Is Google Plus going to rule the world?

Many blog posts and articles have already been written about Google+.  Some of these have focused on the ‘who will win, Google or Facebook’ angle, Phil Bradley argued the case for why Librarians need to get up to speed on it, while others have taken a broader viewpoint. 

One of these that I particularly liked was by Vincent Wong who uses an innovative visual presentation to argue that Google+ is in fact a tool to amalgamate everything that we do on the web into one cloud based platform – that includes tweeting, blogging, sharing, email, collaborating, documents, presentations, networking, etc, etc.

What are the implications if this is how use of Google+ develops?  How will Google generate revenue from having a large captive audience within this platform?   Should Twitter, Facebook, or even Microsoft be worried?

I don’t claim to have any answers to these questions, but I do agree with Phil that librarians everywhere, in public libraries as much as in law firms or in government, should make sure they keep a close eye on what’s happening.  There are already hundreds of librarians on there (Phil himself has almost 750 contacts in his ‘circles’ so far), so plenty of people to connect with, share with and collaborate with. 

As Mike Elgan, editor, blogger and columnist, wrote on Google+ earlier today: 

“Instead of saying, "I'm going to write a blog post now," or "I'm going to send an e-mail" or "I think I'll tweet something" you simply say what you have to say, then decide who you're going to say it to.

If you address it to "Public," it's a blog post.

If you address it to "Your Circles" it's a tweet.

If you address it to your "My Customers" Circle it's a business newsletter.

If you address it to a single person, it can be a letter to your mother.

I'd say this is pretty revolutionary.”