And that is fine…

But it leaves me thinking something…  That since Google+ is the shiny new object in the room… the new kid that all the girls think is “mysterious”… is it getting a pass? 

Or, am I just the stodgy old dude that doesn’t like change?

Frankly, I think I do like change, but I also don’t dive on every new toy.  And I like FaceBook.  I never warmed up to Twitter.  FourSquare took me a little while, and it isn’t on the top of my mind.  There are probably 20 social networking options that I have discarded in the last few years because they didn’t thrill me.  In fact, Google Wave and Google Buzz would be two of the platforms I dropped well before they went away.

And don’t think for a minute that I think Google+ is going to go the way of Buzz and Wave.  Google+ is too good for that.

But, personally I don’t think it is the coolest thing ever…  I think we have a case of Social Media Bias.  Right now, Google+ is made up of early adopters.  And early adopters, in general, are people that like the shiny new objects.  And because early adopter love the new stuff, Google+ is in a Honeymoon phase…  it is getting the love and it doesn’t have to prove itself.

The question is this…  What do YOU think?  Is Google+ all that and a bag of chips, or does it need to bake a little longer?  Is it easier to work with that FaceBook, or is it that the users are those that are generally quickest to adapt?

Image via exceptnothing.com

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Last year everyone was talking about the Google Wave… it was the hottest ‘beta’ invite around.  There were hundreds of blog posts from all sorts of tech luminaries about the Google Wave and how it was going to revolutionize communications… rich media, text, video, audio, websites… all together.

About two and a half months ago, Google announced that the Wave was going to die… probably after the end of 2010.

I wrangled a Wave invite last year.  It was cool… but not cool enough to actually use.  And I guess that was why nobody bothered to really use it.  It didn’t revolutionize email communications.  It didn’t make a wave… in fact, it was barely a ripple.

But here is the big question…

When we look back at this a couple years from now, will we see the Google Wave as a trans-formative communications revolution?

I don’t know that we will… or won’t.  But I think it is just as possible that Google’s Wave will be an idea ahead of its time as it is to be just a bad idea.

Take a look back…

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Normally, I keep my Flashback posts on LaneBailey.com… but this one was just so appropriate for here…

If you haven’t been in Gmail lately, you might not have noticed Google‘s new toy tool.  It is called Google Buzz.  In a nutshell, Google is integrating a social media component into Gmail.

In Buzz, users can strike up public or private conversations with integrated video, photos and links.  Kind of like the Status Updates on FaceBook.  In that regard, it is a step above Twitter… the king of the micro-blog/status update world.  Twitter doesn’t allow inline photos and videos, so when users share them, viewers have to leave Twitter to view the associated content.

I haven’t had a lot of time to play in it, but it seems kind of like “Google Wave Lite” to me…  Google Wave has many of the same types of features… of course it adds a LOT more integration with a wider variety of tools… and isn’t tuned to automatically pull in content as sites like Twitter, Flickr and YouTube are updated.

OK, they are very different, but I see the same type of collaboration available with Buzz as there is with Wave.

But there is a big picture here…

The big picture is that you NEED a Gmail account.  Google Buzz, Google Wave, Google Analytics, Google Maps, Google Docs, Google Voice…  Are you getting the big picture?  There is WAY more than that, but those are a good start.

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Thinking back not all that long ago, I wasn’t doing most of those things seperately, much less combined.  In  fact, a few years ago, many of these technologies not widely adopted because of the bandwidth required.

Now it is possible that someone could send me a message and WATCH LETTER BY LETTER as I type a reply.  And while pulling in information from news outlets, social media and whatever else is required in order to get the message across, we can make a rich media presentation.

In unrelated news, I looked at an 84″ HDTV that was under $5000 (Like I have $50 to spend on a TV right now…).  They were showing a Blu-Ray movie (Pixar’s Cars).  That thing ROCKED.

And then I got to thinking…

<you’d better take cover>

I use a tablet computer.  I was looking at a SERIOUSLY High Definition display “monitor”.  And now this multi-media communications technology.  Imagine if all of these were combined. We are on the verge of things that were in science fiction movies only a few years ago.

And yesterday evening, My son’s teacher said that it won’t be long before kids don’t carry books to school… it will all be online.  I was already thinking that a tablet computer could function as both a reading appliance (like a Kindle) and writing surface…  The 5 year old gets to draw on daddy’s computer sometimes…

I think my phone has more computing power than my school district had when I was a kid.

from LaneBailey.com