Is Google+ a Facebook Killer?
Google has come up with an interesting social networking platform - Google+. It has some nice features, pleasant look and most importantly an intuitive interface. Will it be a Facebook killer? Here is my take on it.
Circles
Google has gone one step ahead of Facebook in creating an online society. As in reality, some friends are closer than the others even on the web. It is desirable to share photos or status updates with only certain group of friends instead of everyone. Circles in Google+ allows one to do this by way of organizing friends. While Facebook also has a way to organize friends, I don't find it as intuitive as Circles; probably circles is marketed while its counterpart's utility is not.
Hangout
For me, if anything can recreate the feeling of society, then its got to be the concept of get together for a conversation. Hangout is designed to do this precisely. If you are chatting with people in a circle, the others in that circle are invited to come hang out. Hangout is a clear winner; forget video conferencing, even a fundamental chat requires improvement in Facebook.
Sparks
Sparks is, in principle, an integration of Google's search, news and buzz. It allows one to search for articles/ news related to a topic (marketed as hobbies). Upon marking the topic as an interest, related news will show up in the spark space in the user's profile. The user can then conveniently share the link on his profile.
As a side note, Google must have been working on this vision for a long time. I have been using the contact organizing feature in gmail since a long time. Hangout is a natural extension to voice/ video chat.
Google vs Facebook is a favorite topic for any technology analyst. A very good analysis of their products in the past, present and projected future based on emerging trends of mobile networking can be found in IEEE Spectrum. In that analysis, Facebook was given an undue advantage over Google in social networking related products. However, it is possible that Google+ can attract users due to the above mention cool features. With Google+ in place, Google has the potential to overtake Facebook even in social networking sphere, given that Google already has an edge in the mobile aspect (Android) of mobile networking.
So is Google+ a Facebook killer? I don't think so...
TJ
Circles
Google has gone one step ahead of Facebook in creating an online society. As in reality, some friends are closer than the others even on the web. It is desirable to share photos or status updates with only certain group of friends instead of everyone. Circles in Google+ allows one to do this by way of organizing friends. While Facebook also has a way to organize friends, I don't find it as intuitive as Circles; probably circles is marketed while its counterpart's utility is not.
Hangout
For me, if anything can recreate the feeling of society, then its got to be the concept of get together for a conversation. Hangout is designed to do this precisely. If you are chatting with people in a circle, the others in that circle are invited to come hang out. Hangout is a clear winner; forget video conferencing, even a fundamental chat requires improvement in Facebook.
Sparks
Sparks is, in principle, an integration of Google's search, news and buzz. It allows one to search for articles/ news related to a topic (marketed as hobbies). Upon marking the topic as an interest, related news will show up in the spark space in the user's profile. The user can then conveniently share the link on his profile.
As a side note, Google must have been working on this vision for a long time. I have been using the contact organizing feature in gmail since a long time. Hangout is a natural extension to voice/ video chat.
Google vs Facebook is a favorite topic for any technology analyst. A very good analysis of their products in the past, present and projected future based on emerging trends of mobile networking can be found in IEEE Spectrum. In that analysis, Facebook was given an undue advantage over Google in social networking related products. However, it is possible that Google+ can attract users due to the above mention cool features. With Google+ in place, Google has the potential to overtake Facebook even in social networking sphere, given that Google already has an edge in the mobile aspect (Android) of mobile networking.
With so many things possibly going Google's way, its still not easy to beat Facebook; Google Buzz was supposed to be a twitter killer. Gmail, Google's second most successful product, still competes with yahoo mail. Google docs can not replace MS Office. Ad Words is a failure. Google WAVEd it good bye :-).
So is Google+ a Facebook killer? I don't think so...
TJ
nice immediate opinion :)
ReplyDeletei would say the conclusion is your subjective bias
buzz and wave was a failure true...
ad words, whats wrong with it? google makes 99% of revenue from it and people work extensively on it even as we speak.
its only facebook's ad program people criticize as a failure as it does not generate clicks as google does.
google docs cannot replace ms office --- i think they are meant for different purposes... cannot compare in my opinion... i use google docs for quick updating few documents that i need to access from everywhere.. i cannot edit everytime in ms office and carry in usb or send to my inbox.
Shyam,
ReplyDeleteIt was definitely my take on Google+.
I meant AdSense, the monetizing option for the users. I don't see anyone making money out of it. Bloggers complain about it and prefer custom agreements for advertisements.
Google docs was meant to be a step towards cloud computing. Unless they make it better, their cloud is not going to take off.
slightly off topic - just heard that Microsoft is entering the cloud fray by putting its office products online too - a la google docs.
ReplyDeleteYes, Ad sense is different. A variation created recently, Ad words is the profitable version of google for long now and very active area of work.
ReplyDeletehmm,.... i concur with that google docs needs improvement.
Nonetheless, i have used more google docs than ms office in last few years. suits my need better than ms office or screwed up linux packages of office.