Google+ is another attempt to take on Facebook. The twist is that this time it might work. It threatens to buck the trend of gaffe-prone Google product launches. People are actually excited about it. I’m excited about it. And I can’t remember when I last felt excited about a social media offering.

Google have obviously spent a lot of time and effort on making sure that Google+ works. A big emphasis has been placed on the user interface, with changes being rolled out across all of Google’s major products.

Circles

On that front, the biggest head-turner has been Google Circles. There is nothing particularly revolutionary at all about the concept. You separate people into different groups, meaning that you can share certain information with your close friends while keeping it hidden from occasional acquaintances.

Facebook has had this feature for as long as I can remember. But it’s never been sexy. Google has realised that people are attracted by flashy and playful interfaces as much as (or even more than) interfaces that are merely functional.

I was initially not impressed by the idea. But I have found that I have created many more circles than lists in Facebook. In Facebook I only have two — ‘Close friends’ (which I don’t particularly use) and ‘Limited profile’ which hides certain profile information from certain people.

But on Google+, I now have separate circles for six groups of people, with the intention of creating more. At the time being it is difficult to tell if the Circles feature will be useful in a way that Facebook’s lists feature isn’t.

A relatively clean slate

But what really strikes me about Google+ is the fact that its main selling point is that it’s not Facebook. Most are focusing on the privacy aspect of this. I am not sure if Google is less of a worry than Facebook on the privacy front.

But where Google has the upper hand is on its image. Over the years, Facebook has built up a lot of baggage. Facebook is now a massive deal with complicated systems of etiquette. Look at how people (only half jokingly) talk about relationships only becoming ‘official’ when your relationship status is set on Facebook.

For this sort of reason, Facebook has become a minefield. I often think twice about adding someone on Facebook just because of all the baggage that comes with it. Some people might take offence. Do they want to be Facebook friends with me? I am never sure. Which pretty much means that I add almost no-one these days.

Google Circles has a major advantage, in that it doesn’t come with all of this baggage. Moreover, it cleverly avoids calling everyone friends. When I signed up, by default I had circles called Friends, Family, Acquaintances and Following (for people I have never met but whose posts I find interesting).

The crucial inclusion of the Following circle means I can feel more comfortable about adding people. Already it is starting to feel more like Twitter or Tumblr in terms of the people that are on there, but with the functionality of Facebook.

Partly this is because, for the time being, Google+ is mainly full of the geeky types that I only know online anyway. Time will tell if Facebook users and more ‘real life’ friends will join Google+. But for me, it is a massively good sign that I have already happily added a number of people to my Google Circles, some of whom I would not consider adding on Facebook.

The other features

This is where it starts to unravel a bit for me. Beyond Circles, which is more about a change in culture rather than any revolutionary new features, I am not sure what else about Google+ is exciting.

I have tried, but I just do not understand Google Sparks. What is it for? It seems like a really bad version of Google News or Google Alerts.

Meanwhile, Hangouts looks like it could be fun, but probably not for me. Out of curiosity, I tried it out on my netbook, which has built-in the only webcam I own. But it seemed like Hangouts almost killed it! Admittedly, my netbook is a bit old and is creaking at the seams, but it wasn’t the best of experiences.

What’s to come

Overall, though, the most exciting thing about Google+ is that it heralds a change in direction for Google. It sounds like there is more in the pipeline and that they are intent on shaking up the social web. Circles is a great start.

If you happen to want to, you can add me on Google+.

As she was overwhelmed by members of the Tartan Army at a railway station, Ms Swinson got out her BlackBerry, logged on to her Twitter site and wrote: “Have I missed something? What’s the football festivity? Can’t move at Queen Street station for folk in Scotland tops.”

Seven minutes later, Graham Barrie posted: “The Tartan Army v the Dutch Army tonight at Hampden Jo. You really need to get out more ”

Jeff and Mr Eugenides both have good takes on this. I have to agree with them. For some, football is a matter of life and death. The Scotsman‘s David Maddox calls the match “do-or-die”. But in truth, it isn’t much more than a slightly tedious playground game.

The Scotland–Netherlands tie wasn’t exactly in my diary, though it is true that I was quite aware of it thanks to my football-loving friends. My own take on the match, as published on Twitter, would probably have got me into more trouble. I wasn’t merely ignorant; I was aware, but sarcastic and dismissive:

Advice to football fans: Scotland won’t win the World Cup, so I wouldn’t concern yourself with it.

