Google+ Vs Facebook | The Digital Clicks Blog
It took just two weeks for Google+ to hit 10 million users, with 1 billion items being shared every day, but could this lead to a serious challenge for Facebook's 750 million user base? While Mark Zuckerberg may not be worried about Google's innovative Circles feature, which allows your friends to be placed into different groups to share separate content with as you wish, he may be concerned over the battle for the best video conferencing features. With Facebook teaming up with popular video calling service Skype, they now have Youtube-integrated Google+ Hangouts to contend with, not to mention Apple's FaceTime across multiple popular platforms, including the iPhone, iPad, iPod, and Mac Desktop. Hangouts allows you and your friends to video chat with up to 10 people and have people drop in and out, and the best thing about it is that you can all watch YouTube videos together with a clever push-to-talk feature as it plays in case you want to comment. Another clever feature is that whoever is talking loudly can find themselves on the main screen of the chat, which is a great way to fight for attention. It's fun and simple, and with a few tweaks, it will work perfectly, just like most Google products. Plus, unlike previous attempts such as Google Wave and Google Buzz, it fits perfectly within the brand new Google toolbar as your complete social networking tab. With your Google account, you can link Gmail, Google Docs, and more with a new +You tab, making sharing easier than ever, especially within your fast Google Chrome browser. The +1 feature consolidates this; it's like 'Like' but also applies to websites and allows you to store everything you like on your profile, ready to pass on however you wish. As everyone gradually switches over, is it time to deactivate and embrace everything on Google? With the search engine giants already at the forefront of targeted advertising, they now promise even better search results with the data acquired from improved profiles; however, this may mean even bigger risks to privacy that social networks pose. It will also only be a matter of time before Google+ becomes awash with advertising and other forms of Internet marketing. This attempted market takeover, however, will not quite wipe out Facebook completely. Along with Twitter, which has now turned 5 years old, success for social networking sites did not happen overnight. It seems most likely that the early adopters of Plus will use both for a while, but is there room for three social networks in our lives? Maybe there will be even more rumours of Microsoft entering the fray, even with the investment they have made in Facebook. What is clear, though, is that social media is only the beginning of the impact it will have on us in the future.