I’ve been on Google+ since shortly after it was launched, as have a number of my friends. Most of them, however, don’t post there. Many haven’t even bothered to fill in their profiles.
In fact, G+ seems mainly populated right now by people who are heavily into social media and technology — consultants, bloggers and the like. Which gives a really warped view of the service. They are all advocating madly on its behalf and quickly adding thousands of people into their circles.
It’s a bit like arriving to a party early where none of your friends have arrived and the few people who are there are already drunk and talking way too loudly.
Few, if any, of my clients or business contacts are on Google+. Hell, few of them are even on Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter to any active extent. I’m talking regular people — lawyers, health care professionals, consumer and B2B PR types, employee engagement consultants, ad agency people, event organizers, graphic designers.
So right now I’m taking mostly to strangers and empty accounts. I suppose it’s good to be in on the ground floor, but the experience is kind of discordant. A TON of noise from a very few people and shrugs from the vast majority.
Now that G+ is open to everyone, maybe this will change, though I don’t know anyone who couldn’t get their hands on an invite when it was “closed” and I haven’t seen a flood of my own contacts coming on.
I wouldn’t consider myself an early adopter. Right now I feel like a vaguely panicked also-ran.
