When I first saw Google+ hitting the news and started getting invitations to join, I groaned. Facebook, yes. Twitter, I’m there. But ANOTHER ONE? I didn’t think I could do it. So, I deleted all the invitations and said, “The social networks stop here.”
But then, Tina Laurel Lee suggested a Google+ Hangout for our TPR group. If you’re not familiar with TPR (The Practice Room), check it out here. The brainchild of Tina Laurel Lee, TPR is basically a way to write in the company of other writers, separately but together, in a designated 1-hour session of concentration (no phones, TV’s, or internet allowed) and chat about it afterwards.
Google+ Hangout gives TPR a way to meet (occasionally) in a visual chat for a writing session. Imagine the Brady Bunch heads in their little square boxes, only everybody is busy writing in their boxes – taking a break every 25 minutes to chat, throw out a question, share a breakthrough or a frustration – and then returning to another writing session. People arrive and leave as suits their schedule. One of our Hangouts lasted for 2 hours of writing, with designated “water cooler” breaks to share.
So far, we’ve done this twice, and we’re planning another session for this Friday, August 19 at 2pm EST. (This is a change of date since my original posting — We wanted to avoid conflicting with Write On Con.) If you’re interested in attending, contact me or Heather Kelly (Tina’s on vacation) for an invitation. Since this is my last week of summer vacation (quiet sob), I hope to set up some evening Hangouts once the school year begins, for those of us unable to make the afternoon EST times.
Okay, so I broke down and joined Google+, but the Hangout is the only thing I’ve done with it. Tell me, blogging friends, what else is it good for? I’d love to know what (if anything) you’ve done with it!
that looks neat and like so much fun! What great motivation for writing! I joined google+ and check out updates that come through my gmail but other than that…I can barely keep up with blogging and facebook nevermind twitter.
As much fun as that looks like (and it does!), I’m still in the Not Another Social Network camp for now. Not enough time in the day to do it all!
Like you, I’m pretty overwhelmed by the idea of ONE MORE SOCIAL NETWORK. I mean, I just got on Facebook! I’m sure I’ll hop on at some point, especially if I find something practically useful about it like you have!
I think the whole point of Google+ is that it’s trying to combine all the elements of different social media platforms into a single, integrated platform. It has non-parallel following, like twitter, so people can follow you and you don’t have to follow them back. It has private, friend-level messages that don’t go out to the rest of the world, like Facebook. It has video chat capabilities, like skype. It’s a little of everything. Google actually hopes people will stop using other media, so that it won’t be ANOTHER social media platform, but will instead become people’s only media platform, or at least their platform of choice.
I’ve joined Google+ because I keep getting invites from my friends, but I haven’t done anything beyond friending them. I’ve stopped using FB for now because it was just too much. Social networking is great, but at some point I still have to write a book to be published. 😛
I haven’t taken the plunge, so for now, I’ll sjtu live vicariously through you 🙂
I didn’t even know what it was when I accepted the first invitation from a good friend. I still haven’t been there. I guess I should take a peek. But I totally get your feeling. ANOTHER one? When will I ever have time to write?
I’ve got some friends who do something like the TPR but they call it sprinting. I’ve done it a couple of times, and it’s fun, especially if I have a question I can throw out to the group.
hi miss dianne! for me im not allowed on facebook or twitter. for sure i do lots of time on blogging and thats what i love doing. now schools started. ack! and i dont got so much time even for blogging. i dont never wanna get all caught up in that stuff cause i got so much stuff off the computer i could wanna do. for sure i like the room you guys got. it could be a big helper for getting writing done.
…hugs from lenny