WIRED: Google's foray into the social networking world is exciting – but is it a 'Facebook Killer'?

I’VE JUST lost several hours to Google’s foray into the social networking world – or, as everybody else in the world is calling it, its “Facebook Killer”.

It’s called Google+, and it’s currently available in the same way as Gmail (and, indeed, Facebook) began: as a limited roll-out to a select few.

Well, it’s probably not that select now: I nipped in as the first open invites spewed out of the Googleplex. With everyone in that wave allowed to send out invitations, the service quickly became overloaded and the gates were shut once more. I can’t imagine that Google won’t be allowing increasing crowds in, however.

So what can I tell you, from this side of Google’s castle ramparts? Well, I’m trying to throttle back my geek excitement. I know the tricks that my attention-deficit disordered mind can play on me. My DNA is just a little too close to that of the average Google employee for me to really be able to separate their joy at creating a shiny new tech product from my joy at taking it apart and playing with all the buttons.

And there are plenty of shiny buttons in Google+. Somehow, in the past few years, the search-engine company has developed a reputation for a staid, utilitarian aesthetic. That’s surprising, given the cheery, informal tone of Google’s overall voice, and the revolutionary design nature of some of its early non-search products, such as the dynamic Gmail and Google Maps.

But Google+ has put paid to that. The interface is clear, with some nice hidden jokiness, and it has a responsiveness that suddenly makes Facebook look like a creakingly old website.

It is fun to play with, and somewhat addictive. Those are both vital elements if Google is going to be able to drag people away from Facebook, while simultaneously requiring them to re-enter and re-categorise all their friends. And reorganising your friends is where Google+ comes into its own.

The service is based on the idea of “circles”. Instead of an amorphous mass of pals, where you end up mostly encouraged to post to everyone, and where it’s hard to control who you hear back from, the first step in setting up a Google+ account is to ruthlessly divide your friends into Acquaintances, Family, Friends, and whatever else you want.

The trick is that you can post to just one of those categories, to just one or more people, to the whole word, or to various permutations thereof. At the same time, you can switch between reading the “streams” of these circles, preventing the undivided torrent of news that affects Facebook and Twitter.

If that sounds about as much fun as a tax audit, Google has at least made it as entertaining as possible, with an easy drag-and-drop interface.

Around this core are a few more entertaining mini-applications. By far the most enjoyable is the Hangout, a multiple-person video-chat conference.

There is a well-rounded mobile app for Android (with one in the works for the iPhone and iPad), which has a genuinely useful multi-person messaging tool called Huddle and a tool to automatically upload photos and videos for sharing later.

Is that enough? Well, my suspicion is that Google has planned 100 days or so during which it will include additions to the basic Google+ infrastructure on a regular basis. It’s a great way to steal users from Facebook.

It is clear that Google+ is taking a lot of the cloud computing giant’s creative energy and raw computing power.

The last time Google attempted to pull off something like this, it ended up with Google Buzz, a product saddled with some early privacy missteps.

Google has erred on the side of caution with Google+, but there is still some weirdness. For instance, the service bizarrely requires you to specify your gender (helpfully giving you “Male”, “Female” and “Other”), and then compulsorily shares that with the entire world. I know a lot of women who work hard to keep their gender ambiguous online; and I know plenty of reasons why you wouldn’t want the wrong people to be able to track down all the “Others” in their area.

But these missteps are relatively small, and hopefully will be fixed quickly. In the meantime, I think Google has a hit on its hands – at least among the first adopters, and those who haven’t tied their colours to the Facebook mast.

Is that enough? It used to be. Google’s original search engine spread by word of mouth from techie to techie. Gmail took off because geeks liked it to deal with their heavy e-mail workload, and when everyone else’s spam and inbox grew out of control, they ended up at Gmail too.

But first adopters clearly want an excuse to get out of Facebook and, for them, Google+ is the Pied Piper. Will it tempt the other hundreds of millions who have made their home on Mark Zuckerberg’s servers?

However it plays out, the fight will be entertainment in itself.