If you’re a stranger who follows me on Google+, you might think I rarely use the service. That’s because the majority of my posts have been limited to the seven circles I created for friends, acquaintances, family, Ars staffers, and other people I like to expose to various aspects of my personality. You had no idea? That’s exactly the point.

After one month with Google+, it’s clear to me that this — sending updates to certain groups of people and not to others — is the main appeal of the service. I was one of the first people to loudly declare that you can do the same thing on Facebook, but so few people know this that it’s basically a nonexistent feature; that’s the problem with Facebook. With Google+, sending out certain updates to some people and other updates to other people is right at the forefront of the experience. You are always asked to make a conscious decision about your social circles and about which circles get to see which posts.

Some people don’t like this approach. I do, but it took a while. Truth be told, I was a fierce skeptic of Google+ when it was first announced, and I wasn’t pleased at the idea of using it every day for a month. (Every single day?) As the Ars forums might say, Google+ was Yet Another Social Network (YASN), and one led by the company behind the spectacular privacy failure that was Google Buzz. Google’s previous social network, Orkut, failed to impress (at least, in the U.S.), and the prospect of dedicating my time to YASN wherein I would interact with the same people I already know through Facebook or Twitter was not appealing.

But Google+ has grown on me. Despite some of its latest struggles, I think Google has a leg to stand on with its latest social venture.

What Google+ has going for it

Because most of us like to frame the unfamiliar with the familiar, let’s get the necessary comparison out of the way first: Google+ occupies a space somewhere between Facebook and Twitter, but I think it falls closer to the former. Features match Facebook in many ways, but it’s the implementation and presentation that makes them starkly different.

Let’s start with posts and Circles — the core functionality of Google+. Posts themselves translate to Facebook wall posts or to tweets, while Google’s “+1? button translates to Facebook’s “Like” button.

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