So Google introduced a new feature in their Google+ social environment: Communities. And that was my cue to jump in as quickly as possible. I understood right away that this was something that Google+ had desperately needed to become a more interactive place for all gmailers, not just a few who wanted something other than Facebook.
Communities were being created as quickly as people could discover them. I myself signed up for six of them: Trey Ratcliff’s “The Photo Community”, “San Diego Zoo Fans”, “MiceChat” (a Disney blog), “The Official San Diego Photography Community”, “Disney Parks” and “Disney Photography”.
I commented and posted, and got some immediate feedback from a few people. Not a lot, but it was more interaction than I was seeing before the Communities launched.
I quickly learned that I needed to adjust the notification settings in the Communities and with my gmail. Within a day my little red Google+ notifications box hit 18 (usually it topped at 2 or 3 every few days), and my mail notifications reached 139. Unfortunately, I also learned that most of those notifications were of no interest to me. I even toyed with the idea of creating my own Community, but I couldn’t think of a really interesting one, plus I honestly didn’t want another online forum to moderate.
We’ll see where these Communities take both me and Google+. I really hope this is the jump start that people needed to make it all worth investing their time on.
