In this edition of my Google+ Monday Nuggets, I'm going to cover one of the basic etiquettes that evolved on that social network.As one of the early adopters of Google+, during those early months I always found myself a little overwhelmed by the amount of different knowledge that was being shared. If you've ever been overwhelmed by one of my Nuggets, you should know what I'm talking about.
Google+ originally opened by invitation-only and those early invitations were sent to the friends of Google employees. As you can imagine, most of the users back then were of the cerebral type, and I don't remember (nor did I find when I went searching archives) many internet memes, jokes, how much snow was outside, or what they ate for dinner.
Engineers, programmers, internet marketers, and a few celebrities got invited to play on Google+ and it quickly turned into a network of early adopters and brainiacs who were excited to have a private forum of their own.
Everyone was giving Google the feedback they wanted, which included new feature ideas and found bugs. The community was small enough that suggested ideas would be passed around quickly and many of them were adopted by Plus Users, aka Plussers, even before Google implemented them.
The best example I recall is the use of the #hashtag. Someone suggested that Google+ allow the hashtag like Twitter (Facebook and LinkedIn were not using them yet) and many people just started using it. Google eventually added that feature and turned it into an integral way The system now functions.
Since then, Facebook has also adopted the hashtag, and LinkedIn adopted but then deactivated the hashtag functionality.
With all the amazing knowledge being shared, users wanted to do more than just click the +1 button on a post they liked, and they wanted to do more than simply resharing posts they found interesting. This is where the evolution of the Google+ Perfect Post came from, because those early brainiac users always had their own comment to add when resharing a post. It seemed like Google+ was made perfectly for those of us who never know when to shut up.
Of course no one knows everything, and users of Google+ knew their limitations. Honestly I don't remember coming across anyone too arrogant during those early days of Google+; it was a really open and accepting crowd of thinkers.
So when one thinker learned something new, and reshare worthy, from another thinker they would often provide some type of attribution during the reshare. In the beginning they would simply +mention someone name during the reshare, but that eventually evolved into what we now refer to as the "hat tip."
The Google+ hat tip, or h/t for short, is just like the real life act of tipping your hat as an expression of acknowledgment, respect, or gratitude towards someone else.
As you experience Google+ for yourself, keep this simple etiquette in mind the next time you read something interesting. Clicking the +1 button shows that your liked someone's post and resharing a post to your own circle of friends is a good way to share something you feel your friends will be interested in. When you really want to acknowledge the writer of the shared post you should show your professional respect by typing "h/t" followed by their name as a +mention and a comment.
For example, if you shared this Daily Nugget on Google+ you could say "h/t to +Matthew Perosi for explaining this simple method of Google+ acknowledgement."
