In the blue corner we have the heavy weight champion of the world . . undefeated in 7 years, crushing every foe it cares to meet. It is the one and only Facebook!
And in the blue, red, yellow and green corner we have the challenger . . . Googles prodigy, the one to blow Facebook away . . it’s the mightly impressive Google+.
Having been on the new social media site Google+ for a week now, I thought I’d take stock of how it stacks up against the king of all social networking sites Facebook. I think we can all agree on the fact that Facebook is an absolute behemoth of a platform, boasting a quite remarkable 750 million active users as of this month – this is more than 12 times the entire population of the UK . . mental!
Running before it can walk!
So what are Google even playing at trying to contend with these figures, well I’m of the opinion and they certainly are, that why the hell not. They have the money to throw at an experiment like this and lets not forget, the Google search engine is reasonably popular or so I’ve heard!
I think this could well be a reason why they are already producing such impressive figures in essentially the blink of an eye! On the 4th of July they had a reported 1.7 million users but wait for it . . . by the 10th of July this had already leapt up to 7.3 million! And with projected user figures of around 20 million by this coming weekend, I think they are on course to make a serious impression.
So why this immediate success?
As always, it is going to be a combination of factors attributing to the success of Google+. The fact that Google already have such an obscenely large market share of the web certainly helps but I think the biggest part has been its ease of use to build your network. The challenge they face is getting people to migrate from Facebook. I mean why would you want to start all over again when you have spent years building your network up on Facebook, connecting with old and new friends, flicking through tagged photos of you that are 5 years old.
This is where I believe Google have been very shrewd in how networks work within Google+. With the ability to add contacts to ‘circles’ you can quickly and rapidly build up a series of mini networks, essentially working like a cross between Twitter groups and Facebook friends. By taking down the barrier and making it so easy and quick to build your network is where the real value in Google+ is. Yes it doesn’t do a lot else that Facebook does but it does it simply, quickly and easily, all three things it needs to be if it is to be a long term success.
I’m keeping a keen interest in how this turns out as we have the two current giants of the web battling it out. Of course, there is nothing to say that Facebook can’t just roll out a lot of the neat features found within Google+ but I am skeptical of this. Simply because they come from opposed philosophies, with Facebook being a closed network and Google+ an open much like Twitter.
I’ll be interested to hear any of your thoughts on this new social network, particularly from those that have recently joined.
