In my last post I gave an overview of several features within Google Plus I like. I tried to describe what makes it different and why it will be a successful network.

So this will be the last thing I post about Google Plus. But I wanted to put this out there simply because I can see a few problems people coming from other platforms are going to have. This is primarily targeted at my own friends and family that use Facebook today but may be considering whether to use Google Plus or not.

There is a culture shock when you go from using Facebook to Google Plus. The mindset and the feature set between the two platforms is very different. Facebook relies on a symmetrical relationship between you and the people you connect with. By that I mean, you must both agree to be “friends” on the platform before you can have any real interaction between the two of you. If one does not agree, the connection is not established.

On the other hand, Google Plus is very asymmetrical in its design. Think more along the line of Twitter than Facebook. For example, you follow me and add me to one (or more) of your circles. You can then see anything I post publicly in your stream. In return, I do not have to follow you back. You can still see everything I share publicly, and I can see anything you share publicly or to the circles you have put me in. This does not limit our interaction though. It is still possible for either of us to tag each other in posts in the stream if we want to. Regardless of whether we follow each other or not.

Confused yet? Don’t worry about it too much. Just boil it down to this.

If someone follows you, you do not have to follow them back. You can if you want, but the choice is entirely yours.

+Evan Williams posted a really good piece about this on Google Plus. It might help to clarify this little bit up. You can read it on Evan’s stream. Its well worth the read. Especially if you ever feel like you need to follow someone simply because they followed you.

It pays to remember that people following you can see anything you share with them or publicly. But only people you follow can see what you share to your circles, and only people that are in the circles you specifically share with.

So how does that work?

Circles are a little difficult to get your head around when you first join Google Plus. You feel like you’re categorising your friends. In a way you are. But no differently from how you might in your real life. Things you share with your closest friends are not necessarily things you might share with your family or your neighbours. Some people might be interested in your 4×4 Off-road adventures while others might find them tedious. In your every day life, you already make these kinds of decisions about who to share different things with and who not to.

And that is essentially what Circles are. They are a way for you to selectively share bits and pieces of your life with those people you either want to share it with, or that would be interested. You might create a circle of people that share an interest in cars or motor sports, or cycling, or the gym, or technology subjects, or games, or … You get the idea. Of course, you can also create a circle that includes all your friends from Facebook or other networks. In fact, there are some tutorials on how to create a Facebook-like news feed.

The biggest thing to take away from this is that Google Plus is not Facebook. Its not put together in a way that is similar to Facebook. You can bend it and set it up like Facebook if you really want. But if you do that, you’re missing out on so much more that’s available to you.

So as a new user to Google Plus, what should you do?

On Thursday during their earnings announcement, Larry Page admitted that in 2 weeks Google Plus already has over 10 million active users. There are already over 1 billion items being shared on Google Plus every day. That is a massive amount of content by anyone’s standard. And getting access to it is very simple.

Because of the nature of Google Plus, you can follow anyone else on the network. You can put those people into circles that are useful or relevant to share with them as you please. So don’t hold back on following people you know, people you know of, people that share things you’re interested in. Even if you don’t know them personally. Some of them may even follow you back.

Another thing to remember is that Google Plus lets you share anything you want, in any way you want. For example, I am sharing this blog post on Google Plus, Twitter and Facebook. That doesn’t stop the post being found by anyone on the web, far from it. My previous post on Google Plus became the most viewed post of the year in its first 24 hours. A lot of that traffic stemmed not only from normal methods of finding it (such as Google Search, Twitter and so on) but there was also a very large amount of traffic that stemmed from Google Plus itself as well. In fact, the traffic from Google Plus outnumbered the traffic from Twitter significantly. So public posts on Google Plus can and will be seen by a LOT of people very rapidly.

If you don’t want to share with everyone, then don’t. You can limit the circles of people that you want to share with. Simply select those circles in the box below where you put your post. You can select circles or individual people. The choice is yours. Its about what you want to share and who you want to share it with.

That is the big difference between Google Plus and most other networks. Twitter is an all or nothing model. You can share with everyone or you can only share with all the people that follow you. But you can’t share with only a sub set of the people that follow you (such as a specific Twitter List.) Facebook is a little more flexible than that. But you must be friends with people or you must reduce your privacy. You can limit who sees individual things you share, but it is difficult to do and not intuitive to get set up.

Here are a few links to articles and blog posts and things shared on Google Plus that should help any new users to the network.