Google’s latest attempt to challenge Facebook’s dominance in social media is called Google+. Plus offers things you’d expect – a wall, photos, videos, chat, friend requests, etc. Plus is being rolled out this week in typical Google fashion – allowing users to sign up only through quasi-exclusive invitations. If you ask, as you might, what is Plus and why do I need it, Google might tell you, simply, that Plus makes it easy to control who sees what. In other words, Plus forces users to place friends in “Circles” (like Facebook groups) so that things are shared specifically rather than generally.
Essentially, “Circles” is a critique on Facebook’s complex privacy code, and an effective one at that. Some other new aspects introduced in Plus:
- Hangouts - group video chats. This holds an edge over Facebook chat at the moment, but look for that to change next week.
- Huddle - basically a chat room for people in the same “Circle.” Not much new here, but perhaps quite user friendly if using Android phones.
- Sparks - a place to share and find links based on specific interests. Google envisions “Sparks” to be a place where people make friends, which is interesting as Plus is more or less about privacy and containing your online identity.
Google+ also differs from Facebook in the way friends are added. Plus uses the same method as Twitter – you can follow people who don’t follow you back, place them circles they might not place you in, etc. Yet for all these differences, Google+ looks quite similar to Facebook. The profile page, for instance, includes posts, photos, videos, and an ‘about’ section. Nothing too revolutionary in the interface either.
If there is an advantage to Google+ it seems to be in the +1 button. Available to a wide audience already, the +1 button, Google’s challenge to the Facebook ‘Like’ button, can do some interesting things. A section of the personal profile is devoted to links +1′d and, while this may not differ much from Facebook’s listing of ‘liked’ pages, +1′s actually matter outside of the social network. For instance, while logged in to your Google profile, Google searches use social information to help promote links/pages your friends have +1′d. The advantage here lies in search-engine optimization based on social information, and, I think, is not unsubstantial.
Yet at the same time it remains to be seem is Google+ is a real challenger to Facebook or another of Google’s failed efforts (like Buzz) to compete in social networking.
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