So last week Google, in keeping with their modus operandi when launching major new properties, started trickling out public invitations for Google + – their latest attempt at capturing some of the lucrative social-networking market share from the likes of Twitter and Facebook.

Yes, yes, I know what you’re thinking – another social networking site? Another place to maintain a social graph? Another URL to check during my lunch hour?Another profile demanding upkeep with details of my top 10 favourite episodes of Buffy and frequent whimsical status updates? Do I really have the time and inclination for this? Can I, to put it bluntly, be arsed?

If this is your reaction to the G+ launch then I understand where you’re coming from. I felt the same way back in April 2007 when I blogged about experiencing social networking fatigue. And having seen the piss-poor attempts at networking that were Buzz and Wave, I too adopted a sneering, sceptical demeanour when confronted with my first view of Google+.

And yet, and yet… despite all those misgivings, I have to say that Google+ is really rather magnificent.

There’s obviously no first-mover advantage here, and while some of the peripheral functionality (huddles, hangouts, background uploading of photos from smartphones) is innovative, much of the core of the site is evidently influenced by the standard FaceBook layout. This is simply social networking done well. Really well. All the best ideas from Facebook and Twitter, implemented beautifully, without the downsides. Let me stop rambling and try to enumerate some concrete examples.

As a consumer of information, one of things I love about Twitter is the asymmetrical relationship model – I am free to follow the public thoughts of Paul Daniels, Bill Gates, The Queen and (of course) Stephen Fry without (fortunately) requiring them to reciprocate. But as a creator of information, sometimes I wish to post status updates which are shared only with close friends and family, which is where Facebook comes into its own.

But this is an imperfect separation of concerns – Twitter posts from genuine friends can get lost amidst the chaff, the 140-character restriction on Tweets can stifle debate or lead to misinterpretations, whilst posting to Facebook can feel like pointlessly cultivating a walled garden with no chance of one’s musings reaching a wider audience.

G+ succeeds in squaring this circle by introducing the concept of, well, circles! That is, people can be grouped into arbitrary sets – friends, family, acquaintances, crushes, colleagues, folks from your badminton club, people to diligently ignore, whatever. People are told that you’re now following them in some way, but are not told the name of the circle(s) into which you’ve chosen to place them.

From a consumption point of view this is admittedly similar to Twitter’s Lists. But G+ Circles also have a bearing when posting – you can specify which of your Circles may view each post (or indeed choose to make the post public). Crucially, the maintenance of Circles is simplicity itself, executed through an impressive UI that is a joy to use. You’re also prompted to add people to Circles when first choosing to follow them – privacy by default.

On the face of it, G+ might appear to be Yet Another site to check, but the enhanced Google Bar now adorning the top of sites I already check habitually (GMail, Google Reader, Google News, Google Finance…) means I’m unlikely to ever stray far from rich G+ notifications or indeed a way of sharing and publishing posts to G+. I’ve already disabled the majority of the email and mobile G+ notifications as I find them redundant given the amount of time I spend in front of a web browser.

There is no app platform on G+, which means that streams are, for now, mercifully free of incessant and vacuous messages along the lines of “Bob just fed his goat in Farmville!”. The downside is that neither is there an API, which limits the integration possibilities. I’m led to believe this is currently under development.

It’s too early yet to predict whether G+ will reach a sufficiently critical mass to be a "FaceBook killer". I suspect that whilst G+ might instinctively appeal to geeks, the migration of the broader population could take some time. But I hope that happens, and I look forward to logging onto FaceBook less frequently in the future.