“Some feel that it is combination of facebook and twitter....Lets take a sneak peak... ”
Man is a social animal. the growth of facebook from a small room to its current headquarters in california will explain a lot about the needs of man to be in a social network. As 2011 approached the user count of facebook grew upto 750 million. The website, originally created for harward students, slowly gained popularity owing to its unique approach and freshness. Independent records state that more people visited facebook than google for a particular weekend of march 2010.
The increasing demand of facebook rattled the cage of the web giant Google. The latter came up with a social networking site called Google+ as a comeback.The google plus service was launched on the 28th of june 2011 in an invite only testing phase. The existing users could invite friends to use the service, however this was suspended a day after there was an “insane demand” of accounts. The New York Times states it to be google’s biggest attempt to rival facebook.
…..is it similar to facebook or twitter??*
A few days after the Google+ service was available to the users, many were of the opinion that it was very similar to facebook (keeping in mind the user interface) and Twitter (keeping in mind the option available of adding people in circles just to ‘follow’ them). But, making a judgement based on these features alone will be a harsh on the still growing ‘circle’ of Google+. The feature of posting to friends or following people you find interesting is just a part of social networking, and having these features in Google+ should not make it similar to the other sites.
‘follow’ vs ‘add to circles’ (twitter vs G+)
It is common for people to follow celebrities and those they are interested in on the microblogging/social networking sute, twitter. However, what people wont get on twitter is filtering their followers and being able to share things to a particular ‘CIRCLE’ and not to everyone. It is good to have a feature that separates friends from family and all those special people from friends.
The feature of circles is said to be inspired with real life; quoting from the G+ website itself : You can choose to share some things with college buddies, others with your parents, and almost nothing with your boss. (Now.. is there anything that explains the advantages CIRCLES better than that ?? )
‘like’ vs ‘+1’ (facebook vs G+)
The one thing that some people are supposed to ‘like’ on facebook was the games on facebook, which are not there on Google+. But the latter provides a very good interface of managing friends into circles and ‘hangout’ with them or have a gorup chat opposed to the comparatively poor idea of groups on facebook. It was after the ‘hangouts’ (video chat) on Google+, facebook introduced the video chat (supported with skype). However unlike the HANGOUTS, the facebook user video chat with more than one person at the same time, or chat with the group and watch youtube videos along with them. After personally testing each of the video chatting service on different platforms, it was found out that that Facebook Video Chat was supported only on windows platform, by providing a .exe file for the plugin; however google+ hangouts run fine on linux distributions also using the google talk plugin and are more efficient compared to the facebook product.
cherry on the top
A few days after getting one’s hands dirty using Google+ , one might feel the picture has suddenly grown larger, with the ease of posting and sharing, and the satisfaction one will get after realizing the scope of the website. But, the ease of use and better performance accompanied with unlimited space to upload photos and videos ( yes, that too! ) are not the only things that give Google+ the ‘+1’. Yes, there is more ... a GREAT mobile app.
The native app of Google plus is currently available for android phones and is soon to be available for iPhones/iPads. The application has been tested by independent users and their performances have been compared with the native applications of other services such as facebook, and the apps of Google+ were found to be much faster. Also, the application does much more than just show notifications and provide a user interface for using the G+ service on the phone. The features also include ‘huddle’, which is very handy for chatting with a group of friends and also a feature of instant upload for Android; where every picture of video taken from the phone will be uploaded to the cloud as soon as it is taken. These uploads, of-course, are done to a private album, from where they can be edited and shared to whoever we want to. There are settings available for these ‘instant uploads’ which can be used either to disable the uploads, or upload only when the phone is charging and/or the phone is using a wi-fi network.
If the native application is not available for your phone, G+ can be browsed using the web-app access in the phone browser, however some platforms only support the basic XHTML site.
The Verdict:
Google+ was found out to be a very decent product for the end user, all the credit going to the rejuvenating features and a comparatively better performance. The social network has indeed evolved into something that goes well with human behaviour, and this change, as we talk now, has already started to be accepted and used by many on the World Wide Web.
*the views expressed in the articles are personal views of the author/s.
**Google+ is sometimes referred to as G+ at some places in the article.
