I’ve been dying for the chance to use “Google+” in a sentence, so here it goes. I’ve never been a fan of Google+. And here’s why.

5. Circles

Sure, the idea that you can individually place your friends into separate circles sounds appealing, and users even say they like this feature. But then they go and try to place people in their lives into “circles,” and suddenly, they realize it isn’t convenient, it isn’t easy, and it doesn’t make much sense. People think they want options, but when they get them, they feel overwhelmed.

Google has no idea how people interact. Sure, they like to think that ideally we have “circles” of friends and that each circle is privy to only certain information. And that’s what a logical world is: ideal. But the world isn’t logical, it’s messy with emotion and irrational behavior (that we try to rationalize).

How do I decide who to put in which circles? Do my roommates get their own circle? Do I also put them in close friends? What makes someone a close friend instead of a friend?

People don’t think like this, no matter how much they want to. Google+, please get with the program.

(Besides, Facebook has had this function in lists, which no one really used anyway, even when they were revamped after the launch of Google+. Also, Facebook clearly understands social and still doesn’t insist users categorize their friends the way Google+ does.)

4. Design

Go to Facebook and what do you see? Social content. Your friend’s statuses, comments on those statuses—pictures, videos, everything. When Google+ first launched, its interface was social content competing with contextualizing elements (timestamps, level of visibility, words like “comments,” “shares,” etc.).

Sure, Facebook has these things too—social networks need these things. But Facebook has always downplayed them and let user content shine. They used color, text decoration and placement to let their contextualizing elements support content, not overshadow it. On Google+, books elements looked the same. Same font, same color, close placement. It wasn’t easy to follow, even if users couldn’t quite realize this was why they found Google+ difficult.

On the left, social content in Google+ is almost overpowered by all the nonessential contextualizing elements. On the right, Facebook uses text color, background color and placement to make social content king.

Google+ took the focus away from social and put the focus on classifying. While things have gotten better with the latest redesign, contextualizing elements are still difficult to distinguish from social content. And even worse, Google+ now uses a frame-like interface, fixing the top and left parts of the screen to the window, allowing users to scroll through only a fraction of their browser screens. I see fixed elements caving in all around me and I feel claustrophobic. I don’t like it.

3. Coolness (Hey, I can use that word.)

Myspace was a place for kids to express themselves away from authority. This was the beginning of Web 2.0 and parents had no idea that their kids were up late writing “bulletins” and sharing their interests with mostly strangers.

A big reason why Facebook was successful was because it started out being exclusive to only college students. And because people talk to others like them, it expanded to include everyone in that exclusive group very quickly.

It just so happens that these are the very groups—teens and young adults—responsible for deciding what is and isn’t cool in our culture.

They made Myspace cool, and they made Facebook cool.

Google+ started off exclusive, too…to huge geeks. And let’s face it, geeks aren’t cool. At least not in the mainstream sense of the word. (Trust, I was one.) So by the time the “cool kids” joined, all they saw were posts by their social media friends and Google employees.

Update (November 28, 2012): Google+’s phased launch also seems a poor choice in retrospect. It forced exclusivity for no reason other than to trottle membership. Myspace and Facebook would never dream of that.