New Blogger?

Well it looks like Blogger Dashboard has gone and got itself a Plus style update - didn't see that coming. Looks tidy. I've always felt the Blogger dashboard looked like a bolt on to the rest. Now it has some of the panache of the Plus and the rest of the updated interfaces. Not sure it's completely on the button but certainly headed towards the unified look and feel of the 'new' Google. So far so good and I like it...

Plus Or Minus

The news has been awash - or should that be aBuzz - with Google Plus, the new social ecosystem from Google and I'm looking forward to seeing how it hooks in with all the other Google services. I do have one fear that all my eggs are finding there way into one super large basket. It's not a big concern but it does need consideration.

I like the idea of a simplified interface verses the bloat of Facebook. The recent updates that Big G has been effecting across it's services look clean, uncluttered and uniform. Google Plus promises that same uncluttered look. Facebook, on the other hand, has too much bloatware going on. What is it with all the 'apps' ? Is it me or is all theat bloat just total crud? I want to use my social network to connect to friends, chat, message, post up the odd photo from an event and arrange the odd night out. End of. To that effect the Google experiment, from what I've manage to glimpse - and admittedly, that ain't much - ticks the boxes.

The big problem as I see it is, can we all really tempt our friends, our networks of interlinked social streams off Facebook into Google+ quickly enough? To be effective you need to be able to interact with your social groups in a single interaction. It's no good having to post once to Google+ and then again to Facebook. That just won't work. I'm sure someone will come up with some way to link the networks but I'm doubting it'll be easy.

Having said all that, if Facebook simplified their offering, stripped out the chaff and left the wheat there'd be no market for Google to try and break into. As it is, there is and I for one hope it works. The main question - will enough of us move across quickly enough to make the whole thing work? - once plus comes out of beta, of course, for those of us still waiting for an invite...