Google+ stole facebook’s “wall” and renamed it their “stream”. I think this move is hands-down the best thing they could do to make the new service a success.

When I opened Google+ Wednesday evening I knew exactly how it worked because I’ve been using facebook for several years. I’ve developed several software products over the last 15 years. Introducing users to a new product was difficult 15 years ago. It’s even more difficult today.

I used to refer to the “Golden 5 Minutes” as the first few minutes that we had to convince someone to continue using our product after they started a demo or trial. Today I think it is more like the “Golden 5 Seconds”! If you don’t get instant feedback and gratification from a new product you move on immediately. No second chances. What Google did with the Google+ Stream is build on a paradigm that 700 million people are already used to. When I opened the interface yesterday I found myself exploring the details, not perplexed about what the product does (cough cough buzz, cough wave).

Kudos to Google on this one. I think there’s a compelling use case in the business world.