T Rav’s Review Of Google+

Just over a decade ago, it was considered punishment to have to sit through a slideshow of your friend's vacation pictures. Thanks to the world of social networking, not only do you see pictures but you also know what hotel they stayed at and what they ate. Thanks?

In its attempt to learn everything and harness the world's information, Google is now entering the world of social networking. Minus a sexy story involving Harvard and the guy from Napster, Google+ is on its way to becoming yet another way to share your life.

Although its only in beta mode, Google+ is open for business. You can't sign up for the site, right now. But it is allowing users to send out invitations. So what is there to do on Google+? Pretty much the same stuff you can do on Facebook, minus being invited to a group called "Dora...Stop F****** Around And Get A GPS".

Google+ allows you to separate your friends in to circles. You can have your personal friends in one circle, work friends in another, and family in yet another. This allows you to only share posts with certain groups, if you so choose.

Google+ also allows you to create hangouts. The purpose of this is to engage in video chat with a circle of your choosing. I'm not too sure as to how this will be useful. Sure we begged for video phones for years. Now its 2011, we have it, and everyone hates using it (thanks anyway Skype).

You can share photos with your friends, which is the staple of most social networking sites. If the internet shut down tomorrow there would be roving groups of people shoving pictures in your face, asking "Do you like this?!?" Google+ lets you share photos through Google's popular Picasa website and its free photo editing software.

There is also a mobile app for Google's Droid client. The app lets you access posts, friends and pictures from your smart phone.

Like I said before, the site is still in Beta, so you need an invite to join. I have a few invites to burn, and I'm looking for friends! So if you'd like to check out Google+ for yourself, send me your email to trav@103gbfrocks.com . Then let me know what you think on here! Invites are limited so its first come, first served!