Google Takes On Facebook With New Social Network

Google Takes On Facebook With New Social Network

Jayesh Limaye, Jun 29, 2011 1503 hrs IST

Google+ project will try to capture the social networking space.

Internet search giant Google has launched its new social networking service called Google+. This is part of yet another effort from the company, to claim a share in the lucrative social networking space dominated by Facebook. Google+ not only lets users post photos, videos, messages, comments, etc, but also will bring "real-world interactions" and "real-life sharing" online, according to the company.

Google's Senior Vice President for Engineering, Vic Gundotra said in a blog post, "Today, the connections between people increasingly happen online. Yet the subtlety and substance of real-world interactions are lost in the rigidness of our online tools. Through the Google Plus project, we'd like to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software".

In what may sound outrageous to some, the company has claimed that this new service aims to "fix" the "broken" and "awkward" way in which people interact online at present. Certain interesting features in the service such as Circles, Sparks, Hangouts, and Mobile may be worth a look at. Circles, for example, shares the user's information with a large number of his \ her friends and colleagues (rather than only close friends), thus expanding the friends circle of the user. That does not mean that all your info will be up for grabs. Google clarifies that the service will let users share just the right things with just the right people. The feature allows the user to club certain groups of users, such as My school pals, My colleagues, etc. Information shared in such groups will be exclusive to the group members.

Similarly, Hangouts lets you convey to your friends when you will be free for a video hangout: to watch online videos together, just like going to a movie together. Sparks is a feed of things you're interested in. You can specify your fields of interest, so that when you're free, there will always be something waiting to be watched, read, or shared. Users will also have access to an Instant Upload feature using which, Google will instantly add photos taken by a user to a private album in the cloud, with the permission of the user, of course. One major difference between Google's new service and Facebook, is that the former will let users video chat with several friends simultaneously.

Currently, this service is in the pilot stage and is available by invitation only and seemed to have temporarily exceeded its capacity when we last visited. Nevertheless, you can visit the home page of this service, leave your email address, and wait for Google to get back to you. Android phone users can download the Google+ application from the Market.

Will Google+ be able to upset Facebook and become the new king of social networking web space? Or will it fizzle out like Google's much-hyped Buzz? In our opinion, it will depend on the number of original ideas incorporated into this service and also the ease of accessibility to the user. Please let us know your take on this, in the space below.