Google+

[FlipFantasia]

Hello lovely bloggy folk

OK, so I'd love to know more about google+.

I've noticed the g+ button on more and more blogs and it's got me interested. I joined g+ in RL but never use it and find it meh (probably because everyone I know is really on FB rather than g+). But if my favourite bloggers are on there (and presumably lots more blogs I could discover!) then I'm willing to give it a try...

So:
Do you use g+ as a blogger?
How? As in, what do you get out of it? Is it fun? Or a source of traffic? Or both? And what on earth is a circle?
And how would I go about joining it? Just using the gmail address I have in my blog name? I would really want to avoid using my real name...

Finally, how would I add a g+ button to my wordpress.com blog?

TIA!

PS my blog is Low Impact Parenting

[FlipFantasia]

Ok, I'll assume no one uses g+ then!

[MmeLindor]

I will join in cause I have tried and failed to get on with Google+ and hope that someone else will come along and give good advice.

[Tee2072]

Google needs to stick to search engines and email clients. Google+ is unwieldy and no one is really using it. I expect it to die the death soon, I really do.

Even my husband, who jumps on all the new social media bandwagons via his work with fandoms finds it useless, and he likes all those things!

[SaskiaRembrandtVampireHunter]

Tee is right! G+ is a strange thing, I've never really figured out what it's supposed to be.

And I don't think you can sign up with anything but your real name, which is another tick on the list of negatives.

[FlipFantasia]

Thanks Tee - sounds like I'm not missing anything then . Thinking about it, my loves-all-things tech dh is also not a fan...

Saskia, defo don't want my real name attached to my blog name (despite some RL friends knowing) so that's a big turn off!

This is probably a Good Thing as I barely have time to blog so hardly need another place to waste time on the interweb...

[MmeLindor]

I think you can have a blog page - but I have to say I went to have another look today and it is just so boring. Hardly anyone is using it and my timeline doesn't move at all.

I do like their Hangouts though - they are handy.

[Tee2072]

I think they have done well with hangouts, apps and, of course, their search engines are brilliant.

They need to leave social media to others.

[MmeLindor]

Nickie on Geekalicious linked to this article on Google+ which I found interesting.

I guess that G+ is different to the other SM platforms, in that they offered something that users liked, and that is why they became popular. Google has flung a lot of money at G+ and while people are keen to use it, they are not quite convinced how and why to use it.

I am giving it a go, but still feel quite lost.

[spicers1976]

I love G+ and use it much like my GFC reader that I used to use a lot when I was on the blogger platform. It's a good way to share with other people and find new content.