Google Plus Now Offers ‘Stories’ Feature – Good Idea?

Google Plus now offers its members a way to share their photos from a vacation or a night out without owners needing to process or create anything. So Google Plus members can say “goodbye” to the days of creating a Facebook album or a Flickr account and just let Google do all the work for you!

So what happens behind-the-scenes is Google creates a daily profile for you using geotagging and other methods of data collection as well as other info from your phone or Android device. This will be known as your home. So if you’re the type who goes out to the club more often that not, you can rest assured that the strange guy grinding up against you will not show up in your feed. However, if you do go on vacation from creepy dance club guy and you’re a Google Plus user, you can automatically share those photos of you wicked awesome adventure without doing much of anything at all.

If a vacationer takes enough pictures and provides enough data, Google will automatically upload those pictures and events to your feed just a few hours to a day after you return to your ho-hum life. The life that Google knows, anyway. Users can go back and edit out or add in any additional pictures or information as they see fit. Users can also add captions.

However, is this just Google trying to create a reason to collect all this data about you? Google is in the business of data collection. The more information Google has on you, the more money they can make from you.

Google has been trying to drum up ways to gain subscribers to their free Google Plus service, to take over the number one spot from Facebook. Now they are playing to their strengths, which is how well they know people. Google has much more knowledge on you and your behavior than you will ever know. This information will allow Google to create these slideshows through their Stories app, which Google hopes will be enough to persuade someone away from Facebook’s clutches.

While Google Plus’ Stories app is pretty cool, it’s not enough to move people from Facebook. From what has been experienced, smart phone users do not mind setting up photo albums on Facebook on the fly or when they get home. So, while Google Plus’ Stories app takes all the legwork out, it does not enhance he usability of the service.