Facebook virtually slaughtered MySpace. But now there’s a new social networking site lurking in the shadows that could potentially murder Facebook.
It’s called GOOGLE+ and it’s looking like it has the potential to be everything we hoped Facebook would be, but isn’t!
One of the biggest missteps of Facebook has been the odd idea from founder Mark Zuckerberg that because he doesn’t care about privacy, nobody else cares about it either. Except nothing could be further from the truth. The open world of Facebook has helped us all reunite with the first guy or girl we had a crush on in 3rd grade, but it’s also gotten a number of people fired. Facebook forces us to share practically everything with practically everybody, without choice, which has often angered many of us who appreciate a certain level of privacy and decorum.
But GOOGLE+ seems to already get it, right out the gate. They recognize that we act and speak one way in front of our friends, which is different from how we act and speak in front of our parents or our church group or our bosses. So one of the premiere features of the new service is +Circles, which puts your people into categories, instead of the “one-size-fits-all” mode that Facebook mandates. According to Google, “Sharing the right stuff with the right people shouldn’t be a hassle. “Circles” makes it easy to put your friends from Saturday night in one circle, your parents in another, and your boss in a circle by himself — just like real life.”
+Circles is also protective when you wish to check-in privately while you’re out and about. With Facebook “Places,” everybody knows your whereabouts and your every move. But with the +Hangouts feature of GOOGLE+, when you decide to sneak off to the local weed-smoking convention, only those in your weed circle will know you’re there — and not your parents or your pastor or your boss.
Other interesting features include +Sparks, which will automatically download news articles, photos, videos, etc. it thinks you might like; +Huddle, which can create a mini-chatroom of text convo for you, when you’re trying to decide on a movie with a group of friends but don’t want to send individual text messages back and forth to each of them; and +Instant Upload, which can instantly upload every single photo you take with your camera phone, to a private or public folder on GOOGLE+.
The service seems promising and can only get better. With the millions of users who seem to be fleeing Facebook due to their stringent rules and forced ideas against privacy, GOOGLE+ could soon become the next big thing. But don’t get too excited too soon — GOOGLE+ is an “invite only” service for now. So you can’t join unless you snag an invite, which is currently showing up for sale on eBay, or requiring your first born from a myriad of online barterer’s.
FOR MORE INFO ON GOOGLE+ CLICK HERE.
The truth is, I've always viewed the emergence of social network systems in much the same way I viewed the Dot.com "BOOM and BUST" era. Each "New" social network site is the "MUST belong to* HOT site for the moment (3-5 yrs on average) followed by that network's decline.Guess I'm a bit old-fashion…lol. I've never interacted on any of those sites (Myspace, Facebook, whatever). Never attached any importance to it. Just the new *toy* of the day.