Can Google+ Challenge Facebook's Dominance?

As quietly as they could, Google tossed their hat into the social networking ring with Google+ on June 28 with a limited amount of invites to tech bloggers all around the globe. Word quickly spread of the new platform and by mid-day on June 29, there were thousands of news outlets and blogs buzzing (no pun intended) about the infant network. The lucky few who were allowed in received invites to hand out and so on and so forth until Google was forced to pull the invite system because of what Google CEO Larry Page described as "insane demand." Fortunately for geeks like myself, this didn't keep people out for long. Someone, somewhere found a simple workaround and I was in.

Some people may recall Google releasing a couple of projects in the past called Buzz and Wave. It has been suggested that these were failed attempts at social networking (Twitter/Facebook) when that couldn't be further from the truth. Buzz is/was a location based blogging tool. In a sense it was a shot at Twitter, but it was more aimed at Foursquare than anything else. Small potatoes. Wave was a shot at no one. The main goal of Wave was to be a enterprise level collaboration tool. It was an extremely innovative idea, which in my opinion was before its time. Buzz is still used by some and is expected to be rolled into Google+ at some point. The Wave project was abandoned, but given how much time and money was spent on it and how innovative it was I have no doubt that many aspects of it can and will be rolled into Google+.

Upon first glance there is absolutely no denying that Google+ was inspired by Facebook. The 3-column layout of Facebook is now as recognizable as McDonald's golden arches or the KFC bucket. You can view updates from your contacts in a "stream" which is the centerpiece of the platform, a chat feature is modeled after Gmail's popular G-Chat and mildly resembles the chat that is used in Facebook.

Where Google's Google+ is majorly different is in how you manage your contacts. Upon signing up your, Gmail contacts are imported and you are asked to assign them to specific "circles" and you can share specific posts to your stream with specific circles. The idea being you may not want to share a picture of yourself partying with everyone you have as a contact. Maybe only your friends, or maybe only your "drinking buddies" if you decide to create that circle. Certainly you wouldn't share that with your boss or your sweet grandmother. If you work in a specific industry you may want to share information or news articles with colleagues, but those articles would be of no interest to Pastor Jones or your drinking buddies. Contacts can exist in more than one circle though, so if Pastor Jones and Sweet Grandmother are your drinking buddies, well, then they won't be left out when you post a video of yourself doing shots.

There are a couple of other features included in the initial release of Google+. The more useful one being something called "sparks," which could also be called "interests." It's basically a search tool that shows you relevant and up-to-date blogs, news articles, videos, etc that you can share in your stream. It's a way to "spark" conversation with people you decide to share with. The less useful feature is called "hangout." In short, it's a group video chat feature. I can't see myself using it much, but who knows. There are people I haven't seen in a long time that I'd love to chat face to face with and this could encourage that.

All in all, I can see myself using Google+ as much if not more than Facebook as long as it is received well. It is slicker, faster and more intuitive than Facebook and the privacy settings are not convoluted and confusing. I'd like to eventually see things like Google Calendar (to create events ala Facebook), Google Reader, Buzz and even Gmail somehow rolled into it. The potential seems pretty great with this and I urge everyone to try it out and give it a shot. Only time will tell if it will succeed.