You probably have heard about Google+, but most people haven't really checked out this new social network. Google+ has some of the good qualities of both Twitter and Facebook, and it could turn out to be quite a nice way for IT professionals interested in VMware, virtualization, cloud computing, and IT transformation to hang out.
Google+ has some of the nicer qualities of Twitter, in that you can follow your interest graph, not your social graph. If you're reading this blog, that means you can follow fellow IT professionals and talk about jumbo frames without Aunt Helga asking how you're going to attach them to the wall.
However, if you've ever played with Twitter, you probably quickly realized that with everybody's tweets zipping by 140 characters at a time, it's hard to actually have a conversation, say about enabling jumbo frames on your management network, especially with more than two people or over a few days. Google+ solves this, like Facebook, by having threaded comments that let you go back and forth about a topic.
Google+ also shares some of the downsides of both Facebook and Twitter. Like Facebook, you get a lot of funny pictures being shared in your stream. And like Twitter, you have to build your own network to actually see anything being shared.
To solve that last problem, we've started the VMware Google+ Community Circle. It's a circle of people interested in VMware, virtualization, cloud, and IT transformation. It's completely opt in: only the people who want to connect and talk with each other are in the circle.
To get started, once you have a Google+ account, go over to this Google+ post and click the "Add Circle" link inside the circle. You can make a new circle or add it to one of your existing circles. Boom! You now can start to see what these folks are posting and start sharing to them as well.
To get added to the circle, first you have to "circle" the VMware page on Google+ — add us to your circles. This is a Google+ rule to prevent us from spamming anybody. Then add a comment on the Community Circle Post to let us know you'd like to be added! It's as simple as that. Every week or two we'll re-share the Community Circle — just add it again to your circles and it'll add all the new people. When we get up to the limit of 500 people, we'll just make a new circle!
We'll see you all over at Google+! We'll be sharing some exclusive content over there as well as having live video hangouts now and then.
–John & the VMware Social Media Crew
