All Channels
1200°

Goodbye Facebook, Hello Google+

Cody from FroogleGeek wrote:

"I am sure by now many of you have already read about Google’s next attempt at stealing some of the social networking pie away from Facebook. For those of you who were not aware, Google has created yet another social network dubbed Google+ which is very awkward to end a sentence on. The only thing is that this time I will stop using Facebook and move over to Google+ when I get my invite. This is something I’ve never done before, I didn’t try Google Buzz and I’ve never been a part of Orkut. In fact for a while I ditched the dream of wanting to work at Google and hoped to one day work at Facebook. However over the past couple of months my feelings about Facebook as a company have changed and I just wanted to create this article giving my reasons for leaving Facebook once I can use Google+."

Read Full Story >>
frooglegeek.com
snoop_dizzle4739d ago

I feel like a good intellectual discussion. At least a somewhat centralized one since there are a ton of articles on it, lol.

I think I have to respectfully disagree with some of your article. I agree in that Google + looks promising, especially broadcasting to certain groups of people is what really appeals to me (Although, I sort of do this already with some private Facebook groups I'm involved in). But I'm not sure I share the same sentiments as you. I can agree with you in that Google + will be excellent, but I'm not sure I would drop Facebook simply because of that. Especially since a lot of people I know wouldn't likely join, at least for a very long time. I maintain that this will likely remain a niche product for a while, but I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing.

The article seem to be under the assumption that Facebook will stay stagnate and won't add features in the near future. Unless you are saying that given Facebook's speed in the past to add features is fairly slow is a disadvantage for them. In that case, I'd agree with you, aside from the fact that for a while Facebook hasn't really had a competitor really be able to take them on.

If Facebook ever found Google a threat in the future, I'm sure they would come up with competitive features. So perhaps it would be best to judge them again in about a year or so. Even so, implementation of similar features might not be so hard. As an example, you can already tweak who sees an individual status. While at this point it is a little convoluted, you can have your status appear to only certain friends and/or networks. They just need a way to make it simple. Like the example you made about talking about college parties and all, you can have a status appear to only your network of people.

The good thing about Google + is that they seemed to have successfully made it simple to do.

snoop_dizzle4739d ago (Edited 4739d ago )

...But a few things stood out to me in your article:

-When you say this shows how bad Facebook is, do you mean its implementation and/or feature set ? If you mean by features, wouldn't this simply a natural evolution? If we were to judge Google on past attempts, we could say pretty bad things about their attempts as well.

- The issue of privacy would seem to be a problem with Google as well, and would likely make many hesitant to join. People are worried enough about Facebook. Google, in this case seems to be more of the same. I still foresee privacy issues, as Google has a similar history with signing people up that were oblivious to it. As for convoluted settings on Facebook, though, I would agree, and I'm sure Google + will be far more easier to tweak in this regard.

-Given the way Facebook has taken off (even with older generations, which is particularly interesting, culturally speaking. Even the usage of Facebook in other countries, for that matter.), how would you see the transition go about? That's not to say it won't happen, but would Facebook really flop or simply Google + become a strong competitor in a few years? If these are really one of the few massive social networks in a few years, I don't necessarily see one killing the other.

I am very optimistic of Google + though. I would really like to see where they go with this. I could potentially foresee Google making a solid answer to making music social, especially now that Google launched music beta. An area that aside from a few companies creating something solid like Microsoft with their Zune service and Last.fm (albeit a very niche service), has been very iffy territory.

codyodiodi4739d ago

I dislike Facebook because they are under the assumption that I want to share everything with everyone from the day I sign up. I also dislike Facebook because they make it next to impossible to delete your account (go ahead try to find the delete button without searching for it on Google.) The CEO is well known for not caring about security, there was an article about how he hacked into email accounts of people who used Facebook back in 2004.

Personally I think all Facebook has going for it are the 700 million + members. Other than that it's not impressive considering how many people they have working at Facebook and how little the network has evolved since MySpace is no longer a threat. To me Facebook is just another website that is big for a while and it's going to die because unfortunately for them Google is now focusing their attention on the social side of things. Google+ likely is not going away in those regards.

