Indeed, Google+ seems to be a real rival of Facebook, containing the best of the social network giant while avoiding its worst.
While there seems to be nothing original with Google+, from its video chat to news feed, group texting and grouping, Google+ is likely to let you organize the mess Facebook created.
Rather than constantly connecting with all of your friends (including some strangers who randomly friended you) like on Facebook, Google+ allows users to create groups through a feature called “Circles,” so they can select whom to communicate what, by choosing discrete groups of friends to send different updates. This way you can secure more privacy and more control, at which Facebook is largely reputed as sloppy and insensitive. With the new facial recognition, Facebook seems to be growing in its insensitivity. Instead, Google aims to offer a clean and organized realm of social networking.
“Circles is an interesting feature. While Facebook does support the group function, Google Circles is a more intuitive approach and seems to mimic the way people work in their lives. Most tend to associate themselves with a group of people and certain environments,” said tech analyst Charles King from Pund-IT.
The Google+ customizations are flexible, giving users freedom to share their location, content , and friends within Circles. Setting up Circles require simpler steps and less click with simple drag and drop options. The potential to integrate all of Google’s website services such as Gmail, Picasa, YouTube, and Google Maps offer major advantages for Google+. A platform can be setup where functions can be consistent throughout the user’s Google+ experience.
Circles, so far most favored by analysts and users, could be Google+’s biggest strength as it is the biggest problem with not only Facebook but with Twitter as well.
Other sparkling features in Google+ include Streams, Sparks and Hangouts.
And Google’s got a wider heart – Google+ does not seek to be a stand-alone social networking service, like Facebook, but instead it is targeted at making everything Google social, capturing market share so that everywhere you go, Google can be with you, but will not trap you inside the service.
Through data liberation, Google allows you to pack up and take your data away from Google+ in case you decide to leave the service. In this aspect, Google+ is a stunning contrast to Facebook, which received countless complaints from users over how difficult it is to leave Facebook and take their data with them.
One aspect of Google+ may give Facebook serious chills. Once you sign into Google+, every single Google site you use gets a toolbar across the top with some new icons related to the service, noted Business Insider. A little notification window among the icons will turn red whenever someone adds you to the Circle or comments on your sharing. The little red button will continuously remind users to check the Google+ site. If 200 million Gmail users and 1 billion Google.com visitors sign into Google+, it will be not so far before Google+ overtakes Facebook in the number of users.
At the same time, the all-in-one model of Google+ may be too complicated for users.
Peter Pachal, in a blog post at PCMag, says, “People want things easy, and Google Circles isn’t easy. It puts the burden on users to take the time to think about each and every contact and put them in a specific bucket.”
It’s still a possibility that Google+ will be a repetition of Google’s past failures in social networking services.
“They’re known for having some of the most intelligent brains behind what they do but their philosophy has always been “algorithm is king.” This is why Google is amazing at search. Algorithms are in their DNA. The problem they face with social network customers is that while Facebook’s backend might run on algorithms, its customers and the social media culture don’t,” said Rich Harris in his Social Business blog at ZDNet.
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