I find it difficult to get excited about football at the best of times. My enthusiasm for Scotland internationals is marginally above zilch. In my defence, I was rather put off by the fact that last month I was taken by a friend to the pub to watch what I was told would be a football match but turned out to be a disaster film. Strange.

Really, you could argue that the people who don’t think about football are making the right decision. All that worrying over whether Scotland gets knocked out in this round or that does seem to be a waste of energy. And I can well imagine Jo Swinson has plenty of other things to occupy her time with.

This comes just a few months after Patrick Harvie was at the centre of another Twitter row manufactured by David Maddox. His crime was to discreetly tweet at the dinner table, something which I think many people do.

I don’t get this obsession with politicians having to be identikit robots who all have to be up-to-date on the price of milk, whatever music is in the charts and some tedious sporting exploit. I have written about this phenomenon before, and my views haven’t changed.

The fact is that there are 646 MPs and 129 MSPs. If you took 775 random people, you can be guaranteed to find people who couldn’t give two hoots about football and couldn’t tell you how much a loaf of bread costs. You would certainly find plenty of people who didn’t feel the need to contrive odd opinions about the Arctic Monkeys. Yet we expect all this from our politicians. Why?

On the one hand people criticise politicians for being almost like robots if they are perceived to toe the party line, talk in soundbites or reel off reams of irrelevant statistics. But then if they reveal a bit of their personality by representing part of the variety of society by not fitting a media-constructed template of what a “normal person” is expected to be, they are blasted for being “out of touch”.

I can more easily admire Jo Swinson for her personal choice not to worry about football than any politician who feels the need to pretend they are interested when they are so clearly not. Indeed, Jeff’s comparison with Gordon Brown’s uneasy comments about Paul Gascoigne’s goal against Scotland in Euro 96 reveals that this is one of those issues where you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.

While you would expect parliamentarians to have a knowledge of certain things in order to do their job, there’s nothing wrong with them being human when it comes to their personal interests. In cases like this, it is those in the media who seem more out of touch.

I find myself once again on the side of Patrick Harvie. I spotted in The Scotsman on Friday that the co-convener of the Greens found himself in a bit of hot water for using Twitter while hob-nobbing with Gordon Brown and other politicians.

Tavish Scott bemoaned the poor manners of it. But a spokesperson for Jim Murphy (himself an occasional Twitter user was a bit more light-hearted, noting that it is normal for Greens to like birds, so it’s not unusual for Patrick Harvie to be tweeting.

Although The Scotsman article itself is not too scathing, immediately underneath was a comment piece by a curmudgeonly “etiquette guru” who says dislikes “antisocial BlackBerry use” because “it really is the worst sort of behaviour”. I don’t know about you, but I think someone takes it upon themselves to go around the place telling other people to behave is actually incredibly rude.

Richard Havers calls him a twit. But Jeff at SNP Tactical Voting doesn’t see the problem, and I have to agree. I wonder if there is a generational divide here. I can well understand why people might find it disconcerting for someone to occasionally prod on a gadget while at a social function.

But these devices are our umbilical cord to the world. Why be holed up in a room when you can be communicating with the world? I think people my age have a tacit understanding about the acceptable use of mobile phones in a social situation.

While I would certainly feel offended were it to happen during a one-to-one meeting, it is in the nature of discussions with larger numbers of people for everyone to find themselves not taking part in a conversation at some point or another. I would particularly be tempted if the conversation centred around that turgid game known as football, as Patrick Harvie found. It is not as though he was constantly plugged into Twitter. He only fired off seven tweets over the course of about three hours.

If you are not engaged in conversation, there is no harm in getting your mobile out. Everyone does it in larger gatherings, and from time to time I have even seen instances where almost everyone in the group is doing something on their mobile. It might seem odd, but it is not a demonstration of antisocial behaviour.

It is silly to call using Twitter antisocial. I never got this nation that using modern communication technologies is antisocial. In fact, it is the complete opposite. So Patrick Harvie decided to take a bit of time out from communicating with eight other people. But by posting to Twitter, he began communicating with his 100-odd followers. So which is more antisocial — ignoring the eight or ignoring the 100?

I also like Patrick Harvie’s point that it is those other 100+ people who are the important ones. If nothing else, the politician’s use of Twitter is a good demonstration of a desire to engage people in the political process, even if his contributions on the night were not always very serious.

