Google Plus one

The recent arrival of Google Plus into the internet market has sparked a new competition with the reigning social website Facebook. Given the domination of Facebook in recent years, such a move by Google may seem surprising at first, but the reasons behind Google Plus stem from seeing an opening in the social media that Facebook has yet to take advantage of and thus gaining a large audience for themselves.

Google Plus does offer several features that Facebook doesn’t or perhaps doesn’t do as well. What follows are a few of the upgrades that Google Plus has made over Facebook, which may explain why they are entering this social media market.

Easier Set Up: Facebook is rather clunky to sign up and find out about all the features. This is not too surprising since this website has been around a few years and new features are layered on top of old ones. Big changes are usually met with resistance, so Facebook has pretty much remained the same platform. Google Plus has streamlined the sign up process and includes a nifty video tour of the entire site that can train you on how to use all their features.

Faster Uploads: One definite advantage of Google Plus is the faster uploads of photos and videos to the system from your desktop, laptop or phone. The options are who you want to share these uploads with and it is definitely faster.

Less Complicated Privacy Functions: Facebook’s privacy functions are somewhat complicated for the average internet user. Google Plus is somewhat more straightforward and allows you to separate friends, family, business associates, and whatever other groups you want into “circles”. You can still access all of those who subscribe to Google Plus, but now the stories you share with your drinking buddies does not have to be seen by your family.

Faster Chatting: The chat rooms in Facebook are good, but they can be somewhat irritating as they are a little slow to upload and if others join into the chat you may be wearing your thumbs out trying to “talk” with different people at the same time. Google Plus offers a chat room called “Huddle” where you can pick a single person to chat with and have no interruptions.

Virtual Meetings: With Facebook, conversations are open to all of your friends, somewhat like the old “party line” when different people used the same phone line. In Google Plus, a feature known as “hangouts” allows you to carry on a private conversation with a particular person without being interrupted by posts from others.

Personal Interests: We’ve seen all the games on Facebook that people play and want to share, but on Google Plus, they have a feature known as “Sparks” which acts like an entertainment director. If you are bored, you can simply type what you are interested in and “Sparks” will bring you a selection of items related to your interest.

Overall, Google Plus seeks to establish its own niche in the vast social media market that Facebook has claimed as its own. By their seemingly late entry, Google Plus has addressed some of the more annoying issues that Facebook has and given the popularity of their search engine, may attract a large audience of their own as well.