Everyone’s been talking about Google + the new social media network Google launched recently.
So what’s the deal with Google Plus and why would Google want to start a new social media network? Besides the obvious reason that they want a slice of the social media money pie, the other reason is that these guys (who by the way are very smart bunch remember they created Google!!) have been studying Facebook carefully and were able to find where it was not delivering. This gave them the perfect reason and opportunity to launch Google Plus.
Now a lot of people just follow whatever everyone else is doing but others may want to know why they should leave Facebook and venture towards Google Plus. Here is why Google Plus is making so much noise in the media these days:
Simple and clean interface. Yes it may be due to the fact that it’s still in beta phase but still having a clean and easy to use UI is HUGE. I remembered when I started using Facebook back in the day (or even MySpace) it was overwhelming to see all the options, account settings and several thousand layers and levels of privacy settings which by the way are still not good apparently as Facebook keeps getting in trouble about all the time.
Circles
Google Plus Circles solves one of the biggest complaints people experience with Facebook and that is not being really able to control who sees what and how? Yes Facebook does have “Lists” but it is quite complicated to figure it out how to use and FB itself has down played this feature and now it seems like they will pay for it.
Circles are very easy to manage. You can simply drag and drop your friends in to “Circles” you want to be in. People can be in multiple “Circles” too – a friend who is a co-worker can be in two of your Circles.
When you are posting content it is so simple to post what you want to say and who you want to say it to. For me this alone is a reason to use Google Plus.
Hangout
In a nut shell, hangout is where you can video chat with up to 10 of your friends at the same time. Yay for all those crazy video chatters out there. Its funny how Mark Zuckerberg and Skype’s “something awesome” announcement turned out to be a “somewhat awesome flop”. I only know 3 people who have used it so far and I am one of them! Hangout totally bursted that bubble.
Can be great for even Work related meetings too. Watch out WebEx!
Sparks
For some reason Sparks is the least talked about feature of Google Plus. I LOVE it. Basically, Sparks are what you tell Google Plus you are interested in and it brings all the stuff you would like to see to your G+ account all nicely sorted out in different “Sparks” folders.
Photos
They do what they meant to do. But what’s great is that if you use Picasa you will find your images already under “Photos” in your G+ account. All you need to do is choose who to share these photos with and viola you are done.
As mentioned earlier Google Plus is still in testing phases so we will see how this baby beast is going to shape. But so far Google Plus seems like a really cool social network and their edge seems to lie in the approach to give the user control of their social interaction which Facebook has secretly taken away.
For the mega nerds who need to know more about G+:
