Oh. Google+.

At some point, social media stopped being fun and started being an exercise in leverage for local government.

I didn't sign up for that. So I'm not going to. I'm going to play with Google+ like a normal person. A normal user. Because how else, ultimately, am I actually supposed to work out how we're going to use this if I can't tell you how the system looks for a normal user?

So if it's ok, I'm going to pretend local government is nothing to do with Google+. I'm going to be irresponsible and learn through playing for a bit. If you're expecting me to be an expert on an entire social network in the space of a week, bad luck. Go see one of the social media 'gurus', I'm sure they'll have lots of literature written up already on how to use the shiny new toy. None of it will mean a thing of course, because hardly any Brits are on it compared to Facebook at the moment, and business entity beta hasn't even been opened as yet, but that wont stop them, I'm sure.

As for me, I'm going to keep asking the same question over and over again. Aren't circles open to severe abuse if you can add anyone you like to a circle and then force updates on them through their Incoming stream? Or is it reciprocal and you have to both have mutually entered each other into circles to receive the updates? Because if the former, then it's going to be even more annoying than Facebooks recent feature amendment which meant you could force friends into Groups. On Google+ you don't even need to be friends if my suspicions are right.

I do, of course, hope I am wrong and also hope if I am right that people are shiny and wont abuse this, but I fear it's only a matter of time before my Incoming stream is full once again of people telling me how wonderful their business is while not actually being a real person at all. And as I don't use Facebook and therefore Google+ is my Facebook, in my mind, I don't actually want to listen to 'buy my stuff I'm wonderful' stuff on there, I want a sanctuary from that, I get that on Twitter all day.

And while we're here, will someone please tell me how come it's the people who are supposedly social media gurus who are the ones who tell other businesses continually to 'be real' & 'be transparent' & 'be honest' and then fail utterly to follow those rules of engagement themselves on those very same networks?