Google+

For the first time in a while, I felt elite, special, like I was apart of this secret club that you had to know the password to get in and if you didn't know, you got left out.  Yeah, I felt like this for a day.  Why did I get so excited?  Because those innovative folks at Google did it again - they created the newest social networking site - their answer to Facebook.  And it's called Google+.  

You may ask yourself, "How do I get to be apart of Google+?"  Well, the answer is, someone has to invite you.  The other day, I opened my Gmail to see the infamous invitation.  That evening, with one friend in my circle, we decided to "hang out" - which is the video chat option for Google+.  And although there are things like Skype or iChat, the neat thing about hanging out is that you can invite multiple people to chat with at once.  My friend was explaining to me that he had chatted with 5 other people at once - they shared YouTube videos (another feature - everyone can watch them together) and drank wine.  So although physically, they were alone, virtually they were not.  As my former qualitative research professor would put it, it's a new way of "doing being with" someone else.  And I'm totally OK with that.

Now that I'm a few days into this new social media site - I'm not sure how much I will use it for status updates - my Twitter has taken over that from my Facebook.  I do, however, love the hang out feature and will continue to navigate and learn the site.  And although I'm excited about it, I'm starting to feel that "elite-ness" wear off as many of my friends are starting to post via FB and Twitter that they are now apart of this new network.  It wore off even more when I met someone today who told me he knows someone at Google and got asked to join it very early.  He declined due to his lack of interest in social networking in general.  He definitely one UPed me on that one...