I posted a couple of weeks ago about the lack of mobile support for the Windows Phone 7 OS from Google+.  The fledgling social network launched with a native app for Android, closely followed by iPhone, however users of any other mobile OS had to settle for using their phone’s web browser to view the mobile web site.  A visitor to the site, John B left an extremely helpful comment pointing out that he had discovered a workaround to this issue.

If anything I’m probably a little late in writing this post as everyone and their dog seems to have used Google+, had their fun and either dismissed it as a fad that won’t last or seen something they like and accepted it as the new contender.  I’m definitely the latter.  I was initially disappointed by the “stream” interface and very nearly wrote it off then and there as a straight Facebook rip-off.  This definitely would have been a mistake and I’m glad I persevered.  You see, there are two things that I feel separate Google+ from the other social networks out there: Integration and Flexibility.  Let me elaborate:

I was lucky enough to get hold of an invite for Google+ earlier today thanks to one of the guys at work and some creative invitation methods.  I’ll cover my impressions of the new social media platform in another post but I wanted to cover an initial stumbling block separately first.  Naturally, after playing about with all the features and inviting half the office, we all decided to take a look at the mobile version of Google+.

There’s a fair mix of handsets in the office, covering iPhone, Android, Blackberry and my own, Windows Phone 7.  Google have already launched a native Android application for +, as expected, while other platforms have to settle for accessing the platform via the mobile web app, available at google.com/+.  While others were able to access the web application without any problems, I ran in to a bit of an issue with WP7.

Last night Google launched their own contender for Facebook’s crown.  Google+ is the search giant’s newest concept to tackle “Zuck” and Co. at their own game and even take it further.  The move surprised a large number of people in the search and social media industries, despite a number of glaring (at least in hindsight) indications.  There was a suprising lack of information around the launch, not even the usual industry gossip around such an announcement.  Naturally, the web has since exploded with the news.

So, what is Google+ and what does it mean to you and me?