Do We Really Need More Social Networking with Google+?
Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Friendster, heck, even LinkedIn — social networking has reached (in my opinion) critical mass, and each social network is not without its disaffected users. My solution? Call your friends to hang out. But apparently, Google has decided to introduce its version of social networking to address the needs of the socially displaced. Enter: Google+, designed to ‘fix’ all those problems you have with those other social networks. Not convinced? Me neither. Read on and find out …
Google+ breaks itself down into four major categories: +Circles, +Sparks, +Mobile and +Hangouts. +Circles lets users create groups to categorize the people they’re connected to, so they don’t accidentally share photos from that booze cruise with their boss or mom. +Mobile lets users get at their social information on the go, and automatically uploads photos. It also includes +Huddle, a feature that directly texts/chats a user’s group of +Circles friends. For those not on the go, there’s +Hangout, a way to let friends who (presumably) are also sitting at home on the computer know you’re available for spontaneous video chatting. Lastly, there’s +Sparks, a way to share with your +Circles friends links and other web content and comment on it, like a mini-forum.
Sounds just like my Thursday night. With my friends. In person.
In all seriousness, Google+ addresses one of the biggest issues with social media right now: the inability to compartmentalize who you want to share information with. But outside of this feature, the rest is just more of the same. I can’t help but feeling like +Hangout actively encourages people to sit at home ‘hanging out’ on the ‘Net, hoping some other user will be there to video chat and fill the void that physical friends provide. +Sparks isn’t exactly game-changing in the way users share stuff they like with their friends (be it web forums, e-mails or Twitter) and +Huddle is effectively a glorified Group MMS, albeit a bit more in real-time.
There’s no doubt people will flock to the platform — it certainly has addressed social networking (and content-sharing) woes, but I’ll be a bit skeptical of it until I can actually use it. More importantly, will I actually want to use it? Facebook and other large-scale social networking platforms have left me with a bad taste in my mouth and the lingering sensation that it fosters addictions and/or creates voyeurists and exhibitionists of us all.
The only social networking I use is Twitter, and it’s because I find it refreshing people can say what they need to in 140 characters.
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Couldn’t agree with you more Dave. What a waste. I see Google Wave Part II as far as success rates go. With all of the time spent trying to figure out what does what, please just get outside and get some fresh air! Want to categorize? Here goes, Facebook= friends and family ONLY, LinkedIn = professionals that you have either done business with or want to do business with, Twitter = anyone and everyone…gotten somewhat noisy of late but every once in awhile there’s a valuable nugget so might as well monitor and engage where appropriate.
“In all seriousness, Google+ addresses one of the biggest issues with social media right now: the inability to compartmentalize who you want to share information with.”
I have found that the utility promised in Google+ to compartmentalize contacts is available in FaceBook through “Friend Lists” and “Groups” considering how poor the documentation offered its no surprise that these features are unknown or to difficult to implement. I believe that the attention Google+ draws to these features, it will stimulate FaceBook to improve them, isn’t competition great!
I agree with all your points, but a Google engineer has said that they based most of their tech on XMPP, meaning that Google should be able to publish this as a standard federated protocol / platform (XMPP plus extensions). If that happens, other players like Yahoo! could easily jump on board with their own implementations on their own properties. That would be a big win for everyone except Facebook, who as the market leader wouldn’t adopt the new protocol until forced to by decreasing user base (See the history of the tech industry for many examples).
If Google pushes this as a standard the same way they’ve been feeding and pushing HTML5, I think it will be a long-term win in the social horse race. Otherwise, it will sit in the middle of the pack, many lengths behind the leader. Not a failure, per se, but probably not even a show.
[email protected]: The VAR Guy loves your opinions but slightly disagrees. Generally speaking Facebook = personal and LinkedIn = business. But those lines disappear in a few areas. Lots of readers come to TheVARguy.com via FaceBook updates. Lots of readers sign up for The VAR Guy’s webcasts via FaceBook. So business is getting done of FaceBook…
[email protected]: Competition is great. Curious to see if Google+ somehow slows down FaceBook’s growing valuation…
Daeng [email protected]: You could have a point. Without continued innovation FaceBook could wind up a lot like Studio 54… the old disco club from the 1970s. People were dieing to get in. But after awhile the party got boring and people headed for home.
-TVG
@TVG, maybe that just means that readers see you as a friend in addition to a great business resource. I kid.
Really I see more business being done via FB but do we really need another outlet that takes us farther and farther away from real life and real relationships? Are the majority of us really doing things we don’t want our bosses to see on FB? Here’s a thought, set your privacy settings.
I like Mark Zuckerberg’s tweet today: @ceoMarkZuck “Google+ is supposed to be our competition? I need to go Buzz about this… oh wait.”
Facebook doesn’t really grow anymore (because “everybody are there already”?). In fact they start loosing users in a few markets.
My major beef with Facebook is privacy and neither Facebook or Zuckerberg are associated with decency and ethics. Quite the opposite I would say.
No need to be dillutional about Google either, but moving from Facebook to Google + should be a slight improvement after all.
Whether business usage or personal use the core issue is the ability to protect owned information and secure sharing which only includes the parties YOU want to share with.
One important advantage goes to Google + because the users are provided with tools to migrate away from Google. Don’t like it? Pick up your stuff and move on.
Let’s put it like this:
If I could download a Google+/docs/+++ virtualized image and install it on my virtualised CentOS server without the prying eyes of Google getting access I would gladly transfer some dollares in return.
Meanwhile I will continue testing in absence of feature complete solutions from Diaspora and OwnCloud. 🙂
google+ ko kaise join kiya jaye ?
I think that more competition would be welcomed thing as fb keeps trying to out people. Google + having good control over what people see would be a growing market of those who already left fb.
That said, I am too lazy myself to adopt a new social media.
Unicorn: You may have identified Google +’s greatest competition: Lack of time. Do business users and consumers have enough time in their day to use yet another social network? Can Google really convince folks to spend less time on other social networks? Hmmm…
-TVG