Comments about oreilly Google+: The Missing Manual:

Introduction

I enjoy Kevin's posts at http://lifehacker.com/, and have been using Google+ since late July 2011.
When I saw this listed on the O'Reilly site, I immediately requested it for review.

About the Book

This book consists of an introduction and nine chapters. The following list will give you an idea what each contains:

Introduction:
How Google+ works, what you can do with it, a little about this book, the very basics, online resources, and Safari Books Online

Chapter 1—Getting Started:
Signing in, Joining up, and fleshing out your profile

Chapter 2—Managing Contacts with Circles:
How circles work, adding, creating, editing, organizing, & sharing circles

Chapter 3—Streams, Sharing and Privacy:
About streams; writing Google+ posts; choosing who sees your posts; sharing, interacting, editing, deleting, and controlling posts

Chapter 4—Notifications:
Where you get them, and controlling them

Chapter 5—Sharing Photos and Videos:
Viewing, sharing, tagging, editing, and more

Chapter 6—Hanging Out:
What they are, and how to use them

Chapter 7—Searching and Sparks:
How to search Google+, and tips for better searching

Chapter 8—Google+ Mobile:
Accessing and using Google+ on your mobile phone

Chapter 9—Playing Games:
Getting into, starting, and joining games.

The book can be read in any order. However, I suggest reading the Introduction and first four chapters in order, particularly if you are brand new to Google+.

Conclusion

I got a lot out of this book, even though I have been using Google+ for a while.
Of particular interest to me was Chapter 8, as I have just moved into the 21st century by getting a smartphone.
If you are just getting started with Google+, or interested in learning more about it, I highly recommend you read this book.

Disclosure

This book was received through the O'Reilly User Group Program, at no cost, in exchange for this review, which in no way influenced the above review.

Comments about oreilly Google+: The Missing Manual:

Whenever an author attempts to capture the essence of an evolving and new social media site, like Google+, it's like the 3 blind men trying to define the elephant. Each has a grasp of part of the beast, but you would need to have all the pieces to have a good idea what the animal is like in it's entirety. That being said, Kevin Purdy, author of "Google+: The Missing Manual" published by O'Reilly Media does a decent job explaining the very basics of the service, however Google+ has clearly evolved with changes since the manuscript was published.

In fairness, the author does suggest that Google+ is in the process of changing and the reality is those changes have happened fast and furious and continue to happen. The book does a fair job describing the rudiments of Google+ to an uninitiated social media neophyte, but is not a manual for someone who is immersed in the social media environment.

What I like about the book is that it clearly shares the basic aspects of how to navigate through Google+. Some of the features, like Hangouts are new features sets that are breaking ground vis a vis other social platforms such as Facebook. For a person who has no experience in video capture, it may be helpful to be reminded to have good lighting or that the background will be in view - personally I found many of the sections to be filler info - very basic.

Originally I was interested in reading Google+:The Missing Manual because even though I am utilizing social media daily on behalf of clients, I figure there are always new tricks and twists that I may have missed. I can share that there were none that I wasn't already aware of, which was personally disappointing, but I may not be reflective of the typical person who would look for a book like this to guide their discovery of the feature set within Google+.

On a whole, I'd recommend this book to a person who is new to social media.

NOTE: I received a digital version of this book for review purposes.

Comments about oreilly Google+: The Missing Manual:

If there was ever a product needing a manual, frankly it's Google Plus. It remains a rather obtuse beast - at least to my way of seeing things. Google Plus: The Missing Manual attempts to remedy this by providing a comprehensive review of all the possible interactions you'd have with the web service from a user perspective. So, do I feel like I know the service any better after reading the book. No, not really, unfortunately maybe it's just the case that G+ doesn't work the way I do. The book makes a valiant effort, but I have a sense that I personally would be better served by a pure cookbook approach. I would characterize this 'manual' as a hybrid approach. Although it structurally does follow a cookbook like structure, I found a tendency to words where graphics and images would better suit the purpose. This isn't to say that the information isn't there, I just found it harder to find. This is not to say that the book isn't well illustrated. It's full of great full-colour screen shots. I think what might improve it for me would be the addition of diagrams that represented the processes related to accomplishing tasks using pictures rather than words.