Then you have all of the applications that Google has that will likely be linked with Google+. I just don't see how this could fail, even initial reports from places are saying it's awesome and works well.

I wanted to end with "could Facebook flop?" My response is look at MySpace, it was bought for $580M and was said to be worth $1.5B and today it was sold for $35M. MySpace was only in the spotlight for a few years (2005 - 2007 IMO) so yes a single website with a single service can flop easily.

snoop_dizzle4739d ago (Edited 4739d ago )

But a lot of issues Facebook has when it comes to privacy is in many ways the same with Google. They both have some pretty controversial histories with personal information, unfortunately. That's why it perplexes me a bit going to Google in the hope of having more "private" information, lol. In that case if I were worried, I would likely avoid both.

Point is, Facebook has gotten to a point that it is so ingrained in our culture and services that for it to die off, there would need to be some serious things occurring. Even if Facebook lost a good number of people that would still pit them above really any social network.

Facebook isn't invincible, but it would have to take something extremely dire for it to completely flop. Myspace, even at its largest was pretty small (btw, 1.5 billion in this realm is really isn't much...although some of startups are reaching that value pretty quickly). Myspace suffered from a myriad of issues, not only with the lack of users, but especially with Facebook in the game. Myspace pretty much begs people to come back and log in with your Facebook account, lol. For a while it really only appealed to indie musicians, and that died off as well. Speaking of making accounts hard to delete. I thought I deleted my myspace account like 5 years ago on a few occasions, and apparently it's still there.

Google + can bring users over, but there are a lot of people that would be very slow to do so.

As for Facebook just being "just another large site" a 70 Billion dollar valuation doesn't all a sudden come from for "any large site", lol. (although that seems a bit much nearing the level of companies like HP), But it's not just its perceived value, but amount of users. Even if a 1/4 went to Google + they would still pretty much be competitive.

Also, keep in mind though for companies, Facebook is a gold mine since it's essentially the closest thing to having a real ID online. Even to a greater extent than Google. Especially for data mining. This is part of the reason why people are throwing around such large numbers. The value of the information that people put on Facebook is staggering.

Now in five years, who knows, but the demise of Facebook will likely not be so sudden.

Even if Google + is a better service (and from what I see, it is), it doesn't mean everyone will pile on. Unfortunately not all great services are the most popular. I'm not saying I love Facebook, not by any means, but love them or hate them, they have gotten to a level that really no social network has. Them all a sudden disappearing seems a bit unlikely.

The good thing is this could start some serious competition in the future, improving Facebook and Google +.

codyodiodi4739d ago

Well I'm not saying that I think Facebook will die tomorrow if Google+ went public today. I am just saying that without Facebook making some major changes to policy and feature sets they are going to have a hard time keeping up with Google+ especially since it's similar to Facebook at first glance which drops the learning curve to almost nothing.

The Facebook valuation has gotten out of hand too, I mean at the end of the day it is just a website.

None the less I think if Google+ is launched like Gmail was (only a tad bit faster) where they send out a bunch of invites to the people who signed up for invites, and then those people can invite some friends, and so on and so forth it could eat up Facebook's popularity rather quickly so long as Google+ stays ahead of Facebook on feature sets, right now they are definitely ahead of them, and with all of the technology has outside of Google+ it'd be hard for Facebook to compete.

One feature that I saw on Tekzilla the other day was for Google images where you can just put in an image of something and Google will find more pictures of that same thing. While the facial recognition wasn't dialed down quite yet, I think it'd be really cool in Google+ to upload pictures of childhood friends and find them that way.

GrumpyVeteran4739d ago (Edited 4739d ago )

I can't really provide anything meaningful to the scale that you have done, snoop. But I just want to share my opinion on the fact that I really hate how Facebook has become so ingrained in our culture. I hate how every website has a "Like us on Facebook!" How people in real life assume by default that you have Facebook and so on. I've got no intention of ever joining for tons of reasons, but I just think it's insane how many people do have it and use it. I don't think I'll ever really understand it or 'get' it.

