At the end of last year I closed my Facebook and Twitter accounts. There were a lot of reasons from this, but the two main ones were privacy and wasting time.

So I am not sure why I am so enamored of Google+. The circles feature is definitely cool as it makes it easier for me to group all of the different people with whom I interact (there are close friends, people I know from school, people I know from OpenNMS, etc.) It seems to combine the best of Twitter and Facebook, as people can opt to follow me without being “friends” and I can easily post things I want to be public versus those I want kept private. The only complaint I have is that it would be cool to be able to nest circles (an OpenNMS circle would fit inside an Open Source circle, for example). I know I can check multiple boxes, but conceptually I like the idea of “this appeals to open source people” etc.

Plus, warts and all, I think Google is a much better corporate citizen than Facebook. While I don’t expect them to look out for my privacy, for some reason I think they will be less likely to sell it out to the highest bidder. Google primarily just wants to serve me ads.

I think I can live with that.