Genealogists meet on Google+

In not quite two days I have developed a circle of  22 genealogists on Google+. That's certainly not up to the number I connect with on Facebook and Twitter but is encouraging.

I have organised the 43 people in my circles into a number of groups: Australian, Education, Family, Friends, Genealogy and Libraries as these reflect my interests. I had an IT circle but deleted that because everyone  in the circles shares an interest in technology and social media. Some people are in one circle, some in more and one is in four circles. ie Australian, Education, Genealogy and Libraries (I wonder who that is, Sharon?).

The major benefit this has over my one Twitter account is being able to target my communications to a particular group and not clog up their streams with too much irrelevant stuff. If something from one of my Education mates that will be of interest to my other mates appears in my stream then I can share it appropriately and so on; just as I did this morning with this video about Google+ circles.



I have tweaked my public profile so that people looking for contacts with similar interests should be able to find me. Just as with other Social Networks when someone adds me to one of their circles I take a look at who else they have added to seek new contacts.

I am pleased that a number of people I invited: Shelley from Twigs of Yore, Tanya Honey, Sharon Brennan, Pru Mitchell, Thomas MacEntee and  Amy Coffin accepted my invitations to join. I also found Drew Smith whom I had met at Rootstech 2011 and Tami Glatz whose Relatively Curious blog I follow. I follow Dusty Rhoades  and Andrew Kemp on Twitter and now on Google+. Australians Shauna Hicks and Stephen Phillips were members of Google+ before me. Of course, most important, is Banai Feldstein who made it possible for me to join. Members of my family have also joined; I wonder if they will enjoy the genealogy posts I send their way?

I have installed the Android Google+ app on my Galaxy tablet. Although I prefer the interface on the desktop  I am quite happy to use the tablet. The tablet does have one feature, Huddle, that does not appear to be in the desktop app. Shelley has set up a Huddle for The Galaxy Girls as a tool for us to discuss our tablets and apps. 

I am finding The Spark function  relatively useless at the moment. I have set up a spark for "genealogy" but it is not returning much valuable information. The results when I set up one for "genealogy Australia" were even worse - that returned an article on Miley Cirus and one on Masterchef!

One of the features I am finding refreshing is that, for the moment, this tool is focused towards people rather than institutions. I envisage that I will continue to use Twitter to follow organisations and commercial bodies, Facebook to follow friends and organisations who are not so into social networking and Google+ to follow my contacts from genealogy, educations and libraries with an interest in social media.

I hope that this venture is successful so, as I did with Google Wave, I am giving it a go. I do have a few invitations to hand out to genealogists who are committed to giving Google+ a  rigorous tryout.