Facebook vs. Google+: the duel to be king of the social network
September 7, 2011 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
Ever since the popularization of the social media network Facebook a few years back, ousting Myspace as the social network leader, there have been no true contenders that have been able to draw the attention of the masses as easily.
A new attempt from Google, known as Google Plus or Google+, has ventured on an undertaking of changing how social networking is viewed today, and it is starting to make Facebook nervous. But does it have any reason to?
Beginning a few months ago, Google, the search engine leader by far, set out on a mission to create the largest social networking website around. They created a small testing group of the website and allowed users to begin sending out a small number of invites to their friends.
Google+ uses the same sort of basic networking tools as Facebook, such as a news feed, but also offers many different and unique features. The largest difference is the introduction of circles, which allows people to distinguish their contacts by various groups. Updates, photos, and anything else can be shared with specific circles and left out of others, and in essence is the solution for the frustration experienced by every student who has their parents as a Facebook friend.
Other features include better photo sharing, and “hangouts,” a feature that gives the ability to set up a time for a group video or text chat with people in your circles.
Shortly after the introduction of Google+, Facebook feeds were swamped with status updates of people claiming that they were going to quit Facebook and use Google+ entirely, and invited all of their friends to join them. Even today, although to a much lesser extent, these updates still pop up in Sonoma State students Facebook feeds.
Strangely however, these same people still update and check their Facebook accounts, leading people to wonder whether or not Google+ is an actual threat.
In an effort to determine the full extent of the damage that Google+ made on Facebook, I decided to begin a search for people who used both networks.
Surprisingly though, my searches came up largely empty. Every single person that I found who even used both programs said that they used Facebook and never even touched their Google+ account.
Stephanie Long, a senior at SSU, explained that the reason that she never made the switch over, or uses her Google+ account in general, was because nobody that she knew was on it.
This response of social dislocation is the only one I received in my search, so the question still then remains whether or not this is really indicative of the population of the majority.
As Google+ becomes more open to the public, things may however soon change.
