Google+ off to a great start

I'm not one of the fortunate tech elite that has a Google+ invite.  However, in my brief overview of what they have done with the product launch, I'm pretty impressed.  

I'm not one of the fortunate tech elite that has a Google+ invite.  However, in my brief overview of what they have done with the product launch, I'm pretty impressed.  

Thinking about a couple of their previous releases around social type products.  Google Wave was nearly impossible to explain.  It solved a very limited use case.  Mainly for technical people who were sharing in document creation.  

Google Buzz suffered from not being baked enough.  And then they went wide with it immediately.  I'm often supportive of just getting an early Minimum Viable Product out.  However, this was too minimum. They could have controlled this if they made it Beta.   

With the failed release of Google Buzz, I hear that the team that was working on that continued working, but under the goal of what was to become Google+.  

Google Plus has the hallmarks of a great release.  It is well thought out.  The design is improved and modern.  Not only did they apply the design to Google+, they applied it to the rest of the properties at the same time.  You even see this design theme in Google Maps.  And it is clean and simple.

It addressed the issues with the two major competitors of Facebook and Twitter.  It is open like Twitter and more personal and controlled than either Facebook or Twitter.   Circles took a hard concept of "List Making" and makes it easy (from what I can tell by the demos).  

Basically they made a very solid first product in both design and concept for a social network.  

Then they turned that product release to 11.  They added the great idea of "Hangouts".  10 person, easy to execute, video conference.  This is the "Shinny Object" that we all want to try out.   I often want to try and use Skype this way so my young kids can visit with their grandparents, aunt and uncle.  Having this just built into the social network experience will be great.  

Now, if only I could get ahold of one of those Google+ invites.  Can't wait to try it out.