Google vs Facebook-my opinion

SOCIAL NETWORKING:

A social networking service is a platform to build social networks or social relations among people who, for example, share interests, activities, backgrounds, or real-life connections. A social network service consists of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. Google plus, Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn etc. are some of the most popular social networking sites.


SELECTING NETWORK THAT WORKS FOR YOU:          To spend our social networking time efficiently we must look for certain features. People use these sites for different purposes. Some use it to learn new things, some use it to interact with their friends and families and some use it for their business activities. Before selecting a networking site we need to look at the following things:

1.  Number of people (friends, clients, relatives etc.) who are already the users of the site.Positive word-of-mouth mentions


2. Positive press mentions


3. Future perspectives (increase in the number of followers)


4. other aspects that suit our purpose


5. Various features available for its users
   

• Hangouts


• Circles


•  search value


• features for photos


• business applications


• Mobile applications etc.

My preference:

          I spend most of my networking time searching for new things or reading the blogs, so I prefer Google plus over Facebook.

         In brief this is the main difference between Google plus and Facebook:

 Facebook focuses on connecting you with your existing friends and your relationships with them  Google Plus helps you build new connections, find interesting people and discover content that can surprise and delight you That’s not to say that Facebook can’t help you discover new things, or that Google Plus can’t help you stay in touch with your current friends, far from it. Google Plus is simply setup to let you define exactly what you want to see and from who, whilst also highlighting some of the best people, content and thinking so you can expand your interests and horizons. Google+ is a great platform for those looking to break away from their current social networks. I believe that Google+ has a few different spaces that it could thrive:

A LinkedIn/Facebook Hybrid for Professionals: - I can see Google+ acting as a vehicle for like-minded professionals to communicate freely, utilize hangouts and share information. The circles feature would make categorization easy for professionals. The ability to follow others on Google+ is more effective than a Twitter or Facebook list.

 An Internal Company Intranet:-While this is no way what Google intended for Google+, the entire time that I was playing with the service I was thinking how phenomenal this would be as an addition to Google Apps for large corporations. The different circles would be perfect for different departments and video chat would be great for the growing working from home community

ADVANTAGES OF G+:

On 28th June, 2011 Google rolled out the beta version of its highly anticipated social networking site, Google Plus. It is no secret that Google has long been wanting to get a slice of the social networking market. Simply put, Google Plus has integrated many of the best features from our favorite social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, in one convenient package. The following are some of the features of that made Google plus my favorite social networking site:

Circles:

You use circles to share specific things with specific people. You may not want your customers seeing the same things you post to a networking group. You can have a coworker's circle where you only share things with those you team up with or work with. This makes it a little easier to keep your business life and your personal life separate. You can do this with Facebook, but you'll need to create those groups as list. This can be somewhat cumbersome, but it's a nice work around

Video Chat (Hangouts)

One feature that Google+ offers that I think is awesome from a business perspective is video chats. You can have up to 10 people join you for a video chat, they call these hangouts. It's a great way to do a Q&A or even do a product demonstration. I love the idea what could you do with video chat? Think of the opportunities, I think by doing so you will see what a big deal this is.

Group Chat (Huddle) Using Facebook you can chat with one other person, but you cannot create a group chat. It's nice to have the option in case you wanted to pull colleagues together to discuss a client or you could also use this as a Q&A without the video option. Lots of opportunities are here as well. No ads: one of the things that I find annoying in Facebook is all the ads and promoted content, how does Google Plus deal with that?It doesn’t, because it doesn’t need to. Google Plus doesn’t have paid advertising or promoted posts. The interface is actually pretty clean and uncluttered, meaning it’s easier to focus on the content and not have all of the different screen real-estate trying to grab your attention.

Sparks:

sparks is one of my favorite features of Google+, you can not only share content with your users, but users that have created sparks that correlate with what you share can see that information. Sparks is a recommendation engine that Google has put together for Google+ users. Users can find information based on their interest easily.

Streams Tired of all the clutter and noise? Tweak your Google+ streams to view them just like you want to see them. Select what circles you want to see in your stream and you are set.

Search Value The research is limited, but we are already seeing bumps in traffic in search marketing when it comes to Google Plus. Using Google Plus and tying it to your Google Profile you will start to see some rapid spike in search traffic. Many are seeing early indications that being active on Google+ will help with the visibility of your company and website.

Mobile The highlight does include: the location based options tie directly into Latitude, the photo functionality works seamlessly, and that huddles were great for communication.

Integration One of the main features of Google+ is the ability to tie multiple Google products to one location. Google+ ties in seamlessly with Latitude, chat, +1, Chrome, Google Profiles, new Google page designs, Google One Bar, Gmail and Android.

Mute When a user adds a comment to a + post you have commented on, it is brought back to the top of your stream. However, Google gives you the option of ‘muting’ a conversation if you don’t want to view it any longer. This is a great feature, even though when I muted a conversation on Google+, it did not stop Google from sending me status updates via email for every additional comment.

Gmail Notifications Notifications can be some of the most annoying and confusing elements of social sites, but if you are using Google+ and Gmail, it won’t be. Profile pictures are seamlessly tied in and you almost feel you are on a website instead of in your inbox.

Google Rankings for Your Profile And finally, probably the most exciting (and most speculated about) feature of Google Plus is the way your Google profile will quickly climb the search engine rankings. Use your keywords in your profile and get ranked in Google.

Latest photo features: The most compelling new attraction is a new photo-management tool that promises to test how much control people want to cede to computers. It will also further blur the lines between a real moment in time and augmented reality. The feature will pick out the best shots from a wide assortment of photos. Google computers will recognize the best photos featuring family members or close friends of a person who uploads a bunch of pictures to Plus. Computer-controlled editing tools will automatically remove red eyes, soften skin tones, sharpen colors and adjust contrast. Google offers something similar through an "I'm Feeling Lucky" button on Picasa. To accommodate the increased volume, Google Plus will now provide each account holder with up to 15 gigabytes of storage for full-resolution photos. When I first logged into Google+ I was a bit underwhelmed, but the more I used and explored the site, the more I liked it. What may really make-or-break the success of Google+ is how fast they can roll out to the public and if they can make the service appear less daunting to the average user. All in all, this is the best social product put out by Google to date, but probably not enough to convert existing social users away from their current service. I am pretty sure that Google will add many other features and also find a way to make it less easy to use.