Anyway, I think this is good. If Google+ disperses the Facebook population a bit, I may not have to hear about 'Facebook' every damn day.

snoop_dizzle4739d ago (Edited 4739d ago )

Once again though, you have to convince the average joe of Google + being better. We will have to see how that plays out. Which is why I see this taking on with geeks like us for a while. And if that's as far as it went, I'd be fine with it. If anything, honestly, that probably would be better.

Either way, neither are going down without a fight, lol.

Oh, and the reverse image service is pretty cool, although similar services have existed like tineye for a while, but Google's will likely be more thorough, which is always welcome.

codyodiodi4739d ago (Edited 4739d ago )

Yeah I plan on keeping my Facebbok until the majority of my friends are on Google+ but I think if this can catch up with geeks and the college folk everyone will eventually follow suit. Again though we will see, I just know that I am planning on cutting my Facebook activity down to next to nothing once I get my invite and will delete my account if most of my friends are on Google+ much like I did with MySpace.

*Edit*

And I've ran out of bubbles. Well played sir.

Hayabusa 1174739d ago

I'd have to disagree with Snoop_dizzle. Obviously Facebook isn't going to disappear over night: no-one said it would. And obviously if Facebook implemented some competitive features it might hold the crown, but that's actually an assumption. facebook hasn't announced (or released) any new features for a while other than new layouts that confuse people and settings that are scattered all over the place: we all know very well the pace they work at. Google+ on the other hand have shown us their features aand everyone seems to agree that they're usefull.

And alot of people already moan about Facebook. They still use it but only because there isn't really any other websites that can be used to keep in touch with people. That's why it's difficult for people to leave it now, it's too usefull. If a website comes along that achieves the same thing + more, then it has a chance of capturing the audience. Once the intial batch who want better filtering options convert, all the regular Joes will slowly move over as well to follow them. It's a snowball effect, it isn't going to happen instantly but I can see it happening with Google + simply because they're fixing problems even the regular joes complain about on Facebook.
One problem I can foresee is the fact that alot of websites now incorporate Facebook for their features and stuff (even games). That could help retain FB's dominance but the fact of the matter is, if Google is the better service it WILL take off as along as it's marketed as well.

The point I'm trying to make is this: social networking websites are here to stay. But we only use FB because there isn't any worth while competition. Google+ looks like it could be worth while competition :)

blacktiger4739d ago

Facebook HUDDLE alone will eatup facebook and skype put together,

I can tell my whole family to go with google plus+ because it's so easy to use out of the box with webcam vs Skype. And Facebook? Webcam? not even close to multiple chat yet!

Google+ is going to the reason why I am finally going to like The Social Network.

creepjack4739d ago (Edited 4739d ago )

Pipe dream. Nothing is dethroning Facebook anytime soon. People are assuming that most care about deep social networking features. Most on Facebook dont care, its "lemme post this pic then get back to Farmville", thats it. THey dont care if more than a few people see a certain pic or read a certain message. They just dont care.
Facebook is just too deep seeded into everyones lives now to change, you'll see.

80°

Galaxy S25 to Integrate Advanced Google AI Features

Samsung's Galaxy S25 is set to elevate Google AI integration, extending to hardware depths.

Read Full Story >>
techacrobat.com
60°

Unveiling Android's Game-Changer: The Long-Awaited Battery Health Monitor – Report

Google Reportedly Set to Launch Tool Revealing Battery Degradation Over Time for Phones and Tablets, Says Android Authority.

Read Full Story >>
techacrobat.com
60°

Apple's Bold Move to Train LLM on Trendsetting News

Amidst the AI frenzy of 2023, major players like Google, Microsoft, and Meta are in the spotlight, launching their own generative AI systems.

Read Full Story >>
techacrobat.com