Is Google+ the new AOL?

I’ve never won the lottery. Ed McMahon, bless his soul, never showed up on my doorstep holding a big fat check. On the few occasions I’ve gambled in Vegas, I’ve always crapped out. But last night I finally received an invitation to Google+, so maybe my luck is changing.

Or maybe not. As regular readers may recall, I was skeptical when G+ was announced. I think we all hit social media overload a while back. Is there really room in most people’s lives for yet one more digital thing to keep track of?

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Still, I plunged in gamely and spent a few hours last night mucking about with it. Now my head is spinning in circles -– or, rather, Circles.

The trouble, I think, is that each new social media darling feels compelled to develop its own nomenclature, which is fine for those on the inside and often incomprehensible to the rest of us.

Facebook’s is pretty easy: You have “friends” (even if they aren’t literally your friends) and “friends of friends,” just like in real life. When you want to tell the world something you update your status, post things to your News Feed or click “Like.”

In Google+, you have Circles and Extended Circles. When you want to tell the world something you “share it in the stream.” And when you Like something, you click the little +1 icon.

The Circles concept is pretty simple: You want to segment your friends so that you don’t share the same stuff with your boss as you do with your poker buddies. Creating Circles, though, is fairly tedious. You drag an icon of each friend (or Google+ mate or whatever they’re called) into circles labeled Friends, Family, Acquaintances, People I Owe Money To, and so on. They only see what you decide to share with those Circles. It’s fun for about five minutes, then it gets really boring.

Where my brain starts to hurt is when it comes to Extended Circles. Just like friends of friends, right? Only not exactly. Here’s how the Google+ Help page describes it:

When you share something in the stream, you might notice an option to share with your extended circles. Your extended circles are like your circles’ circles. Content shared with your extended circles could appear in the Incoming stream of people who are one degree removed from you with certain conditions — namely, that we’ll only include people whose association with people you know is already visible to you.

For example, let’s say Nediva is in one of your circles, and Jadon is in one of Nediva’s circles. You don’t know Jadon and he’s not in any of your circles. If Nediva chooses to have Jadon visible on her profile among the people in her circles, and you choose to share with your extended circles, your content could appear in both Nediva and Jadon’s streams.

You aren’t able to see a complete list of the people included in your extended circles — it’s a collection of people that’s frequently changing.

First: Nediva and Jadon? I feel like I’ve landed on Planet Pandora in “Avatar.”

Second: What the frak? Can someone out there explain to me what this means? On second thought, don’t bother.

Then there’s the “stream,” which is a flow of posts from people you’ve added to your Circles. If you like a post, you click the little +1 button (which is the same one that appears inside Google Search results, even if you never signed up for Google+). That seems easy enough. Can just anyone see your +1s? Here’s Google’s FAQ on that:

You can control the visibility of the +1’s tab on your profile. However, remember that +1’ing is a public action. Anyone could potentially see items you’ve +1’d when they visit the same places on the Web. 

For example, imagine two women — Arielle and Kyla — who’ve never met. Arielle, an architect, decides to +1 her favorite design website. Kyla finds the same site on Google Search and sees Arielle’s +1, even though she doesn’t know Arielle. Arielle’s +1 helps Kyla decide to check out the site, and Kyla ends up loving it!

Now imagine that Arielle chooses to hide the +1’s tab in her own profile. While Arielle’s +1 on the design website remains publicly visible, neither Kyla nor anyone else on the Web who finds Arielle’s profile will be able to see Arielle’s consolidated list of +1’s.

“+1’ing”? This is about the point where I decided I needed to lay down and put a cool towel over my head or possibly a pillow over my face.

I’m sure, if I took the time to carefully parse the FAQs, watch the videos, and study, it would all make sense. But then where would I find the time to surf porn?

I understand –- Google cannot be seen to be aping Facebook, even though Facebook had no problem aping Friendster and all the other social networks that were around when Mark Zuckerberg was still a dweeby Harvard sophomore. But I’m not sure I want to devote this much of my limited gray matter to understanding it.

You know who else does this kind of thing with language? Religious cults. They do it to keep insiders locked in and outsiders from understanding the cult’s true intentions.

Facebook and Google are competing to be the walled gardens for our Internet experience. In essence, they’re both trying to be what AOL was for people in the late ’90s -– one-stop shopping for everything Webbish, from email and search to messaging and now video phone calls. We all know what happened there.

So sorry, Jadon and Nediva. Regrets, Arielle and Kyla. I will use Google+, in part because I have to, just to stay in the loop. But live there? I don’t think so.

Are you on Google+? If not, do you plan to sign on? Post your thoughts below or email me: cringe@infoworld.com.

This article, “Is Google+ the new AOL?,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the crazy twists and turns of the tech industry with Robert X. Cringely’s Notes from the Field blog, and subscribe to Cringely’s Notes from the Underground newsletter.