Sunday, July 17, 2011

Google chrome : buzz

So finally google plus (+) is ready for the networking market (still in Beta testing and invite only mode though) but the big question is do we need to change the social platform again i.e. from "facebook" to "google plus", more so when the 70% of the all internet users are still active on Facebook.

Aren't we already slaves to Google's vast empire ?? From watching videos(youtube) to managing our e-mails(gmail), from blogging(blogger) to storing our photos(picasa), from advertising(adwords) to publishing(adsense,doubleclick), from internet browsing(chrome) to seeking information(google) and last but not the least even our mobile phones are having google's presence in the form of "Android" and if we prefer google plus, our entire internet activity might concentrate at the single host, which may be risky as some critics are pointing out.

The biggest fear among all the tech critics is that the hype which is being created by the Google +, we hope it don't turn out to be a desperate shout or if you would like to put in the financial terms "a big powerful social bubble". Google is treating their social venture as a "project" and not as a "website" (good for them). It's not very long ago when Google launched their one more over hyped social platform named "buzz" to gain the market share of "instant micro-blogging market" and beat the competitors like "Twitter" which for now is clearly dominating the field but unfortunately Google failed miserably and that's the very reason, I would suggest to all the facebook users to think twice before swapping your social life from one platform to another.
It's too early to compare Google plus with Facebook. Google's current 10 million users database might seem "as a drop in the ocean" in front of the mammoth size of  Facebook which is having more than 750 million users, out of them more than 50% are active users. But again Google is in beta testing mode only and is available to selected users only. We have to wait for the real response from the people.

It would be quite emotinal for the addiccted and  avid facebook lovers to leave the terms like "wall", "poke", "like" and get use to new social terminologies such as "hangouts", "sparks", "circles". Google's marketing strategy is quite lame too. Instead of endorsing their own brand, they are showing more interest in downgrading other social media services especially "facebook". Google is emphasizing more on the "privacy issue" which scores where facebook lacks and "sharing" to be made simpler and compatible. Well to be frank there is nothing new in this social extravaganza but slightly different from others. Here are few of their main features-


Circles = Facebook. Share content with your friends, only you don't have to share everything with  everybody at once. You can pick and choose specific groups.




Sparks = Google Reader or Delicious. Subscribe to news and information sources and get a constantly updated feed.



Hangouts = Tinychat. Live video conversations with multiple friends at once.



Instant Uploads = Microsoft Kin (and iCloud, and...). Snap photos with your phone and they're automatically uploaded to an online storage spot on Google Plus.













Huddle = GroupMe. Group chat.

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