Till Google + happened, Google has almost tried everything to make a strong presence in the social networking scenario but was always out of luck. But this time, it looks like the search giant has come out with something big. Google+ seems to be very promising. There are features which certainly are attractive and have generated quite a lot of interest among users. Let us take a look at the factors which can make Google winner this time.
Strategy
Google has launched the product with quite a strategy. A sudden release was quite unprecedented. The invitation-hype has left an air of surprise and talks among the users. You might be surprised to know that Google+ invites were being sold for up to $75 on e-Bay after Google temporarily disabled Google + invitations to your friends. But there is a way around, you can ask your friends who are already on Google + to send you an invite, here is a tip.
Features and functionality
Everything in Google+ seems to be so new and fresh. This is a plus point for the Facebook users who feel bored of using same thing again and again (that includes me too). People really are looking for some changes and here they are. The features really have lot of potential in them.
- Circle – A nice way of organizing friends altogether in a group that you wish to. Users can specify which group of friends can see each piece of content – status updates, shared photos etc. UI for all of this is simple and intuitive.
- The top toolbar – Now this is quite interesting. You can easily navigate to any other Google service from the Google+ itself. The same toolbar exists over every other Google service.
- Sparks – Much like StumbleUpon, here you can recommend to your friends some interesting and appealing pages across the web. Here is Digitizor on Sparks. Add us now :-).
- Hangout – This one is quite appealing and very unique feature. Multiple video chat inside a browser at a time and what else do you want. So, get in the cafe and hangout with your friends. That’s how Google wants you to get social and you can not get more social than this.
- Tagging – It provides a better tagging facility. Once you tag friends in any of your pics, they will automatically get tagged in the upcoming uploads. So, no again and again tagging required.
Large number of Google users
Google has a huge user-base all over the globe (over a billion) who use it’s free services daily. Google+ is all about putting these services on a same platform. So, that may help Google see a large number of people using Google+. Currently, a lot of people seem to be rushing to Google+ to check it out.
Others
There are many other things which might help Google+ become an instant hit. Google has already come up with an awesome Android app for this service (available in Android market) and an iOS app will soon be available too. So, it does not want to let go the mobile users who access web from their phones.
Google is also launching some games within the system and this was revealed by some commented code snippets in the source code of Google+. So, very soon you might be visiting Google+ for playing some games. This can help encourage developers to develop games and services.
Finally
Shimrit Ben-Yair, the product manager at Google and in charge of the social graph says –
With Facebook I have 500 friends — my mom’s my friend, my boss is my friend. So when I share on Facebook, I overshare. On Twitter, I undershare, because it’s public. If Google hits that spot in the middle, we can revolutionize social interaction.
After many futile attempts, Google has exactly gone social this time. People who are using Google+ seem to be impressed by the features. But it would be quite early to say that it is a Facebook killer. Google Wave had also many cool features but went dead quickly. We will have to wait for some time and see the if the initial reactions of users change or remain same as time passes by.
Well, here’s me on Google+, come join the conversation!