We each have our own metaphors.

For Facebook I go with a family weedding (family and friends).

For Twitter I go with a rain. Sometimes you need an umbrella.

Overused, overhyped, over-whelming noise. It depends on if you like going out in a thunderstorm on monsoon.

And as a rainmaker do you go out with a water-pistol or do a rain-dance?

I’ve observed Twitter misused drown discussion groups (Oxford University) because it is being used like DIY direct mail or spam. Everyone sticking their heads out a window and blowing a trumpet about stuff that very few people have any interest in at all. So instead of being used as a way to talk with a niche audience, it is used as a way to spam millions.

For Google+ so far is a handful of OU students who happen to be studying the Masters in Open and Distance Education and are joining this lab together. Its appeal is obvious – control. Though nothing I don’t recognise from Diaryland which has something called ‘rings’ and was live in September 1999. No such thing as a good idea then?

Just someone coming along and doing it better?

Linkedin is where the real networking occurs, between professional like-minds.

Not forgetting blogs, where a specialist interest or three is the best place to pull-together and associate with people whose comments and opinions you value.

We can make these platforms anything we want them to be, indeed turn the recieved thinking or common practice inside out if we wish.

Why not draw professional contacts to Facebook as a creative workout in a different context?

If Google+ replaces Facebook AND Twitter I’ll be happy.

But the idea that I’ll get used to Google+ over the next 18months and then need or want to change to something else fills me with dismay. It reminds me of how the privatisation of the bus services meant you could get three busses all arriving at the same time, each from a different operator, each wanting you to use their bus.