Over the past ten years we have seen a number of social networking websites rise and fall. In 2005 Hi5.com was the number one social networking website accessed from Jamaica while in North America MySpace.com was number one. During that period another social networking website called Facebook was being launched. Facebook’s user growth was not as fast in the US as it was in the rest of the world. However, by 2008 Facebook became the number one social media site accessed from Jamaica and the same feat was repeated a year later in the US.

Today Facebook.com is the top overall site accessed from Jamaica, knocking Google.com from that position for over a year now. According to www.alexa.com, a website ranking site, Google.com is still the top site accessed from the US, followed by Facebook.com. Google has definitely been watching the rapid growth of this social networking site and has been working on a solution to counter this threat. The solution is called Google+. MySpace learned from the mistakes of Friendster and was the top social networking site for a while. Facebook similarly learned from MySpace and leaped to the top. Will Google learn from Facebook and rise to the top with Google+?

The Google+ Project is currently in a limited field trial period. You can sign up at plus.google.com to be notified when the site goes live. To join now you would need a current Google+ member to send you an invitation. The first thing you will notice when you login is that it looks like a cleaner version of Facebook. It also has a “+1” feature which is similar to Facebook’s “Like” feature but there are some major differences. As the two giants poise to battle it out in the social networking arena, let’s see how they compare.

Privacy

Have you ever shared way more than you intended to on Facebook? Persons have lost their jobs because of what they shared on Facebook. This is because segmenting your friends on Facebook and sharing content accordingly is not the easiest thing to do. Google+ intends to capitalize on this Facebook weakness with its feature called Circles. As you add persons in Google+ you must decide up front which “circle” they belong to, such as Friends, Family, Acquaintances or any other circle you want to create. You can put people in multiple circles. You can also choose to simply follow people by placing them in your Follow circle. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder, is on Google+ and is so far the most followed person, even though he has yet to make a post.

You will have to be careful of photos you upload and make public on other Google sites such as www.picasa.google.com. It has been reported that Google+ will automatically find and link those photos to your profile if you were tagged in them. When you share content you must specify which circles you intend to share with. Of course you can limit what you share within Facebook but it’s much easier and more intuitive to do so in Google+.

Real Time Communication

Google+ has introduced a feature called Hangout. This feature allows you to conduct a video chat session with up to ten persons. When you start the session you can specify which circle of persons will be able to join the hangout. Selected persons can choose to join until the session is full. You can currently participate in group chats within Facebook but with the use of third party apps. Since the launch of Google+, there have been some changes in Facebook as it relates to having a native video chat feature. As a result of their partnership with Skype, Facebook will soon be launching a video chat service. We will have to wait to see if it will include group video chat, as this feature is currently a paid service in Skype.

Google+ also provides a chat service but unlike Facebook you must invite someone and they must accept before you can begin chatting. Persons who were already a part of your chat groups in other Google products will be automatically added. The smartphone app for this service is called Huddle. Huddle has an additional feature that allows you to chat with many persons at once. Notably, the app was initially released for Android smartphones only and later iPhone smartphones but none for Blackberry. Google has provided a mobile website version of Google+ for Blackberry and other smartphones.

Advertising and Business

Facebook has improved their offerings for business users moving from a time when you had to specify the gender of your company to a much more customizable Fan page. Google+, on the other hand, is yet to release any business related features. In fact, they have specifically asked users not to create business profiles in Google+ as yet. Instead, users should await the launch of Google+ For Business scheduled to be released by this year end. Businesses can currently advertise in Facebook using the Pay Per Click model. Google+ currently does not display advertising; this may be because there are not many persons to advertise to as yet.

Search

Facebook currently lacks a proper search feature. Google+ has attempted to address this issue with its section called Sparks. Sparks allows you to search for topics of interest within Google+ and add them to your profile for quick future reference. I did a comparison of the search results from Sparks, Google Web and Google News to see the difference. I found that Sparks matched neither but was much closer to the results of Google News than Google Web. If this feature becomes popular, Sparks may eventually develop into another spot where website owners are jockeying for position.

Omitted

The Google+ Project is a work in progress hence we would expect to find some snags. Two of the ones I found are outlined below.

The equivalent of Facebook’s Wall in Google+ is called the Stream. You can easily select to see all Streams or only a particular Circle of persons’ Stream. The problem I have found is that the Streams are sorted by popularity by default. This means the posts at the top of your Stream will not necessarily be the most recent but the most popular.

Facebook users are accustomed to playing games and using other applications within its network. Third party developers create the majority of the Facebook applications. There are currently no applications in Google+ and no way to add any. Google has announced that it will open up their platform to developers in the very near future.

Conclusion

These are not the only factors that will affect persons’ decision to switch from Facebook to Google+. The willingness of people to leave a familiar and established network is another major factor. It has happened before and can happen again. The appeal of a more user-friendly and feature rich environment was enough to encourage persons to switch from MySpace to Facebook. Google+’s current 18 million users is a far cry from Facebook’s 750 million users but will there be déjà vu? This is surely not Google’s first crack at a social networking presence. Google Lively and Google Wave are two examples of their failed attempts but will this attempt be their winner? Whatever the result, the big winner of the social networking battle will definitely be you.