Ten Reasons I Prefer Google+ Over Facebook

As if managing Facebook and Twitter wasn’t nuts enough, I’m now totally hooked on Google+. The sooner all my friends migrate from Facebook to G+, the better. Not that I expect that actually to happen, but I wouldn’t mind :) I’ve always preferred Twitter over Facebook because of its public nature (a well-curated Twitter firehose has a much higher information quotient than a Facebook stream), but Google+ cranks that equation up a notch by giving you the perfect combination of public and private, without Twitter’s character limitations. In a nutshell:

1. Posts don’t get cut off after 420 characters like they do on FB, forcing you to add the rest of your post as comments.
2. You can actually edit posts and comments after they’ve been made, so you don’t have to delete and repost.
3. You can actually use bold and italics (imagine that!)
4. Cleaner design.
5. The Circles concept gives you way more control over who sees your content. You can be as public or as private as you want to be. Share with the world or just one person or any subset thereof.
6. You actually own your own data – you can export your entire history of content, and all of your contacts – to back it up take it elsewhere if you ever want to (FB shuts down all attempts to do that).
7. Perfect combination of the privateness of FB with the publicness of Twitter, so you get exposed to a much broader range of content than you do on FB.
8. No Farmville!
9. No ads (yet)
10. Great collaboration tools (Huddles, Hangouts), great suggested reading (Sparks).
11. Animated GIF support (no really, it’s cooler than you think – click through)

Oops, that was eleven. Want an invite? I’ve got 150 to pass around. Have a mint, they’re free!