'Here is a new and brilliant way to connect with people," your friend will say to you. They say this every 18 months, and each time your heart sinks. All you can see is a clock counting down to social network Armageddon: the precise point when you are somehow cyberfriends, yet again, with your mum, your boss, all your exes and that boy who thinks (wrongly) he went to school with you.
So what if, instead of all that harrowing connecting and reconnecting, you could cut ties, hide in corners and keep yourself to yourself, without offending a single person? That's the idea behind Google+, the perfect anti-social network. Its killer app is Circles, which is a bit like Lists, that Twitter thing nobody uses. You connect with people by adding them to a Circle, and you can then post stories, pictures, videos and all the stuff you might in the distant past of last week have posted on Facebook or Twitter, and only people in that Circle can see it. Friends from work might go in both "Friends" and "Work" Circles. And maybe, because people can't see which Circles you've put them in, you'll also create a Circle called "Work Idiots". "Family" is separate. Always. Or you could do what I'm thinking of doing, which is to simply create two groups: YES and NO.
Google+ is in beta at the moment and new users are being invited in gradually. Many posts are coos and wails of awe and bewilderment: "Testing", "is this conversation private?", "HELLOOOOOO???", "has George Michael signed up yet?". Some people are gossiping about what is happening on Twitter in Google+ Circles called things like Twitter Refugees. Most liberatingly of all, because there is not yet any structured sphere of influence beyond being able to click "+1" (similar to Facebook's "Like") on posts you like, Google+ has not been overtaken by brands, there are no trending topics, and there is nobody instructing you to, for example, boycott a publication you never purchase anyway. Attention-seeking seems to be at a minimum, and there are no famous people apart from Britney Spears, for whom I have invented a Circle called "Britney Spears".
But I also bring bad news. The asterisked stage directions that sprang to life thanks to Twitter's lack of text formatting do not work here. On Google+, which does support text formatting, those beautiful asides (*falls asleep*, *retires*, *throws laptop out of window*) simply show up in bold, which doesn't work. This state of affairs is unacceptable and must be addressed before Google+ goes fully public. The success or failure of Google+ is at stake.
