It's not that new, after all, if we were to "hear" the GCTs talking about it during the GTANY in October. However, to me, it was... although I first heard about it when the boys introduced it when we ran our eduCamp@SST for educators in July last year.
You see, it's always this "needs-driven" mentally. If there is "no need", one might not even see the need to look at it or be bothered about it. Of course, there are some urgent needs (at the back of my mind) when I made an effort to carry out some systematic exploration. There's a target in my mind :) It's not so much to address my personal curiosity, but it's a professional need. No regrets... after making the first move into to... lots of potential, however again, the degree of potential really depends on the individuals. The more open minded we are, the greater potential we see its uses in education, definitely :)
The backbone environment of Google+ is quite similar to "Facebook" - a social network where one can broadcast to friends. However, it makes a 'conscious' effort to remind one to choose to whom one wants to broadcast the info to. The circles would automatically appear, unlike Facebook, which appears as a small icon which quite often we might just ignore it unless we make a conscious effort to remind ourselves when posting the comment.
In Facebook: it appears as a small icon before the "Post" button
In Google+: it was obvious, as it appears right above "Share" - the box is huge and we can't miss it!
For posting, of course, Facebook is 'clever' enough to detect the link, etc. and we can click at "Add Photos/ Videos" to add other media. G+ can do the same in detecting the link and providing a preview. The additional feature is, in G+, there are specific buttons for us to add these media too. (So, to some, it is redundant; anyway, it's a neat way to insert comments that go with this media). One observation when using the G+ apps in iPad, the link that was copied earlier will show up automatically in the G+ posting dialog box that prompts us if we intend to post that link. Clever!
I guess, so far, one difference is capturing the location where the post is put up... when G+ not as "advance" as Facebook yet.
One other thing that I like about G+ is... it's free of advertisements... so, we are save from those embarrassments when inappropriate advertisements showed up when we need to do a demo of the work carried out in Facebook!
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