Why I likely won’t follow you on Google+

Twitter is a real-time medium that I use for whatever I’m thinking about at the moment.

Facebook is an asynchronous (for me) to keep in touch with people I don’t interact with on a daily basis.

Google+ is a way for me to communicate with all the disparate groups I associate with.

While I understand the personal need to feel popular and the ego boost an increased follower count often provides, the pitfalls of falling into the same damn trap Facebook has ensnared us in freaks me out.

Most people aren’t interesting, but that doesn’t mean they’re not important, useful or a blast to be friends with. What I’ve always wanted, and email CCs and listservs started this, is the ability to communicate with a specific group of people on a specific topic without the general public or my other friends and acquaintances sticking their head in.

Sure, this kind of exclusivity doesn’t work all the time–it can also be horribly elitist–but dammit, why do we assume that everyone must always be included in everything that’s mentioned online?

Right now I see super popular geeks like Robert Scoble, Chris Pirillo and Louis Gray flooding my stream with long threads filled with inane commentary, most of it of the “great post” or “I totally agree” type. While I don’t blame these guys for being popular, I’m thankful that the mute button is so easy to use.

And that’s where Circles comes in. Likely to be seen as the killer feature that elevates Google+ beyond Facebook for an asynchronous group communication tool, Circles allows me to divvy up the people I want to follow, those I have to follow and those that I hope will listen to what I have to say.

I don’t have to make public groups, I don’t have to deal with invites and I sure as hell don’t have to include people just because they want to. No more “I tried to DM you but…” type of comments and I couldn’t be happier.

But it won’t end there. Sooner or later, and it’s always sooner, we’ll again start posting about stupid, vapid crap that far too many mindless people care about. We’ll get wrapped up in trying to be funny or overwhelmed with desire to share pics from our latest trip.

The inanity of what many of us post continues to baffle me. Would you walk up to people and show them stupid internet videos? Dog pictures? Lame-ass stories about how your kid pooped that day?

Save that crap for Twitter and Facebook, yeah? I’m trying to use Google+ to learn, communicate and get shit done.

The problem with social networks always comes back to people. There’s no shame in trying to alleviate some of that.