digital envy Where Facebook was firmly in charge of the social networks just a couple of weeks ago, the recent launch of the new social network site Google+ caused quite a stir. Although it has yet to prove if it is a “Facebook-killer,” Google+ has already set the record as the fastest growing social network in history; it lured in almost 18 million users in only three weeks of existence. And since it is still in closed beta, Facebook should watch its back as Google+ is gaining momentum quickly. So how did they get 18 million users? With G+ Google has created the most visually appealing and simple way to create and share within online groups: Circles. In contrast to Facebook, Circles enables you to share your content with a select group of people, such as friends, acquaintances and co-workers. The rationale behind this is that you don’t want to share your drunken party pictures with your boss. And it works the other way around as well; you don’t want to see that never-ending stream of baby pictures from friends with kids. The question here, however, is whether online users have the time and the will to start using yet another online social network. Linkedin CEO Jeff Weiner recently said that “unlike social platforms and TV, which can coexist, you don’t see people using Twitter while they’re using Facebook, or using Facebook while they’re using Linkedin.” Social networking at some point will become a zero sum game, meaning that for one network to win, another one has got to lose.
To win this online war social networks should come up with original content to differentiate themselves, but also make sure that there are enough other members to share that content with. Circles might be such a way for G+ to differentiate itself as a corporate social sharing tool; enabling groups of co-workers to quickly share relevant information amongst each other. However, besides circles, G+ and Facebook both include very similar services, as for example group video-chat (Huddle en Social Hangouts) and image storage services. The most significant difference that remains is the number of active users, which is clearly in favor of Facebook with over 750 million. No wonder Google+ actively tries to facilitate intgrating some of those Facebook users to their own network. Facebook on the other hand is actively protecting their user base and digging digital trenches around their castle. They’ve done this by cutting off services such as Facebook Friend Exporter, which used to enable you to export your Facebook friends’ contact info for use with other services. Also, Facebook blocks out any form of ads in their system that promote G+. For a company that encourages its users to share amongst each other, Facebook’s own data stream seems to be a private one-way street leading inwards. I could, for example, upload my photos and videos to Facebook, but I can’t download or export them somewhere else online if I wanted to. It is the terms of service “you will not collect users’ content or information, or otherwise access Facebook, using automated means (such as
harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scrapers) without our permission” that might drive their users somewhere else. I know it does for me. Although a heavy underdog in social networking, Google has taken the opposite stance, having recently launched Takeout, a tool that lets you export all your data from various Google services. And Google+ has some other tricks up its sleeve to counter Facebook. For starters it is accessible through every Google service (including Google search) throughout the Internet via a seamlessly integrated black toolbar along the top of a google page. Every time someone posts a message in one of your circles a red number lights up on the bar, effectively pulling you back into G+. Meanwhile, Google introduced a ‘+1’ button next to all of their search results and as an implementable button on websites (similar to a the Facebook ‘like’ button) as a way of promoting search results when your connections search on Google. When, for example, looking for similar news articles, they could then see your +1’s directly in their search results, helping them find your recommendations when they’re most useful. Once the new car smell has worn off a bit and the dust has settled, we can better see where Google+ is heading. For now it remains a well-made network, with a clean interface and mobile apps that work as they should. On the other hand, it misses integration with other Google services, the possibility to build applications and corporate pages, so I’m not sold just yet. Luckily Google has said that this
initial roll-out of Google+ is only a sliver of what’s to come. So we’ll have to wait and see. Let’s just keep our fingers crossed and hope that Farmville won’t make the switch to G+. By Bendert Katier