Google+

It's that time of year when a multi-billion dollar information technology company makes its annual foray into the mysterious world of social networking. Last year we watched Apple's musically-oriented Ping never quite get off the ground, and at various times over the years we've had MySpace try to reinvent itself and Microsoft promise that they've got a social networking revolution in the pipeline. Google has tried once before to enter the social networking arena with their ill-fated Buzz platform, but this time has vowed not to make the same mistakes and is attempting to really shake things up with Google+.

‘Thank God,’ I hear you say, ‘that somebody has finally realised that what the world needs is a huge integrated online network which allows me to share things with my friends.’ Although their idea isn’t exactly revolutionary, Google needs to break into the social networking scene because, as Facebook has demonstrated, there is a huge market for advertising when people voluntarily give up information such as where they live, where they like to travel and what they like to eat, watch, read and listen to. Advertising revenue is the oil which greases the Google cogs, and if they could tap in to even half of Facebook’s vast membership then it's mission accomplished and caviar baths for all.

First things first: the name. I can't decide if I love it or hate it. I think the main problem I have with 'Google+' is its dullness coupled with its ambiguity. Facebook is a great name because it escapes ambiguity by being essentially what it promotes itself to be: an extension of a physical college facebook (never mind the fact that most of the world outside North America probably had no idea what a 'facebook' was pre-2005; FB’s popularity in the US was so well established that it didn't matter anymore).  MySpace is another example of a solid name which pretty quickly tells you what you have in store. Twitter also escapes name criticism because although the name is ambiguous it is interesting enough to contemplate. 

Conversely, 'Google+' looks like the name of 1970s Soviet software that was specifically programmed to sort and rank south-Ukranian wheat stocks. The name doesn't really offer you anything exciting. ‘Google’ may well have been an intriguing word that garnered interest in 1998 but the company has been so successful that it is blasé now.  The 'Plus' tells you precisely nothing about what the product is or does, except for a vague notion that it may enhance your life (or your wheat inventory). The thing it has going for it is the fact that it clearly tells you that it’s a Google initiative, and Google is a good, strong brand. And, granted, it is marginally better than ‘Buzz’, which perhaps started the 2010 trend of giving social networking start-ups moronic monosyllabic monikers.

Let's skip past the rigours of getting an invite* (which is becoming easier by the day) and take a look around. Looks eerily familiar, doesn’t it? The page layout is, rather unimaginatively, essentially a Facebook clone:

Click for larger image

Can you blame them? Why not try and emulate a service that has a quarter of a billion regular users? Using a Facebook style layout means that people are already familiar with the system and can dive right into using Plus. For example, the ‘Like’ button has become the ‘+1’ button, so whenever you see something that appeals to you, you can hit the +1 and declare your approval publicly. 

But why design a social network clone of Facebook if you want people to move from FB onto your service? It gives people no incentive to make the switch, because all you get is Facebook with Google’s logo plastered all over it. The argument that you have to stick with something that people are familiar to doesn’t necessarily hold up either, as when FB started getting big it looked markedly different from MySpace profiles, which was its biggest competitor at the time. Budgetary issues surely wouldn’t have been a big concern for Google; perhaps they could have paid their programmers to come up with something a bit more revolutionary. However, Plus can’t be faulted in terms of usability, every action is fairly intuitive and there are quite a few keyboard shortcuts which can be mastered to save time.

 

One of the first things I noticed about Plus when filling out your profile information was that Google lets you update the privacy settings for each piece of information that you edit. This makes it really easy to quickly set up a level of profile privacy that you’re happy with, without having to venture to a ‘Privacy’ tab and try and work out which setting will affect which piece of info. This is not to say that Google’s privacy ‘settings’ are actually any better or more secure than Facebook (which are quite comprehensive, once you find them) but they are much more user friendly.

  

Circles

Plus’s big selling point is its ‘Circles’ feature, in which you can separate your friends into groups which reflect real life networks. No longer do you have to fear your boss or your mother getting hold of that photo of you riding a tricycle through the zoo in the nude after a night on the turps, because with Circles you can be choosy about who you share certain things with. Furthermore, it provides you with an opportunity to ‘Follow’ certain people without them needing to add you to a Circle, which makes Plus a hybrid between Twitter and Facebook. Circles brings us closer to needing only one networking account that you can use for both business and social contacts. 

The concept is not quite as revolutionary as Google would like to have you believe, for similar features exist on Twitter and Facebook (‘Lists’) and the smaller social networking experiment Diaspora, whose ‘Aspects’ feature seems to work in the same way as Circles does.  Although Plus isn’t the first social network to provide a contact sorting feature, Circles appears to be the best attempt at it so far. I tried to organise my Twitter followers into lists the other day and died of boredom after adding four contacts. On Twitter it takes at least three clicks just to add someone to a list. Plus lets you add somebody to a Circle in one.

Hangouts

One feature I haven’t had much time to test is the Hangout feature, which lets you connect via webcam with a group of up to 10 people. I’m unsure if this will be a big drawing card to the service. One of the advantages of social networking meant that you could interact with your friends without having to get out of your pyjamas or shave or wear pants. As soon as you bring a webcam into the mix, normal social rules apply. While I’m sure some people will make the most of Hangouts (travelling family members, business meetings) I can’t imagine it becoming used as regularly as simple online chat. Now watch as I’m proven wrong and a social networking revolution occurs in which everybody starts interacting via vidphone as promised in every sci-fi book and film created from 1948 to 1994.

  

Sparks

The other feature worth noting on Plus is the ‘Sparks’ feed, which lets you subscribe to a news feed (provided by Google search) of things you’re interested in. For example, I made a Sparks page on the Space Shuttle, and so whenever I visit that page I get up to date news, pictures and videos about the final Space Shuttle flight. It’s kind of handy, but anything more obscure than ‘Space Shuttle’ or ‘White House’ tends to return a pretty eclectic collection of ‘news’. I tried Sparks with the Melbourne Football Club and got a variety of out of date news and a bunch of articles that mention the MFC in passing. No doubt Sparks is something that will improve once the field trials are completed but if Google really wanted to impress people it should have made this feature a bit more intuitive.

So, aside from worldwide social domination and filling their coffers to the brim, what are Google trying to achieve with Plus? Here’s what they claim:

‘The Google+ Project makes sharing on the web more like sharing in the real world.’

Google have taken an interesting focus with Plus. Whereas Facebook has historically been based on connecting with people, Google have identified sharing information as being the most critical feature of social networking. Plus is geared towards the dissemination of information: the status box asks you to ‘Share what’s new’, as opposed to FB’s ‘What’s on your mind?’ The focus on sharing equates to Google trying to design a product which incorporates the features of other sites like Twitter and Digg with social sites like Facebook and MySpace. Google’s ultimate aim is for Plus to become your networking hub, whether it is professional or social. As in the real world, you’re probably not going to ‘share’ photos of your weekend away with your boss, just like you wouldn’t share last month’s data entry reports with your loved ones. The Circles feature means that this is now possible, and in this regard Google certainly have made it easier to share information between different parties as it would occur in the ‘real world.’ 

Whether or not people will find the service useful enough to abandon Facebook and Twitter is another matter, and the only way I can see Plus being truly successful is if they become the only social networking site that people use. Facebook and Twitter are different enough that people will quite happily use both, but I find it hard to imagine someone using Facebook, Twitter and Plus regularly. One of them would have to give, and history suggests it will be the new kid on the block.

The problem with Plus is that it is evolutionary rather than revolutionary. There is nothing different or useful enough on Plus to entice people away from their established presence on Facebook and Twitter. Google’s attempt to create a networking hybrid seems to have come up with an acceptable half-breed that lets you do some nifty – but ultimately pointless – things.

Of course, if we’re honest, that's essentially the whole concept behind social networking anyway.

*Thanks to Kim, who sent me my Plus invite.