It is called “small talk”. Small Talk used to be the name of a teatime programme on BBC One. Ronnie Corbett would sit there in his cardigan and point and laugh at all the gullible little children saying naive things. The poor children who starred in the show probably got bullied for the rest of their school life.

Much hilarity was caused by these kids talking about things that they don’t really about (and even then, it’s only because their parents did not have the sense to tell them the truth in the first place). Yet, the things these children said still made more sense than approximately 100% of actual “small talk” conversations that I have had.

I mean, what a waste of breath, power, energy and brains. I bet you if all the input used to make small talk was diverted and put to a better use, fusion power would have actually been invented instead of still being a pipe dream.

The thing that I really hate about small talk is the fact that I am not the only person who seems to hate it. In fact, I bet you that everyone hates it! It is an acute pain in the arse, yet we all subject ourselves to it.

What really gets me is the way people ask, “How are you?”, even though they could not give two hoots how you actually are. As such, you can never actually explain how you actually are (which, let us face it, is shit, complete with long-winded tale of woe).

If you do say how you actually are, the person who asked how you were in the first place will probably just turn around (if they are actually still in the room and haven’t fallen asleep) and say, “What makes you think I care?! Don’t take it out on me.” And if I retort, “Well, you did ask me how I was,” they would look at me as if I was the mental!

Even if they do not, I can assure you that they did not take in “how I am”. People just ask “How are you?” as a way of avoiding an uneasy silence. It is probably supposed to be polite, but I would rather have the uneasy silence, because at least that recognises the truth of the matter: you don’t care about me, and I don’t care about you. So don’t ask me how I am.

I am not even all that fussy about small talk. Questions like “How are you?”, “Nice day, isn’t it?” and “Have you got any plans for the weekend?” may not lead to any world-changing answers, but at least they form proper, meaningful sentences. Because there is another form of small talk which I consider to be little more than an advanced form of grunting.

“All right?”

That is the most innocuous one. Indeed, I often find myself using it. But even this is an absolute minefield. James O’Malley summed up the dilemma excellently:

I really hate it when people greet me by saying “Alright?”, as I can never figure out what they’re asking, nor how to respond. Are they basically saying “Hello”, or are they asking “How are you?”? If you misinterpret the question you risk looking like an idiot.

So, if somebody greets me by saying “Alright?”, I reply simply: “All right (?)”, which I say with an ambiguous monotone so that you can’t tell if I’m asking a question or not. This is because, to be honest, I don’t know if I’m asking a question or not, because I don’t know if I’m answering a question or not. “How’s it going?” provides similar confusion.

But those are benign compared to something like “What’s happening?” This sounds like it is less ambiguous than “All right?”, but it is not. If anything, it is even more confusing. I mean, think about it. The person who is asking me the question already knows what is happening — I am having a terrible conversation with him. Once again, there is no sensible answer to this.

But the absolute top of the tree has to be this: “What are you saying to it?” I mean, what the fuck is that? What am I saying to what? I’m not saying anything to any one, or any thing. A nonsensical question. Sometimes I reply, “Hello, It! Ho ho.” But that seldom raises a titter. Therefore, the only viable response is: “Nrargh.”

I am sure I have had actual conversations which have gone like this:

“All right?”
“All right (?)”
“What’s happening?”
“Errm. Yes.”
“What are you saying to it?”
“Nrargh.” [runs away]

Another one to add to the list: “What’s the craic?” The craic with what? I have not set foot in Ireland for about a decade. The only craic I have is my arse craic, and I doubt you want to know about that.

All of this explains why I fully support James O’Malley’s campaign to insert “What are the haps?” into every conversation. You know it has to be done.

Personally, I am not one of those who cares either way. I don’t see it as my right, as a male, to keep the toilet seat up after doing a number one. However, I certainly do not see it my duty to put the toilet seat down for the benefit of a female who can’t be bothered to put it down herself.

In fact, if I have a preference, it is to not only put the seat down, but also put the lid down. After all, let us not kid ourselves here. The toilet is a hole in our house that leads directly to a sewer. I would quite like to put a lid on that.

Economists to the rescue! Jay Pil Choi has taken a look [PDF file] at this vital issue from an economic perspective, and has concluded that the “selfish rule” — i.e., leaving the toilet seat as you, er, left it — is the most efficient.

So the next time you see the toilet seat up and you wish it was down, just remember — leaving it up was the most efficient outcome. Do you want to incur even more costs by having a wasteful argument about it?

Via Freakonomics.