In the realm of social media, I usually end up forgetting to post and tweet regularly.

I work in waves of activity. One day, at the crest of activity, I tweet and post and blog like a madman. The next day, I’m a ghost.

But those tendencies have dropped off since I joined Google+, Google’s own social networking platform. Right now, Google+ is still in beta testing phase with access granted by invite only. Even so, it is speculated to have more than 10 million users already.

Here is the main stream of activity for Google+, a setup that resembles Facebook at first glance.

It’s hugely popular with already avid social media users, but it is also gaining momentum for inspiring a new and distinct audience.

Here’s why:

1. Privacy: Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Google+ allows users to choose who they share certain content with. In reality, people don’t speak with family the way they do their friends or coworkers. Google+ attempts to simulate that truth and stimulate deep conversations and activity. They do this with their signature feature, Circles.

The simple click-and-drag interface for the Circles feature of Google+ allows users to sort followers and share only relevant material to those people.

Circles allows users to sort friends, coworkers,  celebrities and whoever else, into any category you wish. You can create as many circles as you want, up to 5000 anyway.  All you do is click and drag your list of friends into the circles you create. Simple.

2. Hanging out: Interacting with your friends has never been easier. Over the internet at least. Google+ introduced their hangout feature, which enables circles to video chat with each other, up to 10 users. If one person you are interested in is talking, just mouse over their thumbnail video and it expands above the rest. If nobody strikes your fancy, Google+ takes the liberty of cycling through users every few seconds.

3. Photo sharing: If you are like me, viewing shared photos of friends or colleagues is an important tool in social media.

The Google+ photo interface maximizes size and keeps design pleasant to the eye.

Facebook has slowly improved their tool. Twitter lacks one all-together. Google+ made leaps and bounds over competition. The photos tab on your main page takes you to a sleek, cleanly designed page.

When you open up an album, the photos appear big and beautiful on the page, a photographer’s dream photo tool. Even in the Stream, Google+’s version of Facebook’s Feed, the photos appear big, with every detail clearly defined.

4. Immediacy: Google was able to take Twitter’s  market advantage. Since Twitter publishes every tweet to everyone, information gets lost to viewers who follow a sizable number of accounts. Plus, replies come in a back-and-forth method. Little activity between the audience happens because of the difficulty to keep up with the “who said what to who?” mentality of tweets. Google integrates the immediacy of Twitter with responses in a clean commenting system, like Facebook. But, because all the information is relevant to every Google+ member, more people are inclined to join the conversation and actually see what others are saying, too.

5. Simplicity: The word to describe the entirety of Google+ is simple. Developers took every step to make sure that the program was as simple and clean as possible to use. You’ll be hard pressed to find useless design elements in the system. As of now, Google+ doesn’t feature games or advertisements. That prevents users from being bogged down in the usual insanity that comes along with most social networks.

I’m a simple guy with big expectations. Since I started posting on the site, I realized I was reaching my audiences like never before. I have opportunities to meet others with my interests like never before, and I’m a consistent social media user.

While the program does indeed have flaws, and so much potential to grow, the program has made a serious name for itself. Maybe you’ll get hooked like I did.

Add Brandon Goodwin to your Google+ circles.
You can also follow Brandon on twitter, @bdgood, but don’t expect much. He’ll be on Google+.

Photo by: AP

No one should sorry for me when they read this.

I am generally an uncool person, but good things sometimes happen to everybody. For example, I was accidentally blessed with a very cool present last year. The iPhone had been out for a few months and somehow my mother put her name in a box and got drawn as a winner of the first generation iPhone. She’s generally terrified of technology more advanced than a game of Tetris, so I was presented with the iPhone.

When I held the phone I felt twice as interesting and twenty times as snobby as a Sharper Image store. That’s a good feeling because all I had to do was pull the phone out of my pocket and look bored. Automatically people would react to the phone. There was nothing to it.

However, that’s changed so much lately. The 3G came out, and I was mildly fazed. I thought Apple would be done releasing new things for a few years, but then today Apple releases the 3G S. It’s so slightly different that I need it more than anything.

I watched the 3G S commercial last night, looked at my now horribly dated phone and gave it a terrible, cold stare. I wanted to throw it over my backyard fence and forget about how it crossed me.

Don’t bother calling me to cheer me up because I use my phone as a coaster now.