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Comment by bonch | Hacker News Reader

I think Google+ will be a social network for techie hipsters and other early adopters seeking a Facebook alternative, but the novelty will wear off, and the mainstream will barely notice. Just my initial impression. There isn't a compelling enough reason for Facebook's 750 million users to switch.

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With social networks, what really matters is how users think they should use the graph. It matters whether it's a personal or professional graph. That's why social networks are "balkanized" across personal/professional lines.

I find G+ especially useful in a "semi-professional" use case. G+ is just an extension to gmail that adds some easy ways to organize work groups.

For example, a meaningful percentage of my gmail activity is sharing links and info with project teams. It's more intuitive to me to create a circle for each team and post to them via G+ than it is to prepare an ad hoc email to them each time. Also, I'd rather organize that conversation as a private stream with discussion, etc. It avoids clutter in my gmail inbox.

I also spend a lot of time chatting and talking on Skype. Now that I can organize group video chat via G+, I can cut Skype out of my workflow. I don't like using the Skype client at all.

I realize that solutions to these use cases existed before G+, but G+ provides a unified interface that has a powerful effect on my willingness to organize a graph inside Google.

I can see Google+ taking off for enterprise users of Google Apps, once it's released to them.

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