For the best part of four weeks, there seems to be a new craze in the online space – no Apple are not launching a new product, but Google have made yet another attempt at cracking social media and having a worthwhile competitor to Facebook and Twitter.
Well after Wave, Buzz and other ventures it seems Google Plus might be the one to finally give Google a real Facebook-beater, or more likely a Google-challenger.
In the first 2 weeks, Google + amassed close to 20 million users which is staggering. I’ve seen a graph (see below) that show Facebook and Twitter taking well over 2 years to reach half that. And this is all without providing an option for businesses to join and without promoting the still BETA service through its other channels, namely Youtube and Google.com.
That said, I very much doubt Facebook is going to go away anytime this decade. Saying that might be tempting fate as a decade is a long time in the world of the web – however with half a billion people on Facebook and growing, it has the kind of critical mass that MySpace may have never even have dreamt of.
Anyway, this is about Google+ and if it is any good. Well after playing around on it for most of July, I can tell you a thing or two. As I’ve already said, its Google’s best effort by far in social networks. Its very well thought out, is nice, simple and clean to use and just works. Its like they’ve taken the best bits of Facebook and Twitter, made it look better and meshed them together. Privacy settings are a breeze, unlike with Facebook – its simple and clear-cut.
G+ has this concept of ‘circles’ into which you put your various connections. This is great because now you can communicate certain information to certain people much more easily. You may want to put up photos of last Saturday night to show your friends, but keep those dodgy ones from your professional and work colleagues. It takes 2-3 clicks to get that sorted out.
Then there’s Hangout – a fab video chat service. It allows multiple users to join the same ‘hangout’ and see each other. I’ve only used the once so far and loved the simplicity of it all.
As its still invite-only, there is a certain emptiness feeling you get when on G+ because there’s simply not as much relevant stuff going on as you get in Facebook. But for me this is just a timing thing. Once it opens up and the number of users grow, there will be a shifting of focus and that’s when we’ll know that G+ has truly arrived. Just don’t expect a mass exodus from its Facebook rival!
Related articles
- FriendFeed vs Twitter vs Facebook vs Google+ (chris.pirillo.com)
- Some thoughts on Google+ (businessinsider.com)
- Google Plus Benefits (buzzoodle.com)
- Google+ — Information Overload? (fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com)
2 replies on “Is Google+ any good?”
I do agree that Google+ and their circles is brilliant. I know Facebook attempted something like this with groups, but it didn’t really work. But because Google did it from the off – it’s worked well. I like it because I don’t need to worry about certain people seeing things. I’ve used Hangout a couple of times as have friends dotted all over the country and it’s sooo good. I think in the future, Skype are going to lose a lot of people.
I still use my Facebook account more though as most of my friends don’t have Google+ accounts, I think it has a long way to go yet. Something that is slightly worrying is that we found some stats showing that last month, most Google managers don’t have or use a Googe+ account http://www.lucidica.com/blog/cto/management-of-google-dont-seem-to-love-google/ so this makes me think that they don’t really like it themselves.
Hopefully it will change in the future though .
Hi Emily
Thanks for your comment. I agree G+ has some way to go yet before even coming close to challenging Facebook and the repertoire it has built up. I think they’ll both co-exist along with Twitter as they’re not in direct competition. The conversations I take part in G+ are a lot different to those in Facebook and actually more closely aligned with those in Twitter. Surprised to hear the Google managers stuff though – might have something to do with corporate policy whilst in the beta stages.
I love Hangouts too – a very useful feature. Doubt it will affect Skype in the long term though due to their interfaces being different and appropriate for different scenarios.