Google+ V Facebook
Google’s new social networking product, Google+ has been released in ‘limited’ beta mode where only a handful of people (ie prob a couple hundreds of thousands of people) got an invite. I did put my email in the signup area but didn’t get an invite.
Google’s Vice President of Social, Vic Gundotra has come out and said the beta trial will no longer be accepting invites due to overwhelming interest. 
Ok fair enough, same thing kind of thing happened with Google Wave and Buzz didn’t it.
Only recently Google launched their Google +1 button, to obviously compete with Facebook’s Like Button. As a webmaster I willingly implemented the button on my site, especially as I talk about Social Media News, it’s kinda in an area of interest to me.
I have enormous respect for Google and the Google staff (and anyone that creates a wildly successful scalable business), but this proposition of them making their own social network could be ruffling the feathers maybe a little too much. It’s war!
As Australian’s we are a social bunch, getting out on the weekend, sunny weather, beers at the pub, beach, BBQs, seeing the family, messy drunken nights at the club etc. We like to get out and about and be social – and we are some of the highest users of Facebook in the world – all because of our social nature I believe.
I actually have even more respect and admiration for Mark Zuckerberg and what he has done with Facebook. Sure a lot of people just say “Mark Zuckerberg was in the right place at the right time” – well fine, so was Bill Gates, so were the Google guys etc. You could say the same about anyone who creates a hugely successful business.
Let me get back to my point about our social life in Australia, basically everyone I know – family and friends are on Facebook. This has been engrained into our everyday social interaction. We are becoming Facebook addicts. Every big business is on Facebook, TV adverts often incorporate a link to the brands Facebook page, bus stops, magazines, newspapers – I could go on and on. The reason of Facebook’s success I believe is because they were the first to make an attractive social platform and we have had years to get used to it. Facebook does update the system but it’s always very user-friendly and I believe the interface is attractive.
I work in the Web/ IT/ Recruitment/ HR/ Finance/ Sales/ Social Media world in my day to day work (Yes I do a lot :)), but reality is most people I know are not all that web savvy (only a small % would be).
For the 90% of people who are not all that web savvy and have built their whole network on Facebook and are happy to use it, understand the functionality and technology – will they want to change to the new Google+ Social Network?
Thinking from my social circle, everyone is happy with Facebook. These people are not interested in the tech world, at all. Even when Facebook had these ‘privacy issues’ did anyone I know actually care? No.
Did I care? No.
I think the only people who cared were people engulfed in the digital world, privacy advocates, tech reporters, competitors and so on. How many people actually had their private information exposed in a way that it impacted their life?
