What's wrong with Google+?
Ignoring that we don't really need another place to post content but we have to use Google+ because of Google looking after their own for search there are some useful things about Google+.
For example I like that it sits between a tweet and a full on blog. You have as many characters as you like (which is refreshing after being limited to 140) and you get some of the benefits of a blog, like comments with your post.
However, as a new Google+ user there are many frustrations. The ones I've noticed so far include:
1. No title - longer posts feel like they should have a title
2. Some basic html or rich text formatting (like lists, bold, alignment) would be useful. I'm manual number these points now and it's a pain if I think of something to insert later
3. Pulling out the first link to the area below is pretty untidy. You can't construct a complex post with multiple links and images.
4. Google+ page and profile URL's are very untidy and get in the way to even linking between Google+ content
5. Not natively posting through twitter feels almost spiteful. Most I'm sure would post their links on Twitter or how does anyone know what you wrote? Making Google+ Twitter friendly would accelerate it's use.
6. I live in Google Reader. It seems nuts to me your stream is not available as an RSS feed in Reader. I simply don't check Google+ that often.
7. You can get tangled up with multiple Google accounts
Google+ is undercooked and comes across as a competitive response which may even attract some antitrust interest.
Google could have been less evil by baking it a bit more and being gracious with Twitter to seamlessly span the space between Twitter and a full blog.
Google+ makes me wonder what would happen if Twitter allowed long Tweets. Twitter has much more elegant way of linking to authors (@xero rather than +Xero Accounting Software ) and deals with threads acceptably.
I do expect Google will iterate Google+ quickly. There is no doubt the social battle is on. I'm just not sure that in the short term users benefit that much.
What do you think?