Recently Google is (again) the source of a buzz on the internet. After two previous failure (buzz and, although more arguably, google wave) Google tries again a social tool. The good thing with geeks friends is that it's easy to have invite, even during the close beta stage :)
So, some first impression about it. It's clean and neat. Like the front page of Google, no fancy gimmick and a well thought interface. It is also not too hard to figure out how to use Google Plus (g+). I think it's partly due to the fact that people are now used to social websites and know what they are expected to do.
About the features, I think Google had two great ideas for this. the circles, the hangouts and the sparks. The circles first : it's like groups of friends/acquaintances/whatever. It allows users to control more tightly what they want to share with who. And that's a great move especially when facebook had to deal with issues about privacy. The sparks : it's like RSS suggestions. Users type what they like (technology, android, [lolcats]...) and a new stream of suggestion is added. This is not crucial for people who already have a lot of RSS feeds (like me) but it can be nice to discover new things.
I was talking with friend yesterday about that and naturally, the question about Facebook versus Google was asked. I think this time Google may have a shot, because it's well built and users can share different type of content without worries about other discovering it. Still, there is a long way to go. For the moment it is small, but the circle management can become overwhelming (I just changed my jog, thus I have to change a lot of things not to share info about my new jobs with my old coworkers), and there is no g+ apps for the time being.
Anyway, I'm quite curious about it, and I'll try to use it as I use Facebook for a while.