Google is to square off against Facebook!
Another day, another surprise. I just read a couple articles about the new social platform Google+ and I must say – it completely blew my socks off. The all-new approach to making communities and online social interactions looks not only very interesting, but maybe even revolutionary. I’m not a big fan of online social networks, but I am definitely going to watch the rise of Google+ closely.
The whole idea seems to me like a very fresh social concept that is going to make the online interactions between people a little bit “better” from what we know today (it may be considered as a next step in “online social experience”). Well, it also confirms that computers have become an unseparable part of our lives, today’s people can hardly escape the grasp of the artifical, abstract world that is the internet (almost everyone is signed up to at least one of them social networks – it’s like a plague). And Google+ takes this conformity even higher, with introducing the “more advanced” social features.
This sharing, it’s now the fundamental part of our “life on the internet”. We look for heads-ups from others and in return, we always let them know about anything interesting we come across. This ecosystem is well established by the Facebook. Everyone has their own profile, where they can post random thoughts, links to interesting stuff, pictures from vacation etc. that they want to share with the world. And they also can view what the others share with them. In the case of Facebook, this whole “sharing” thing was sophisticated, but still far from perfect. See, the Google+ steps it up a whole damn level with its “Circles“. You know, we don’t always want to share everything with everyone – so here come the “Circles”, which represent certain groups of people that play some role in our life. Here we have the acquaintances, our schoolmates, there our workmates, friends from sport club, etc., etc. We can break down the whole lot of people that we know into couple of well-distinguished groups – “Circles”. And now we can share whatever we want with whomever we want (and respectively, we can read whatever might interest us from the “Circles” we follow)! This also means that we can share much more things than before, even the stuff we would not have wanted to share with just everyone. Behold, how our online life is being improved – with sharing ability level two!
There’s a mighty more to that than some “Circles”, of course. You can take a peek at Google+ on the official website.
It’s now more complex, more comprehensive, more “social”. Will Google+ beat the pants off Facebook? Or will it go down as soon as it starts off?
Personally, it gives me goose bumps, thinking of where such things will be in five, ten years. Just consider what we were thinking about “social” internet a mere five years ago, it’s completely unpredictable. As of me, I personally don’t want to know where these things are going – because I’m pretty damn sure they’re going nowhere but (more) south. Will we once live our lives in their entirety on the internet? Best not to think about that. Still, I do much admire how giant leap of progress the technology has made over past decades to make all this possible. It’s truly fascinating.
Watch the official promo video (in case you still haven’t, which would honestly surprise me 
):