For those unfamiliar with Google+ (which is most people right now), this post is not a review on how to use it, though it does cover many of the important features of the service. If you are actually interested in switching to Google+, I suggest you take a look online, or just create an account (if you don't have one already) and just start playing around with it.
What I Like about Google Plus
The theme to this post is integration and simplicity. Most of the features I like are either because they are integrated well with other Google services, or they are very simple and straightforward to use. That is not to say that all Google+ features are this way, and those features which I do not like generally are either not well integrated, or are not intuitive and simple.
Circles
This feature is mostly meaningless without sharing, as both are integrally tied together. For those who may not be aware, circles are like your Facebook friends, except you can create as many circles as you like, as well as add certain people to as many circles as you want. This is great for sharing stuff you usually only send to certain individuals, like something you might have emailed to a couple close friends before.
Circles are also nice, because they work a bit differently than Facebook. With Facebook, I had to make a friend request, then wait for the other person to accept. On Google+, since everyone gets to create your own circles, a person you add to one (or more) of your circles is instantly added. Anything you share to that circle will be shared with that person. This works because that person only shares back with you if they then add you to one of their circles. There is no requirement for both of you to add each other. I can share everything with someone, and they do not have to add me to a circle and share anything if they don't want to. And for those especially annoying people who are sharing a bunch of garbage with you even though you haven't added them to a circle, you can always block their posts.
Sharing
While this was not the primary reason for switching initially, or really even much of a concern for me when I was a Facebook user, it has turned out that the sharing options have been my favorite and most widely used feature in Google+. These features also mostly exist in Facebook, but it is the simplicity in which sharing is executed in Google+ that puts it a level above. I have found that I use Google+ to share almost everything now, including things that I used to email out to certain individuals. The ability to choose which of my circles or which specific individuals I want to share with quickly has made sharing via Google+ faster than text or email. Plus having one service that I use to share everything has really consolidated my behavior on the web. Anytime I can minimize the number of different apps and services I have to use, the better.
The wonder of Google+ sharing is extended to your media too. Let's say I have an album from a recent family vacation. I may be okay with showing all the pictures to my immediate family, but I would only want friends to see certain ones. On Google+, I can share the entire album with my family circle with a couple clicks, then pick and choose the less embarassing photos to share with my friends circle. Now I can easily put all my photos and videos onto my Google+ account, but only share the ones I pick with everyone. On Facebook, I only chose to add the pictures I cared to make public, meaning the rest of my photos were left either on my camera or on my computer.
Photos and Videos
Because of the ability to add all my photos and videos to Google+ without requiring me to share them with everyone, I have finally put all my media online. This was exceedingly simple, and is great because I no longer have to worry that a hard drive failure or dropping my phone in the water will destroy all the pictures I have taken. I tried to do this a couple times on Facebook, but I gave up due to how difficult and slow it is.
I already mentioned the advantages Google+ has over Facebook sharing, so I will not go into that again. Another great set of features Google+ has is its 'auto-awesome' options for photos. When you upload a set of photos, Google+ will analyze them and generate new photos with some 'awesome' features. A few I have used include Mix, which creates a photobooth-style collage of similar photos, and Motion, which creates an animated GIF out of several similar photos. These are just fun little additions, but I have found they are great for Google+ posts without inundating people with five or more pictures in one post. You can find all the auto-awesome types here.
Google+ also auto-enhances photos, which has done a nearly perfect job enhancing the brightness and colors of my photos to make them look their best. This is great, because even if Google+ screws up a picture, you can easily revert to the original photo with a single click.
Google+ also does face-recognition (which Facebook does too), which makes tagging very easy. One great addition to this is the option to let Google+ "remember" your face, so any future photos of you are automatically tagged without you having to find yourself in a photo.
Oh, and one last nicety, if you already store your photos online via Picasa, they are already in your Google+ account since Google owns them.
Auto Upload
This feature also exists in both Google+ and Facebook, but I would never trust Facebook to not accidentally share my private photos to everyone. This feature automatically uploads the photos I take on my phone to my Google+ account soon after I take them. When I want to share my photos, I can now quickly move them into their respective albums, or add them to a post without having to worry about making sure the file transfers over. Photos and videos that are auto uploaded are placed in a separate private album that only you can see until you decide what you want to do with them. It is actually a huge convenience, especially when dealing with large videos.
