A quick guide to the best features on Google+

I already maintain three social networks—Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn—and spend time on several others just to maintain a sense of what’s new and evolving in the social media space. That’s what my clients expect, so I make the effort.

However, it is my life and my time. I drew the line at creating a whole new network. Because I was already using Gmail, Google Reader, and Calendar and had dabbled in Google Docs, I decided to click the “Claire +” button on my Gmail dashboard.

See? They sucked me in right away by personalizing that little button.

Here are my favorite features on Google+, as well as why they might work for you:

The feed. The feed or stream looks just like the Facebook feed we’re all used to. One really cool difference I noticed right away: You can edit your feed update after you post it, unlike Facebook, where you have to delete your post and re-post if you make an error. (If you have clumsy fingers like mine, that happens often.) As a PR professional who is judged by typos, I appreciate the ability to correct my mistakes.