On the weekend I sent out close to 500 invites for Google+. The list of invitee's included my friends, family and business connections. Overall, I was surprised at how many people accepted the invite and embraced the conversations happening on Google+. A good 50% signed up within 24 hours. I have never seen such adoption to a new service so quickly.

I figured the responses from those who tried Google+ would come back in two categories:

1. "I Love It", or "Interesting", from the early adopters in my network

2. "Eh. Whatever. I will wait and see", from the rest.

However, this was not what I discovered at all. In fact, I would say the two categories of responses could be grouped into two unsuspecting camps:

1. Those who are not on Twitter (or rarely), but on Facebook.

2. Those who use Twitter regularily.

Here's the feedback I received:

1. Those not on Twitter, but on Facebook - "I don't get it", "Why is this supposed to be better than Facebook?", "This is a waste of time". Their general emotional response was some level of either skepticism or outright dismissal.

2. Those who use Twitter regularly - "It's interesting, I need to play with it more", "This is great!". Many made no comment at all but were "in like Flynn" based on the volume of posts and comments they were making. Their general emotional response was somewhere between curiosity and excitement.

Given that our attention is limited and many people have time to monitor only a couple of social networks during the day, I think Google+ represents a significant threat to Twitter, while Facebook is likely to feel little impact with the present offering.

On Google+? Add David Gratton to your circles!

CC Image Credit: _rockinfree