Source: xkcd.com
Pardon me, am I too late to be an early adopter of Google+?
The service launched on June 28 in an invite-only “field testing” phase. Since then, roughly 20 million people have already blown past me. (Mostly geeks, let’s be honest — but ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.)
Still, maybe I can be among the first crop of journalists to tinker with this new-ish tool. (Too often we reporters play catch up, or even lapse into laggard status.)
The Everett Rogers Technology Adoption Lifecycle model (CC)
Why my sudden interest? Well, I’ve received a handful of invites to google+ over email, but an old friend and reformed twitter-phobe recently called me out publicly:
Follow @RonSlyRon Sly @fiercefab why aren't you on Google Plus yet? You got me to adopt Twitter, I'm I going to have the same discussion with you?
Ron Sly is a pretty reliable content curator, and I trust him despite his last name. So, today I put my reservations on hold — see: the googlization of everything — and have spent the last couple hours reading up on Google’s new brainchild.
Sure, the New York Times calls Google+ the latest “we wanna be Facebook” project, but also notes that this time it has really got a shot. Unlike underwhelming efforts like Google Buzz, some techies say G+ may actually dethrone Facebook the way Facebook dethroned MySpace.
I’ve come across myriad reasons to get in on the action, including many lists that cater to journalists specifically. Instead of linking a whole whack of ‘um, here’s the most comprehensive (sent to me by, surprise surprise, my buddy Ron Sly):
Read: Google+ for Journalists — A Primer
Anyway, since starting this blog post I stumbled upon a red button that instantly upgraded my Google profile to a G+ account … so I guess I’m officially an early adopter among journalists! Yay me!
Oh…
Dammit. Look who’s already here: