I’m writing this down more to clarify my own thoughts than to try to persuade anyone, or to change any hearts and minds. People like what people like and that’s fine. It’s a big world.

Too much set theory. There’s way too much thought required to reckon who sees what. My first inclination is to model it as set theory: there is a set (or set of sets) of people I broadcast any given message to, and among the potential recipients, they each have sets of who they are looking at, and my content will appear to the intersections of those sets. I may not have that exactly right, but then, that’s part of the problem, too. And if you think set theory’s the wrong approach and there is a more linear algorithm we can apply that might simplify it, take a look at this:

(Original image via a FoaF (someone in my Extended Circles?) named Evan Berman.)

I don’t think that’s materially better than my set theory model when it comes to figuring out whom I’m talking to, especially before my first 32oz of coffee.

It increases the number of places I’m going to have to check every day. I know there are all sorts of Social Media Weenises™ out there who have declared after 24 hours with g+ that they can shut down their blogs, Facebook and twitter accounts, even their gmail. Well, good for them. Most of these guys (and they are all guys) really just like the sound of their own voices, so a single place to blast their thoughts into the ether seems like a great idea.

But the reason I do social computing is for the social, not the computing. I’m here for the people; I’m here to read more than I am to write. And while it is clear that I have a number of friends who are leaping into g+ full speed ahead, I have many, many more who aren’t going anywhere. They’re staying right where they are: Facebook. It was a miracle that some of them even showed up there in the first place. So, if I want to see what they are up to and what the other bunch is up to, I’m going to have to go to both places. And, for me, that also implies that I’m going to have to participate in both as well. I may be here to consume more than to share, but social computing is what you make of it. The connections made are maintained by two-way flow. I will lose something important if I try to access any of these information flows unidirectionally. My time is already very tight and this is going to make the situation unequivocally worse.

Google is just as evil as Facebook, maybe more so. I see a lot of Zuckerberg and Facebook haters out there, and I get that. Anything that gets that big and monopolistic is something to be concerned about. It looks to me like a large number of the people flowing to g+ are doing so because FB is evil, and that’s OK, but in my opinion, the sins of Google far, far outweigh those of FB. They are selling more information about each of us in a given microsecond than FB would dare to dream to acquire over our lifetimes. Every search term, every gmail sent, every picture uploaded, youtube comment, +1 on some derpy CNN article: they’ve got it all and it’s all for sale. They’ve surely got more that we don’t even know about. Personally, I’ve made an uneasy peace with this fact, as well as with their truly evil behavior in China and other places. No corporation is without sin, and this is a fact that bears remembering.

Oh, and Google will bully you just as quickly as Facebook, and perhaps with more disastrous effect, too. Try willfully violating their ToS, maybe post some hard core porn, and see how long it takes them to shut your ass down, possibly including all your other Google services, too.

Too much whitespace. I know I’m in the minority here and Google is just doing what everyone else is right now, but I prefer my information to be densely packed on the screen. This surely comes as a result of my working for over a decade in the trading industry where I look at tight grids of ticking data, and from two decades of coding where I like to see as much as possible of what’s going on in my editor at one time. It’s purely a personal preference, but I’d like to see more than 2-3 posts (stream entires? googles?) on my browser window at a time. I understand this is just the latest trend that designers are foisting upon us. Gmail’s doing it, the new Lion version of Mail.app. We’re trending towards about 3 characters per square inch. Maybe if I don giant, plastic-rimmed glasses, Chucks, a scarf, and stop shaving for a week, I’ll see it that way, too. But this is everywhere lately and I suppose I’d better get on board, or finally knuckle down and learn CSS and create my own stylesheets, though that seems dangerous for services that evolve this quickly.

Random stream ordering. They’ll probably fix this or make it an option, but for Christ’s sake, just show the posts in straight reverse chronological order and show them all. Your algorithm adds no value to me, no matter how well you think you know me. Facebook’s “Top Stories”: I’m talking to you, too (but at least they gave us an opt-out).

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It’s early; maybe they will fix some of these things. There are a lot of really smart people working at Google and so far it seems that they are at least listening to user feedback. I’m cautiously optimistic. This is their third shot at this, and it’s clearly the closest yet. At least I’m talking about use cases that I think need fixing, not questioning why the hell they did it in the first place.

There are some things I like about Google plus. The Circles UI is fabulous. I think the concept is, too, if they can find a way to simplify the semantics. I haven’t done a hangout yet, but it looks great. The way you can send direct messages to someone via the stream (circle of size 1) is great.

There are also some things that are definitely not the problem. Most notable: I do not fear change and I am not too stupid to get it, themes I now see appearing amongst some of the Weenises out there. I’d love one of these bloviating douchebags who have never written a line of code in their useless, parasitic lives to say either of those things to me in person.

Anyway. Ramble over. My overall reaction to Google+ is one of sad resignation: “great, somewhere else I’m going to have to spend time and attention on to see what people I care about are up to, and while I’m there, I will be frustrated by the aesthetic and flow of it.”

But I’ll be there, at least a little, because I care about the people more than the technology.