The Hashtag

Had Bianca substituted 'the Internet' for 'Europe' she would have been exactly right (and 12 years ahead of her time), judging by the reaction to Google+, launched last week.

This week, some users are non-plussed, others are plussed-ish with specific features (like Hangout, a video conference call tool that only crashes a little bit and gets a mention further down), but the overriding impression is that people are 'just whelmed' by the whole affair.

The search mega-giant's foray into social media had a rocky start, with Google+ rather nihilistically telling users who arrived via invite that it itself didn't exist. It also made one young boy cry by threatening to wipe his whole account for signing up despite being underage.

It was the butt of jokes, as well as a scam - the sincerest form of online flattery - involving fake invites, and China blocked it almost immediately (another form of compliment).

Some are waiting to see if it crashes and burns like Google Wave and Google Buzz, though Google's had success at customised landing pages with The Lot (mail, news, weather, stock market etc), but then so have Yahoo, MSN, Bing and so on.

So to Hangouts; the feature that's had better than 'just whelmed' reviews. A good indication of its strength was that  Facebook immediately brought out its own version of the same thing. Nuff said.

In non-Google news, by now even Fox News's Twitter followers know Obama isn't dead, contrary to what hackers would have had them believe otherwise earlier in the week. The pranksters gave their tender ages away with clunky wording and frankly silly tweets. They also got into Britney Spears' account, but her followers may not have noticed the difference.

In sport, British and Aussie tweeters teamed up to laugh their footy-socks off at Harry Kewell's demand for a cut on gate takings in the A-League. SBS sport blogger Rob Grasso did a neat job of wrapping up the #KewellALeaguedemands hilarity.

There *is* more to say about sport, of course, four out of ten top trending topics in Australia today have to do with a certain NRL series whose decider was played last night. SBS is a national broadcaster, but given the side of the border this desk is physically on, that's quite enough about that.

Another top Aussie trend this week was #vaginashows, initiated by writer and comedian Ben Pobjie. Bemused? You're not alone - but here's Ben to explain what it was all about. He kindly interviewed himself for this blog, because his hectic schedule and proximity to Melbourne made a catch-up out of the question.

Money made a rare appearance in the world of social media, and it didn't involve Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's arch-nemeses the Winklevii. Living Social - a sort of group-buying service - is rumoured to be looking at going public on the stock exchange. It's offering $1 billion worth of shares, which reportedly puts its value at $10-$15 billion.

And finally, Twitter introduced an interesting new feature amid the hubbub of the Google+ launch, quietly removing restrictions on Direct Messages (DMs, yo) and allowing ordinary punters to send private missives to famous people with verified accounts.

So get thinking about whom you're going to message and what you're going to say, if you haven't already.

Other than that, happy #nationalkissingday if you're in the UK. The international version was yesterday, it turns out, so if you're in the southern hemisphere like SBS, you've missed it. But you can hit up Twitter, where the topic is trending worldwide right now, because what is a hashtag good for if not to share the love.