Google+ Offers Chance For A Social Reboot

(CNN) -- Almost immediately after Google launched its new, not-Facebook social network in late June, a hilarious and much-shared comic strip about the service popped up online.

"You should I join Google+!" one stick figure urges another.

"What is it?"

"Not Facebook!"

"What's it like?"

"Facebook!"

"Oh, what the hell. I guess that's all I really wanted."

The comic strip, posted by Randall Munroe on xkcd.com, struck a nerve with an audience in social media overload. If nothing else, many early Google+ users figured, this new social network would give them a chance to start over -- to build a new online network without all the distant ex-classmates, boring business associates, and kooky cousins that have made Facebook, like MySpace and Friendster before it, more of a carnival than a comfy living room.

"Much as I've tried to tame my network, it feels more like a hydra or the carnivorous plant from 'Little Shop of Horrors' than the calm and orderly information drag net that I thought I was weaving," wrote Alexis Madrigal, an editor at The Atlantic, in a post titled "Google+: In praise of starting over."

"I needed a greenfield in which to grow a different network."

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