To say that Facebook is getting slightly scared at the advances being made by Google+ is an understatement. Ever since the search engine purveyors decided to infringe on Facebook’s social network territory, they have begun to make more and more noise. Now the social network is fighting their corner with a bit of verbal slagging.
Sean Ryan, Facebook director of game partnerships, is quoted in Fortune as saying the new network “doesn’t have any users” and compares their tactics McDonalds copying Starbucks by selling coffee. Current user count for Facebook: 750million. Google Plus: 25m.
Now we know you guys are pissed that Google is offering a much better deal. We can’t help point out that someone else probably came up with social networking long before you did. Remember Faceparty, Friendster, MySpace, Bebo, Makeoutclub. We could go on.
Google+ might also be offering games to their users but if it “doesn’t have any users” why is Facebook getting so riled up? To explain this, you only have to look at the fate that befitted MySpace since Facebook began back in 2004. Pre-Facebook, MySpace was the coolest thing to hit the Internet since pornography. That all started to go downhill to the extent that media mogul and serial phone hacker Rupert Murdoch couldn’t wait to get rid of the site just last year. That will be the worry for those at Facebook and goes some way to explain their worries.
Launching games on Google+ has seen them take 25% less from the developers and it comes after a deal they signed with Zynga. This means a lot to the gambling industry as they created free-play texas hold’em and the social gaming industry is likely to see a lot of growth over the next few years.
All Google needs to do now is get themselves a patent troll to rile against their social network and they could conceivably call themselves the new cooler version of the social network.
