Nonplussed?

Like I have mentioned elsewhere on this blog, I joined the FB bandwagon pretty late. Firstly, I was unsure of whether my little brain would be able to understand one more UI. Secondly, I had nothing to say to the world. My life was pretty un-happening, if you know what I mean. No tours (international or domestic), no photos amidst the wildlife, no videos of me diving through the sky – in short, nothing that would make anyone (even my hypothetical pet dog) jealous.

Erm.. well.. how happening my life is now is not a wise topic to discuss. So, let’s get on with what I wanted to say.

What has all the networking done to me today? Apart from an exponential increase in my creativity and boldness in writing (if you have a different opinion on that, let us take it offline :P), nothing positive, I would say.

Despite continuously cribbing about social networking’s negative value add to my life, last week, I self-inflicted some more pain into my system. Yes, I created an account with yet another social networking site, despite it being very unimaginatively named the Plus.

But, before getting on with that, it would only be righteous of us to mourn in honor of the debacle that Google came up with sometime last year. I was one of those people who actually saw in entirety, the one hour long video that Google had put up on how to use Wave. And, I conveniently forgot that “enthusiasm” is a two-way street. After much cajoling and threatening of the near and the dear and everyone in particular, I gave up mournfully. And, I went back, defeated, to good old FB.

Google Wave was such a fiasco it would not even go down in history as a failure.

However, Google, just like Mahmud of Ghazni, is not willing to give up the fight so easily.

Enough has been said on FB about Plus already.

My two pence is this: If Google can crack the mobile app well enough for Plus, it is going to be a big hit amongst the Android fans, and sooner or later, amongst other smart phone users too. The “circles” seem like a smart idea, weird that FB did not think of it. But, it might only be prudent for Plus to stay away from the whole commercial pages part for some time at least. The number of advertisements and programs in the media that advertise FB proudly saying “Like us on FaceBook” – well that is going to be very, very difficult to crack and might be a fulsome dilution of Plus’ ‘personalization’ image, with no tangible returns in the near future.

Sigh! If only Larry and Sergey would listen to my periodic advice, they would just be elsewhere I tell you.