My Google Plus review

I guess most of you have heard of Google+ by now.  Apparently it is the next big thing, facebook killer, or whatever...

Well, here's my two cents:

I love the graphics.  I don't know why, but I love crisp, clean graphics with bouncing icons.  It must be because I'm an Apple fanboy.  But as every Apple fanboy knows, it's not just about looks, but about functionality.  The functionality of Google+ is nice, but not great.  If I had never heard of facebook or twitter then I'd be over the moon, but I'm not.

From my (albeit limited) experience it seems to do what it promised to do.  But the question is whether or not I care?
Let's have a look at it feature by feature:
Circles: This is my favourite part of G+ it is nice to know that only the people that I select get to view my random status updates.  Yay.  But then facebook has had this ability for ages, it has just been too much hassle to use it.  Personally I use Better facebook which has given me the ability to do the same thing on facebook (just without the cool graphics)
Sparks: I don't care about this.  Sorry.
Chat: Opt-in chat is useless.  People are too lazy to opt-in.  If I want to chat to someone I have Skype, email, facebook and a telephone.
Hangouts: Group video chat sounds cool, but I'd be too worried about my hair and what is happening behind me to want to use this.  And when I do have my hair just right, the probability that someone else would have their hair just right at the same time is very remote.  So no, I wouldn't use this either.

But probably the most annoying thing for me is that there is zero integration with my Google mail account.  What's going on there?

So in conclusion:
Will Google+ replace Twitter?  Unlikely
Will Google+ replace Skype?  Unlikely
Will Google+ replace facebook?  Very unlikely, at least until G+ gets "Farm Town" or equivalent
Will I keep using Google+ beyond a month?  Honestly I don't know, only time will tell.