Google +

As a standard now, I have Google Chrome brought up anytime I have a laptop opened, the main reason: Google +.

Why have I found Google+ so fantastic primarily stems from that fact that I have found great conversation and connections within Google+ which is what I felt I have been missing or lacking with twitter of late.

Don't get me wrong my Twitter PLN is such a fantastic source for great ideas, new technologies, etc, but what I was missing was the conversations.  The cause of the lack of conversation is no ones fault per say.  I imagine that everyone's twitter follow list is as long or longer than mine and being constantly bombarded with great tools that you want to investigate further causes any person to spend their time just reading, so there is no time to have conversation, we are all to0 busy reading and planning how to implement what we are learning about.

Google+, in it's current infancy, has produced a concentrated version of my PLN, sure people are still posting resources, but after a single post you get conversation connected to said post. A person comments on it or adds to the source that was shared. Then I as a reader of the post and comment finds another person to add to my PLN.  Not only have I found this useful but I have also been able to ask a question and get an almost immediate response. In my early days of twitter I tried this and even tried to start a hashtag. #AskTheMasses, which never took off, I used it a couple of times and never got a single response.

Perhaps over time this may or may not change, but for now I am enjoying the simple, clean, conversation rich, platform that Google+ has offered. Never fear faithful twitter followers, I am not leaving Twitter. I like any other tech enthusiast will continue to spread myself over the newest tools that exist and find some sort of happy medium.