I’m more like a late early adopter. LinkedIn already had 5 million users by the time I signed up in September 2007. Twitter had been around close to two years by the time I joined in December 2009. I can’t remember when I signed up for Facebook, but it was definitely after my two oldest kids were experts.

But that was then. Social networks have become vital research and reporting tools for journalists and freelancers, so that when a new one comes along it’s smart to check it out sooner v. later.

That’s why this week found me digging into Google+, Google’s latest effort to beat Facebook at its own game. The online network is still in wide beta testing – meaning you have to get an invitation to try it. But some industry pundits are calculating that close to 10 million people are already on it.

Using Facebook has been a problem for people who wanted to separate their private lives from their work. The only options were either creating a separate fan page for your freelance work or small business or give up and accept friend requests from work colleagues and mix business with pleasure.

Google+ solves that problem by letting users create groups called Circles so they can share work-related updates with work friends, family updates with family, shop talk with fellow hobbyists and the like.

Will Google+ take off? It’s way too soon to tell. Right now the biggest topic of conversation in my Circles is Google+. However, I could definitely see using it for my freelance business to:

• Exchange instant messages instead of email with an editor to tell her I’m finished loading a story into the publication’s content management system
• Hold a video chat with the group of writers I edit
• Track sources
• Read articles in newspapers and magazines
• Do a video chat for the WordCount Blogathon (I just thought of that, now that’s a good idea!)

But a lot of those things would replace social networks and other tech tools I already use. So the big question is, is Google+ good enough to make me change my ways?

See for yourself. Here’s a post I did for SecondAct.com on Google+ – maybe it will help you decide whether to open the invitation that’s sitting in your inbox.

Google+: Testing the Waters

Are you using Google+? If so, I’d love to hear your initial reactions. Please leave a comment, especially if you have tips for how journalists and freelancers could benefit from using it.

Here are links to the week’s top media industry stories:

The end of the World as we know it (The Economist) – The News of the World scandal is as juicy as anything the infamous tabloid ever reported on: spying, hacking and other skulduggery, outraged politicians, policemen on the take and even a dragon lady editor. They couldn’t make this stuff up.

Move to close newspaper greeted with suspicion (New York Times)

10 ways journalists can use Google+ (Journalism.co.uk) – Yet another social network to try to figure out how to use for work.

Long Story, Shortlist, First Edition (New York Times) – The new feature is a compilation of the best “long form” stories appearing in the paper during the past week. Find it on Twitter at #LongReads. Other places to find longer non-fiction online:

• @TheByliner
• @SomethingtoRead
• @ESPNReader

Knight Foundation sponsors DEMO conference, scholarships available (Knight Digital Media Center) – The foundation is giving 20 scholarships of $1,000 to journalists to attend the annual tech innovation confab, which takes place Sept. 12-14. Application deadline is July 15.

The new midlist: Self-published E-book Authors Who Earn a Living (Publishing Perspectives) – Great stuff for anyone who’s curious how much not-so-famous authors can make selling ebooks.

The value of toxic feedback (Urban Muse Writer) – As author Joni B. Cole explains in this guest post, it’s possible to learn from even the harshest criticism.

Why should writers care? For one thing, Google claims that Chrome does a better job than existing browsers like Internet Explorer or Firefox when it comes to searching for multimedia content online.

But the bigger deal might be that Chrome will give everyone, including writers, more tools to choose from for the online work they do.

The good news is there are already lots of early reviews of Chrome, some of which I’ll list here. The bad news is Chrome doesn’t work with Macs yet but is reported to be “coming soon.”

If you’re thinking of giving Chrome a spin, read these reviews first:

Wall Street Journal: First test of Google’s new browser – “Chrome is a smart, innovative browser that….will make using the Web faster, easier and less frustrating. But this first version….is rough around the edges and lacks some common browser features Google plans to add later.”

PC World: Google Chrome Web Browser Review – “Chrome lives up to its hype.”

VentureBeat: Chrome more than capable of taking on IE and Firefox – “Add Web browsers to the list of things Google does well.”

Newspapers see the future, and it’s digital. The latest evidence: earlier this week the New York Times Co. and three other investors sank $29.5 million into Automattic, the company that makes WordPress blogging software runs the WordPress.com free blogging Website. (Disclaimer: I use WordPress.com to create and host this blog.)

According to a news report, the Times was the smallest of the four investors – the others were venture capital firms. But the deal solidifies the paper’s existing relationship with Automattic, which the Times uses to host about 50 blogs, as well as About.com, the Internet information service it acquired in 2005.

As the Times investments illustrate, newspapers’ embrace of digital media has moved beyond erecting Web sites and asking reporters to write blogs. Consider:

• E.W. Scripps, the Cincinnati media conglomerate, is so jazzed about the prospects of its TV and online ventures the company is set to spin them off into a separate public company later this year.
• Ruport Murdoch, new owner of the Wall Street Journal, told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday that he will keep subscriptions for the paper’s online version, though prices will be higher and some “commodity” financial information will be free.
• I’ve already written about how the Los Angeles Times’ Innovations (read Web site) editor, Russ Stanton, is being mentioned as a front runner for the now vacant editor-in-chief gig.

At the same time, newspapers’ economic prospects are looking dim. The latest on that front: the Orange County Register, my old stomping grounds and the place I got started as a tech reporter, is killing its stand-alone Business section and folding it into the News section in one of several cost-cutting measures. When it does, it’ll be the only major daily in the country without a separate Business section. Ouch.

What does it mean for freelancers? Bone up on your coding skills. Seriously, as newspapers go through this transition to digital, it’s more important than ever to keep up with the times, and the Times. Maintaining a blog is one way. Seeking out Web-based work is another. If you don’t believe me, this blog post from Publishing 2.0 called The Only Way for Journalists to Understand the Web is Use It says it a lot more eloquently than I can.

That leads me back to Automattic. The investment is great news for the two-year-old start up, whose major competition includes Blogger, which Google bought in 2003. Other blogging software makers don’t have such deep pockets, but there are a lot of them, including Six Apart, which makes Movable Type and TypePad, plus a host of smaller proprietary and open-source blogging software makers. Automattic said it will use the investment to beef up projects like Akismet, a blog comment spam blocker.

 Updated on February 27, 2008: Thanks to the sharp-eyed reader who pointed out that WordPress is open source software. Automattic uses it to run the WordPress.com blogging Website.

Delicious is a social bookmarking site that lets you tag and store Web pages on their site. You can share pages with other Delicious users, but that’s not the main way I use it. Before when I researched a story, I would find data on a topic, and then highlight, cut and paste the info to a Word file that I’d fill with clips. Now, I just tag everything and save it on Delicious. I tag everything with keywords that will help me find it again. Then, when I start to write, I open my story file in Word, and my browser window, use a function of Windows to tile the two windows horizontally and switch between my research file and my Word document.

Another way to research a topic is through Google’s News Alerts, a part of Google’s News search function. With this service, research comes to me. Sign up for News Alerts on specific subjects and Google will crawl news sources or blogs and drop what it finds into your email inbox once a week, once a day or instantly. You can set alerts up for multiple topics and track each separately. To set up alerts, click on the News Alerts link on the left-hand column of the Google News page and follow the directions.