I LISTEN TO MARSHALL KIRKPATRICK a lot (he's on the audio file attached to this post) and thought he had insightful knowledge about Google Circles when he broke the story months ago.
His Read Write Web scoop was debunked by Google and a lot of the tech press. So when I stumbled into the G+ ecosystem a month ago, I start following Marshall's journey with this new enabling technology. Like Marshall, I've cut back on tweeting and pulled back my time on Facebook. It's a matter of what works best for the time available. One of the most illuminating things I've learned by following Marshall is the importance of stating things in public if you want to get a conversation going. That's counter-intuitive because the concept of Google Circles hits you all the time when you're inside the system. You might think that you have to build a circle of friends if you want to converse but the reality is you need to be inside circles built by others if you really want to have easy exchanges of views. I enjoy good cross-talk with Google Plus--much better than Facebook or Twitter--because of threaded comment strings that happen naturally with thoughts shared to the public side of Google Plus. I've also had some very meaningful exchanges with small groups of people, knowing the Google Plus privacy controls prevent the small group sessions from going public.
Markshall Kirkpatrick on Google Plus
Oregon Public Broadcasting -- "Think Out Loud on Google" with excellent comments, August 1, 2011.
I'm http://glus.to/topgold on Google Plus.
