On the radar; Friends+Me beta

My mate in Australia, Brian Clark, found this little gem and passed along to me, asking for my opinion. I thought it might be a good opportunity to weigh in not only on the product, but the evaluation process I go through when looking at a new tool…

In order for product to receive my recommendation, it has to meet the following criteria [in addition to others]:

• it must be best of class
• it must be free or freemium
• it must be completely cross-platform

This product belongs to a very small group of products that can actually auto post content from Google+ to other social networks and that really puts it in a class almost by itself!

Secondly, this is an affordable freemium product that allows you to auto post 40 times before paying a reasonable annual fee of $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year. Over the years I’ve become increasingly leery of great free products that appear one day and disappear the next — I’m happy to pay a reasonable price for a great product because it means that the products and services that I’m relying on may actually be there when I need them.

Lastly, because this product relies on Google+ sharing, it’s accessible from anywhere! Friends+Me is for people who are – or would like to be – using Google+ as their primary social network and I can see where it would be a valuable asset to people in both categories. I’ll be testing this product and let you know of a later date whether or not it becomes an approved part of my workflow…