I like Google+ and consider it to be the most interesting and well thought out social media site out there. The membership count is significantly lower than Twitter, but that could change. Here are some ideas to make it better.
(1) Seeing your feed.
When you login to Twitter, the first thing you see is the posts of your followers. On Google, you put people in your circles, but what difference does it make if your material is not in their face regularly. Even on Twitter where your material is in their face, very few people dig down enough to see your content much if at all. On Twitter the problem is that people follow too many others and your stuff gets lost in the shuffle. When I login to my business Google+ account, I have to dig to see what my followers posted.
(2) Favorite accounts vs. favorite posts
Twitter allows you to favorite a post. Google allows you to circle an account in any circle you want, or in more than one which is great. What I like to do is to have favorite accounts. I find most people boring, so I want to see the accounts that I really like. Google allows me to do this, but they should have a standard and mandatory circle for all accounts called Favorite Profiles. Google could rank accounts not only by how many people circled them, but by how many people favorited their account! Smart!
(3) Multiple repeats
When you retweet or repost something on Google+, the original post still stays on whatever feed(s) it is on. You might see an identical post three or more times on a particular feed. This is a problem and really annoying since I run into this problem several times per day.
My solution to the multiple repeat post syndrome issue is to have posts show up once. If the post gets retweeted, then show the icon of the last retweeter as well as the icon of the original account posting the content on general feeds. When it gets retweeted, it should jump up on the algorithm for where it appears on the feeds, but should appear only once.
(4) Notifications
I don’t like clicking on the bell to get a thin display of critical information that could get lost easily. It is better the way Twitter does it by having a full scroll of interactions. I like the idea that you can delete unwanted interaction information on Google+, but the problem is that content gets deleted by accident the minute you are not paying attention. Perhaps an “are you sure you want to delete this” button would be a good safeguard.
(5) It is hard to get followers
Does it get easier over time to accumulate followers? On Twitter it is a snap to get followers. I can get 20-40 per day without even spending more than 25 minutes per account. But, on Google+ I spend an hour and only get three or four new followers. Couldn’t there be an easier way to get circled?
(6) Take the tour
I feel that if Google+ had their own communities for several dozen popular interests and put amazing content picked by experts, that would be amazing. Then, prospects who are interested in Google+ could take the tour and be impressed out of their mind at how good the content is. Even people who don’t want to join Google+ might change their mind after they saw that the content was superior to any other medium in social media today!