Tired of blocking followers who post relentless political campaign-related gibberish or blatant Gilt-esque advertising? We don't know about you, but we sure are. (Side note: if you're a campaign director who's hired a "social media consultant" [ick] to advise you that spamming your followers with aimless updates about your candidate is a good thing -- which counterproductively results in you and your updates getting blocked -- you should, one, fire that scam artist on the payroll and, two, stop it this very second.) Which is why (at least for now) Google Plus is a radical shot of fresh air. Like a VIP club or comfy booth inside the noisy, arena-like nightclub that is Facebook, the best part of Google+ is for sharing and discussing with a close circle of friends.

Jason Brooks at eWeek, who penned a thoughtful pros-and-cons piece on the new social networking thingamajig, writes:

Google+ is focused squarely on giving users control over how they share their information, with apparently little focus on how others are to consume this information. This difference in focus is the biggest difference between Google+ and other services such as Facebook or Twitter at this point.

The most prominent feature of Google+ is the circle. Where in Twitter you follow, and in Facebook you friend, in Google+, you drop people into one or more circles (Friends & Following are two of the suggested circle defaults). When you share information on Google+, you select one or more circles with which to share. You can also opt to share with single users or with the public at large.

Brooks also goes into how one can score an invite and more. Be sure to check it out. Furthermore, one can also hide you friends (i.e., turn that part that shows whose circles you are in) in case you don't want people to spam your buddies, or feel compelled to follow someone because they might get butthurt. ZDNet has a great piece on this very subject.

However, the best part of Google Plus thus far is that we've been able to take a gander inside Google VP Marissa Mayer's decadent and divine Four Seasons penthouse. Sigh. If only.