Another dot in the blogosphere?

I don’t know of any techie blog that did not have something to say about Google’s announcement of Google+ project yesterday.

The video below outlines the idea and the link above provides details and more videos about circles, sparks, hangouts and the emphasis on mobile.

Video source

Some techie bloggers and writers are wondering out loud if Google+ is positioned to compete with Facebook and Twitter. Even though there are functional overlaps, I don’t think this is the case.

Based only on what I have seen in the videos, I think that Google+ is more like Facebook minus or Groups plus. Or perhaps Twitter on steroids.

You can create separate audiences, groups or collaborators for things that are important to you. You can text or video chat with your groups. You can connect only with people that matter to you.

It’s Facebook minus because you aren’t broadcasting everything to everyone. It’s Groups plus because it includes features that might be useful for a project or discussion group.

I wonder if Google+ will be integrated into things like Google Sites or Docs. If it is, I see great potential for its use in education for cooperative and collaborative work as it will literally add important faces to the artefacts that you are trying to create together.