
This time next year, I'll be spending WAY more time on Google+ than I do on Facebook. Currently the ratio is likely 90:10 Facebook. Lets say, it'll be 75:25 Google+ by next December.
Here's why... after 20++ years, migrating mail (still the killer-app after all this time) from (whatever) to Eudora to Outlook (during my blue period) back to Eudora then to Thunderbird then to Apple Mail... each time hating the overdone NEW features and lamenting the loss of the really useful simple ones... I've given up on mail client/mail-app... crap... I've left my hard drive and settled on gmail.
I got myself a spiffy Google Enterprise account and have been furiously consolidating all mail, systems & services under this googly-umbrella; dropbox will linger, but everything is going for a google-"drive"... Things like Analytics, they were already in this 'newer' world, NOW they're just far more integrated into my (good-gawd I hate the word) eco-system.
NOW here's the bonus... I've recently been introduced to a little beauty of a contact database cloud app called Solve360 (made in Canada). Solve sits as a layer overtop of my gmail enterprise account and, for all intents and purpose adds 90% of the feature-set I abandoned when I left my last gig and the Netsuite install we'd just completed... top up Solve360 with another integrated app, Xero for accounting (and a couple of others)... AND, BANG, I pretty much have the fully integrated Sales, CRM & Accounting system I've been having spread-sheet laden wet dreams over of all these years. The fact that Solve360 rides on my email (still the killer app after all these years), rather than treating email as a "paste-on"... my little corner of paradise is in the cross-hairs (after all these years).
OK, Outlook IS headed in the same direction, but Outlook belongs to a universe in which I do not reside. Netsuite, SAP, Salesforce are (for now) far better more robust systems, but at a "five figure" buy-in; unless I land in Big-Bizland, these solutions are NOT geared to us mere mortal SMBs... In hindsight, trying to jam Netsuite onto a 6/7 person $5MM operation was a fools pursuits (in hind-hind site, my gmail/solve/xero etc... eco-system was not yet out of the development sandbox when we made that call)
SO... what's behind Google+'s nomination the "social app" end/access point of my new (arrgh) eco-system... SIMPLY... 100% integration to email (still the killer app after all these years), which means its totally integrated into my "real world" through Solve360 et al; it's not a toy, not another place I goto when I'm not really real-working...
I can only hope the folks at LinkedIn are paying attention to this; that said, I can surely see them either aligning themselves with Netsuite, Salesforce, SAP or... being bought by one of the seemingly drunken tile-meister's at MicroSoft (do we still midcap that S?)
So, all in... I'll keep you posted. In the meantime; heck, here's an invite to join one of my "circles" on Google+ (damn, that's going to be hard to get used to)... I'm not going anywhere from Facebook, I'll always be here; HECK, I'm still on MySpace for goodness sake. Just, it'll be nice to have you over there too. :-)
[[...to be re-read and reviewed for accuracy, Nov 21st, 2013]]