Join Us on Social Networks Like Google Plus

Many of us have found each other through social networks, usually our blogs’ blogrolls in the sidebars. But many of us are also carrying on daily conversations on the major social networks.

I wanted to put together a place where we can post our social network IDs or URLs. Mine are and have been in the sidebar and header, but here they are in easy format.

http://twitter.com/cffatboy
Follow @cffatboy

https://www.facebook.com/cffatboy (yes, always use https!)
https://plus.google.com/114766171607995059456 (Google +)

Please leave your information in the comments so others can follow you and we can all have big parties.

Google +

The newest social network is Google +. It just opened up its doors by invitation last Tuesday, and I got in on Friday. Rather than creating lists and groups that you try to keep track of what permissions they all have (like on Facebook) or broadcasting to everyone without any group control at all (like Twitter), Google + has the best of both worlds: circles.

You create circles of people, such as family, friends, acquaintances, people you think sat behind you in class, etc. Then, each time you post something, you have the option of which circles to broadcast to, or “public” or “extended circles” of your circles’ circles. Pretty neat feature.

You can also edit both posts and comments later AND easily mute a conversation that you comment on and it just never ends. I’ve got a Chrome plugin so I even turned off all e-mail notifications.

My one gripe is that the stream shows all of your circles, but I have some very noisy friends. The work-around is to create a circle of those you want to see their posts (call it “stream” if you want to be really wild and crazy) and put most of your people in that circle, but leave out the noisy ones. You’re still following them and can see them by going to their circle, but your daily stream isn’t taken over by their “junk.”

If you need an invite to Google +, DM me your Gmail address in Twitter after I follow you back.