The only thing which Google has done better this time is to have launched Google Plus as a social networking platform with some additional features. If we look at earlier attempts by Google with Orkut, Buzz or Wave, you will not find any thing which can be termed as the USP. I mean, there was nothing which could draw attention of loyal Facebook users. Probably, that was the biggest reason that Orkut, Buzz and Wave failed.
Google might have done lot of research and brain storming in finding out a wish list of most Facebook users and have tried to offer the same within Google Plus before Facebook could do the same. However, that doesn’t make the job of making Facebook users switching to Google Plus so easy. Of course, that will save the Google users from switching to Facebook now and they may at least like to give a try with Google Plus.
So, what are those features that will help Google Plus to survive this time. I am still not thinking about a scenario of Google Plus giving either a tough fight to Facebook or replacing it altogether. That will be a long way and it will be hard to think that Facebook will just adopt a wait and watch strategy for this. In fact, Facebook has already started gearing up to come up with an equal or better features so as to retain its user base.
When we think about possible features of any social networking platform, the most common and obvious ones that come to mind are – adding friends & families, status updates, photo sharing, posting information, commenting, chat, networking with colleagues & business partners. Now, Facebook has most of the above. However, Facebook is a non-serious kind of social networking site which people uses for fun and sharing. On the other hand, we do see some other serious kind of social networking sites like linkedin. LinkedIn is admired by the corporate and business people as much as everyone else likes about Facebook. So, Facebook is all about Fun and LinkedIn is nothing about Fun. Generally people uses linkedin to network with their professional circle whereas Facebook is used to network with family and friends. Most of linkedin users have an account with Facebook and vice versa. Google probably could knew this gap of users being forced to keep at least two social networks owing to personal and professional reasons and used it to its advantage by launching Google Plus. They removed this gap with the new Google Plus feature called as circles.
The idea of Circles is nothing but to keep the same social network cater to different personal and professional needs. So, what you achieved by keeping separate accounts with Facebook and Linkedin, same can be done using Circles within one Google Plus Network. You can define the circle to be – Family, Friends or even Colleagues & Professional circle. That way, you get the benefit of both Facebook and Linkedin within same network.
By keeping separate circles, you can also decide to share different things with different circles. So, you can share all about your personal happening within family and friends circles whereas you can post any thing related to your job and business in other circle.
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