When Google's new social network Google+ launched a few weeks ago people were excited, others were apprehensive, but I'm sure most of us thought, ANOTHER social network? Really?
Google+ is Google's latest social networking platform, you may remember the online giant introducing services like Wave and Buzz in the past, but Google+ is pretty different and from what I can see has already had far much more take up than its less successful predecessors.
In many ways Google+ is similar to Facebook, there's a news feed, you have a profile, you add friends, you +1 things that are interesting in the same way you'd usually Like, the list could go on and on. However, there are some interesting new features too, like Circles, which allow you to group people so you can control who sees what, or Hangouts which let you have informal group video chats, oh and let's not forget the fact Google+ actually looks good, think a Swiss Miss style black, red and white design, which is clean, simplistic and most importantly not blue like Skype, Twitter, Facebook, Delicious...
Google+ may be shiny, new and beat Facebook when it comes to certain features, but are these reasons really enough to make us update both simultaneously? Or cause a mass exodus from Facebook? Who knows. There's certainly been a lot of articles and blog posts that look into the already irritating and over-hyped Google+ vs. Facebook debate.
However, I'm more interested in what makes us use certain networks regularly and which fit in with our everyday behaviour enough for them to become much more than a flash in the pan, because I imagine plenty of people crazily signed up to Google+ last week, myself included, without even thinking about it.
In my experience, for any kind of social network or online platform to really have a permanent position in our lives it has to either offer something entirely different or blow the competition out of the water, if it doesn't tick one of those two boxes it often doesn't seem worth making the effort or altering the way we already behave.
However, it seems that two platforms don't have to be really different to be useful to the same people, I've recently noticed just how many bloggers that have always uses platforms like Typepad, Wordpress or Blogger also use Tumblr to supplement their larger and more popular "main" blogs. To many people a Wordpress blog and a Tumblr blog may seem far too similar, but because the Tumblr community choose to curate small snippets of content and photos, it's actually very different to standard blogging platforms, which is probably why some of our favourite bloggers, including Mademoiselle Robot and Gala Darling use both without too much overlap.
At the same time there's the issue of volume, we can only handle so many different social platforms if we're going to update them regularly, I'm currently using Tumblr, Flickr, Steply, Instagram and Facebook to try and store all of my photos and as you can imagine it just doesn't work, or it would if I didn't have to work.
There seems to be a trend among those really into the technology / social media / geek scene to sign up for things as soon as they come out, whether it's to be the first to have a play around, claim your username before anyone else gets to it, or prove to people you know your stuff, but there's a big difference between signing up to something and finding a genuine use for it in your life in the long run. It's all down to personal preference, how platforms compare to what you use already and whether you have enough space to squeeze it in - other than the design I'm not sure Google+ really stands out for me at the moment, but I suppose only time will tell...
Becca Caddy is a BitchBuzz Tech columnist and freelance writer who has a habit of signing up to everything shiny and new. She also writes for a number of international tech blogs, including Popgadget and The Future is Entertaining. You can read her personal blog beccacaddy.com or watch her rant on Twitter @beccacaddy.
Image via the Google+ Demo Page.