This editorial cartoon about animated gifs on Google Plus came from my time on there over the past two weeks. For those of you who engage with me on Twitter or Facebook, I apologize as I have been sucked into the world of Google + and though it has it’s limitations, I prefer it over both platforms.

The Good

Take the best of twitter in that you can follow the message streams of anyone you want with the best of facebook that allows you to see pictures, links and more than 140 characters and that is the promise of Google Plus.

Being able to engage with people you admire and feel like your message isn’t lost.

The ability to put the people you follow into different circles that you create. For example, I have a circle for people I folow that don’t follow me, webcomic people, art people, learning people, etc. At any point I can only look at the postings from any individual group AND I can have a posting only show up to specific individuals or circles.

The Not So Good

Unless you link your photo albums to Googles photo sharing site Picasa, the way it manages your pictures is horrible. I would love to see a feature that allows you to choose “insert picture” and have you be able to choose a specific picture from a specific album. I am hoping there is a fix for that soon or I am doing something wrong and someone will correct me.

One complaint I hear from others that I am not so sure I mind YET is that some circles are so incestuous with the same people that 5 people can share someone else’s post and it shows up every time in your stream if you have all five people in your circle. The one complaint you hear most about is oversharing of animated gifs. Again, so far I don’t mind them but I love when someone says “I know people don’t like animated gifs but I HAD to share this one because it is so cool.”

So is it ironic that I had to make this cartoon an animated gif in order to make a point of animated gifs? Is it even irony? I don’t know since all the “experts” said none of Alanis Morrisette’s examples in Ironic weren’t ironic.