Deepi Garbyal|FMS
On June 28th my RSS feeds were chirping Google+. People were asking, requesting, begging and becoming restless for one. Reviews were blogged left and right, there were new user sign ups and very heavy traffic. Google had to stop circulating the invites by disabling it.
It might be a part of their marketing strategy to create artificial demand. So this +1 feature of Google is a Facebook killer or just another Wavebuzz? Well, perusing through the features it appears it has cleverly incorporated all the salient futures of the most popular social networking sites. +1 for Like, Share for RT, Geotagging for Foursquare and more importantly –Stupid Apps and +Privacy Settings. With clean GUI, well structured, neatly planned G+ is definitely not a half-baked cake from the Amphitheatre Parkway like the previous issues of Knol, Video player, Page creator and other several few. It’s indeed inarguable that people are getting annoyed with recent Facebook developments like Q&A, identity theft, unverified third party apps, auto face recognition and myriad ville, mafia games updates on the timeline. Not long ago Facebook came with project Titan, a so called Gmail killer. The world dumped it straightaway. After all we know where Facebook emerged from. Hot or not? It’s not.
With the given context, +1 is a stupendous discovery which the future decade circle is going to hang out with. Not only a one stop, one place solution and a All-social killer but this also increases the search relevancy. Interestingly as I write this, Mark Zuckerburg is the most circled person on G+ with more than 44K+ people. Larry page is with +30K and Sergy Brin with +23K people. That says some story. Will Mark be able to come of this circle? And a close friend of mine just pinging “ G+ is definitely not a Facebook killer”. I am yet to reply back. Ironically just few days back I happened to read my 5 year old UG college slambook at home. His message read, “ We can always be friends, as there is Orkut”.
It might be a part of their marketing strategy to create artificial demand. So this +1 feature of Google is a Facebook killer or just another Wavebuzz? Well, perusing through the features it appears it has cleverly incorporated all the salient futures of the most popular social networking sites. +1 for Like, Share for RT, Geotagging for Foursquare and more importantly –Stupid Apps and +Privacy Settings. With clean GUI, well structured, neatly planned G+ is definitely not a half-baked cake from the Amphitheatre Parkway like the previous issues of Knol, Video player, Page creator and other several few. It’s indeed inarguable that people are getting annoyed with recent Facebook developments like Q&A, identity theft, unverified third party apps, auto face recognition and myriad ville, mafia games updates on the timeline. Not long ago Facebook came with project Titan, a so called Gmail killer. The world dumped it straightaway. After all we know where Facebook emerged from. Hot or not? It’s not.
With the given context, +1 is a stupendous discovery which the future decade circle is going to hang out with. Not only a one stop, one place solution and a All-social killer but this also increases the search relevancy. Interestingly as I write this, Mark Zuckerburg is the most circled person on G+ with more than 44K+ people. Larry page is with +30K and Sergy Brin with +23K people. That says some story. Will Mark be able to come of this circle? And a close friend of mine just pinging “ G+ is definitely not a Facebook killer”. I am yet to reply back. Ironically just few days back I happened to read my 5 year old UG college slambook at home. His message read, “ We can always be friends, as there is Orkut”.
Counterview
Jayant Rana|
IIFT, Kolkata
IIFT, Kolkata
Internet forums are abuzz with astonishment on the revelation by Social Statistics that the most popular person on Google Plus is actually Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook! And that comes at a time when Plus has carefully kept the access to only a select few for trial purposes.
These are interesting times we live in when an Internet giant has been forced to rethink and reinvent its business strategies, more than once, because of a perceived threat from a Harvard dropout. Nevertheless, Google’s every attempt at social media so far has been a no show, be it Orkut, Wave or Buzz, due mainly to concerns regarding privacy and data security. Facebook, on the other hand, has done a wonderful job of making people think of it as synonymous to social media. An entire 360o effort, Facebook touches the social lives of people at almost all points-of-contact to the extent that checking their FB account is the day’s first activity for an increasingly number of people. And Google Plus doesn’t really give any compelling reason to switch to it from Facebook. Apart from the Circles concept, the Huddle, etc. there really isn’t much to Plus that catches the eye, and that capability too isn’t something that Facebook would take long to incorporate in some way or the other to the innumerable features in its repertoire.
Even though the early adopters took to it with maddening swiftness, there are lessons to be learnt from other similar failures of FriendFeed, Quora, and Google’s own Buzz! Far from being a Facebook killer, Plus appears as Google’s another desperate attempt at social media, even as its own privacy policy is confusing and it leaves much more to be desired on the features front.
These are interesting times we live in when an Internet giant has been forced to rethink and reinvent its business strategies, more than once, because of a perceived threat from a Harvard dropout. Nevertheless, Google’s every attempt at social media so far has been a no show, be it Orkut, Wave or Buzz, due mainly to concerns regarding privacy and data security. Facebook, on the other hand, has done a wonderful job of making people think of it as synonymous to social media. An entire 360o effort, Facebook touches the social lives of people at almost all points-of-contact to the extent that checking their FB account is the day’s first activity for an increasingly number of people. And Google Plus doesn’t really give any compelling reason to switch to it from Facebook. Apart from the Circles concept, the Huddle, etc. there really isn’t much to Plus that catches the eye, and that capability too isn’t something that Facebook would take long to incorporate in some way or the other to the innumerable features in its repertoire.
Even though the early adopters took to it with maddening swiftness, there are lessons to be learnt from other similar failures of FriendFeed, Quora, and Google’s own Buzz! Far from being a Facebook killer, Plus appears as Google’s another desperate attempt at social media, even as its own privacy policy is confusing and it leaves much more to be desired on the features front.
1 comment:
Just saw this...thanks for posting this here guys! Was great participating in the contest. Keep it up :)
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