Google has just introduced Google+, a new alternative for the facebook platform. The user interface amazingly resembles the one we know in facebook. In the meantime, Google+ is limited for invited people only.
Google+ includes the following three main components: Circles, Hangouts and Sparks. In addition, it provides with a simple and easy navigation to its other main parts: Profiles and Photos.
The Circles idea is amazing. It allows you to share what you want just with those you want to share it. The user interface of this feature is amazingly simple. We can easily create new circles and we can easily assign each content we want to share with the circles we select. In addition, given that our friends have no idea about the circles we assign them to, no one get hurt.
The sparks component provides us with kind of a mixture of a web search engine and a wall sharing as the one we know from facebook. Its integration with circles allows us to share the great stuff we find on the web with those circles we are interested in sharing with. Sparks leverages the power of the google search engine into the social network arena.
The hangouts component turns the video chat into a more social one allowing friends that belong to the same circle to jump into a social video chat.
Will Google+ work? Hard to guess. Will it take a bigger market share comparing with Google’s previous tries?
Bing succeeded in taking a significant market share from Google. Yet, most people still use Google. Can we expect a similar result from Google+? Will it take a significant market share from Facebook? Unlike a search engine, the power of a social network comes from the people who already use it. Will people move into Google+ although most of their friends use facebook?
People already fear of the private amount of data Google saves on their servers. Will that be a factor in their attitude to the possibility to start using Google+ as one of their social network?
We already keep most of our social life digitized on the facebook platform. Will it be a factor that keeps us away from using a new social network?