Events
Events are a really cool feature of Google+. They work exactly how you expect, with the ability to create an event, invite certain people, and have it added to your calendar. The great part is the integration. If you use your Gmail account for your calendar (like most Android users) any event created in Google+ is also available there. If you click the event in your Gmail calendar, it automatically takes you to the Google+ event page. Seems simple enough, but there is more.
For events such as vacations with many different people, everyone who is invited can share their vacation pictures directly to the event. Sharing to an event also creates a photo album in your account which not only contains your pictures, but pictures from everyone attending the event. Now you can see pictures eveyone took instantly and in one location, instead of having to browse though each person's photos seperately. All photos shared to the event are instantly shared with the invited attendees of the event (obviously), and you can choose to share your event photos (not other people's) with whomever you want without giving other people access to the other attendee's photos. We did this during our most recent Disneyland trip, and it worked fantastically. It often took months or years to finally get around to seeing everyones photos from a trip. This time it took less than a week.
Phone App
The last great feature of Google+ is the phone app. The one huge complaint I have about Facebook is its app is pathetic. It is painfully slow, and doesn't allow you to do many features you can in Google+. When I was having issues with my Android phone forcing me to root it, one of the things I did to fix it was to stop using the Facebook app in favor of Google+. Facebook has slowly added some usability to the app, but it generally buried and inconsistent. You can't do everything from the Google+ app, but you an do most things, and the features are very intuitive. The best part is the Google+ app is so much faster than the Facebook app. It is night and day.
What I Don't Like About Google Plus
Google+ is far from perfect. There are a few things that bug me, though these are mostly minor issues. I hope Google is reading this, because these are the issues that stop Google+ from being perfect for me.
Communication
Sharing media is great. I have, however, run into an issue a number of times where I shared some photos that were not auto-uploaded, get a notification the post was generated successfully, but couldn't view the pictures. As I found out later, this is because the Google+ Android app uses the built-in sync functionality of the phone, which will auto-sync the pictures to Google+, but not necessarily in real-time. The post will be generated, the spots for the pictures will be there, but the only thing visible for each photo is a sync icon. I was not aware of this initially, and ended up spending hours trying to figure out why my photos weren't being uploaded. This is not obvious unless you are very familiar with the innerworkings of Android, and will undoubtedly cause issues for other people also. There really needs to be a better communication to the user telling them their photos are being synced, or to hold off on generating the post until the photos are all uploaded.
Auto Upload
Auto upload is great, unless you have a very large video. I used to have my video camera on my phone set to record in 720p, but the subsequent video files were so large the auto upload never happened. Even when I tried to force the upload, Google+ just sat there, trying to sync, but never succeeding. I don't know if this is an issue with my internet speeds, my phone, or Google+ itself, but it is incredibly irritating.
+1ing
+1ing is the same as liking something in Facebook. It is really nice, because it does not only apply to Google+ posts, but to just about everything Google, including websites you find in Google search, YouTube videos, and apps you download on Android. The one, little thing that annoys me is the way it displays +1s. A post without any +1s displays as a button with just the text "+1" in it. If you +1 the post, the button displays "+1" witha red background to indicate you +1ed it. This is fine, except if you want to see how many people +1ed a post, there is no visual difference to a post that no one +1ed and a post that one person +1ed (other than you). I realize this is terribly minor, but it is one of those confusing things that should be fixed.
What's Hot
This is a circle that is added to your account by default (and you cannot delete it). If you make a new account, your News Feed will be populated with these posts. They are posts that are trending on Google+, which is fine, but seems bizarre to a new user. It is actually not bad once you have your account set up and posts from friends are interspersed within them, but upon opening Google+ for the first time, this is all you see. There is no explanation as to what you are seeing, and there is no explanation on how you can hide these posts (you can). I think this is something that needs to be explained better to new Google+ users, either describing what you are looking at, or giving you the option to disable upon initial startup.
Try Google Plus for Yourself
Overall, Google+ is far superior to Facebook. It does have a bit of learning curve which makes transitioning more difficult, but it is absolutely worth it. True, most of your friends aren't on Google+ right now, but most of your friends weren't on Facebook before either. The integration with other Google services along with the wide array of features make Google+ the hands-down winner. I also see a framework that is much easier for Google to add to than Facebook has, which is why I suspect Google+ is going to start running away with Facebook users in the near future. Even if you end up hating it, give it a shot. A far shot. Spend a week or so trying out features, creating an account, getting acclimated. If after a week you still prefer Facebook, go back. I suspect many people would switch to Google+ in a heartbeat if they were as familiar with how it works as they are with Facebook.
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