About Google+
January 17, 2012 | Shout your comments at fb.slingshotmoon.com
Social media sites rise and fall seemingly overnight. Just three or four years ago, MySpace dominated the social media space. Then came Twitter, allowing users to provide real-time status updates that everyone could see. Facebook followed not far behind, and is expected to reach 1 billion users soon.
Third time’s the charm
Google, which has dominated the search engine world and the webmail world with Gmail has had a tough time in this environment. Google Wave and Google Buzz were attempts to capture a portion of the social media market, and they both failed miserably.
Google+ is the third product offered by Google in an attempt to capture the social media space, and it seems to have gained some traction.
What does Google+ do?
Google+ does what other social media sites do: it connects people. Google+ allows you to stay in touch with family, friends, colleagues, business associates, businesses, customers, and more. In that regard, it’s a lot like Facebook.
What makes Google+ different?
Google+ isn’t exactly like Facebook, however. There are some important differences worth considering:
- Google+ is built on the idea of “circles.”
With Google+, you put your friends and followers into Circles – which is just Google+’s term for groups of people. When you post something to Google+, you decide which circles the post will be visible to. Likewise, you choose which circles will appear in your stream (Google’s term for the flowing information, like a Facebook status update feed).
- Hangouts. Google+ has built-in multi-user video chat capabilities. In this regard, it’s way ahead of any of the other social media outlets out there. Even Skype – which is built on the idea of video and audio communication – requires a membership for multi-user video chat.
- Games. Google+ doesn’t have the vast amount of social games that you’ll find on Facebook.
- Gmail integration. One of the major complaints about Facebook from some people has been the relatively weak messaging system. Google+ fully integrates with Gmail, giving you all of its capabilities.
- Business presence. As of yet, many businesses are more focused on their Facebook or Twitter presence than on their Google+ presence. This is understandable, as the Google+ page feature (aimed at businesses) wasn’t released until recently. It remains to be seen, however, whether business presence on Google+ will reach a tipping point as it did with Facebook.
Is Google+ the Facebook killer?
Whether or not Google+ will capture the social media market remains to be seen. For now, many consumers and businesses seem to be in a “wait and see” mode, holding off until they see whether Google+ is going to catch on in a big way.