I was fortunate to get an invite to Google Plus this past week. Although the feature set seems pretty awesome, I’m intrigued to see how the mass audience of Internet users actually adapt to this “social network” (I don’t know if I consider it to be this or not, but I’ll get to that later) or if it will be another Wave/Buzz snafu.

I had a hunch that Google was up to something earlier in the week (before the Plus announcement) when I went on Google and found that the top navigation bar used a new dark grey color set w/a dark rusty orange highlight. Yeah, it was a minor change, but the shift was a visual avenue that Google really has not used in the past. Then, when I was using my Android phone’s web browser, I found that the UI taskbar had unexpectedly changed and, then later in the night, saw that YouTube’s interface had the dark grey color scheme applied to its video controls.

Needless to say, Google is making an overhaul of all of their products piece by piece throughout this week. I’m questioning Google’s execution. Are users going to soak in all of these changes and take them in like a plant that needs water, or will all of the introductions, as a whole, overflow the how users interact with Google? In other words, will people not understand how to use the new feature sets because there quite a few changes spread out through multiple Google properties.

Changes to Google Maps

Just this afternoon, I went into Google Maps and found that the site had introduced a browsing history allowing searchers to view the most recent locations that they’ve viewed in the past few days. Although small, this new feature is something that I’ve been craving for a long time. Additionally, some changes are not good. The content within my Google Calendar is now hidden behind “+1 more event” or +2 more events” reminders because the UI has widened out. As someone who relies on Google Calendars for close to all event scheduling (my college calendars looked as if someone had puked a rainbow onto my screen because I had multiple color coated calendars), I saw this as a turn in the wrong direction. If you’re going to change the look, don’t diminish the functionality.

But now to the big stuff: Google Plus. When I first signed up, I was weary  of Google Plus because it seemed like a legitimate copy of Facebook and Twitter. But over the past few days, I’ve found that the biggest strength of Google Plus is the notification area in the top-right corner of the Google bar on many (but not all – Google, why would you not put this in Google Calendars?????). It’s been nice to get notifications when I’m on Gmail or conducting a search on the Google homepage. The notifications are unobtrusive, which is very nice. Additionally, the little rust orange box has popped its way into mobile: both on the Android Google homepage and in app form for Android. I cannot speak about the features like Huddle because, frankly, I don’t have my best friends to “huddle” with. In theory, this would be a great tool. But I feel like the mass audience of consumers that enjoy good old pen and paper communication would find this overly frustrating as opposed to a group message on Facebook or simply doing a three way call on their cell phones.

And there are aspects of the site that flat out bug me. First of all, when you go to the Circles page where you can add users to your friend groups, Google Plus will show all contacts from your Gmail account regardless of if they are a Google Plus user or not. It took me a little time to realize that these individuals are noted by a small mailbox icon over their image. Google says that these are contacts that can only receive information by “sharing through email.” I’m sorry, but our inboxes are cluttered with enough crap, so why introduce even more messaging into a overfilled space? Also, I cannot feed information from my Twitter into my Plus feed. There needs to be API development rolled out which gives users of both platforms the ability to share information between the two different social networks. I mean, you can do can already do this between Facebook and Twitter as well as Twitter and LinkedIn, so Google Plus should follow in the footsteps of others. I believe that if Google sees their product as the “end all be all” of social media, then they are heading down the road of Wave and Buzz – aka failure.

As I said before, I don’t know if I would classify Google Plus as a social network. Social media – yes. But the site lacks the “networking” aspect of reaching out to individuals who are not your immediate contacts. The flow of information, unless you opt for the share to public option, will only extend to 3 degrees of separation, meaning your friend’s friends (and that’s if you decide to push information out to your “extended circles.”). This isn’t a network. Twitter’s infrastructure actually promotes information flow between the initial node publisher and other nodes that can be multiple degrees of separation away (ie: retweeting someone who retweeted a newsource who tweeted about an individual … I’ve seen this happen before). So I’d actually say that it’s more of a social platform than a network.

Oh Google, you never cease to amaze me.