Google launches its own social network in attempt to take on Facebook

Google+ circles is the best thing ever. I only wish you can put circles inside other circles...

xionvalkyrie

Interesting read on the Google+ vs Facebook situation. :)Hexagon_777

This right here...

Facebook has lots of little problems, and two big ones. The first big problem is that everyone you know is by default lumped into the same category: "Friend." It's like your spouse, niece, college buddy, BFF from high school, boss, grandma and former assistant are all in the same room. The things you would say to all of them are different from the things you would like to say to each of them individually, or in smaller groups.

... is the main reason I'd welcome some real competition. I have too many friends and family members with extremely diverse backgrounds, many polar opposites. I've had to just outright reject some friends because I don't want them getting into a fight with what another friend might be saying, and to avoid too much conflict myself. I haven't found a viable solution on Facebook to handle the situation of keeping friends within specific groups so that my sum total of information is not shared to everyone and everything.

Additionally, because of my job, I've had to seriously consider cancelling my Facebook account. I only barely avoided that by changing my name on the account to something else. Having any friends with public profiles whatsoever, or even friends of friends of friends with public profiles, makes lots of personal information somewhat accessible to the world at large.

There are firms that now associate employees of larger firms with their Facebook accounts through nested searches. They match information they know and associate, then they sell this to other firms. Sometimes these are customers of a firm the Facebook target works for. Sometimes it's the employer itself. It causes a myriad of problems for a Facebook user.

To associate lump sums of friends and information onto a site with your real name and pretty much whole identity attached is at best a clear oversight or at worst intentional bastardry.

Mark Zuckerberg Has The Most Followers On Google+ :lol:Hexagon_777

Wonder how much he paid to get amount of followers, including account creations.

[QUOTE="Hexagon_777"]Interesting read on the Google+ vs Facebook situation. :)m0zart

This right here...

Facebook has lots of little problems, and two big ones. The first big problem is that everyone you know is by default lumped into the same category: "Friend." It's like your spouse, niece, college buddy, BFF from high school, boss, grandma and former assistant are all in the same room. The things you would say to all of them are different from the things you would like to say to each of them individually, or in smaller groups.

... is the main reason I'd welcome some real competition. I have too many friends and family members with extremely diverse backgrounds, many polar opposites. I've had to just outright reject some friends because I don't want them getting into a fight with what another friend might be saying, and to avoid too much conflict myself. I haven't found a viable solution on Facebook to handle the situation of keeping friends within specific groups so that my sum total of information is not shared to everyone and everything.

Additionally, because of my job, I've had to seriously consider cancelling my Facebook account. I only barely avoided that by changing my name on the account to something else. Having any friends with public profiles whatsoever, or even friends of friends of friends with public profiles, makes lots of personal information somewhat accessible to the world at large.

There are firms that now associate employees of larger firms with their Facebook accounts through nested searches. They match information they know and associate, then they sell this to other firms. Sometimes these are customers of a firm the Facebook target works for. Sometimes it's the employer itself. It causes a myriad of problems for a Facebook user.

To associate lump sums of friends and information onto a site with your real name and pretty much whole identity attached is at best a clear oversight or at worst intentional bastardry.

So is Google+ an absolute solution for you?Hexagon_777

Based on what I've heard, it's definitely a move in the right direction. At the very least, a bit of competition would push Facebook to make some necessary changes instead. Without some competing force, I think they might avoid addressing these issues in particular.

I hardly ever use Facebook, and I don't trust Google at all. So... no, I will never use it.

Interesting read on the Google+ vs Facebook situation. :)Hexagon_777

good read but i don't get the criticism that facebook just dumps all your friends, family and acquaintances in one room, this is not true as far as i know. you can make groups and make individual things available to these groups or specifically exclude groups from seeing things you don't want them to see. setting up the groups is a bit of a hassle but once they are in place it just does it's thing. to me this sounds exactly like the circles thing. a friend really doesn't even have to know you have any other friends on there if you want. can somebody explain what the difference is? cause to me it's starting to sound like a marketing machine is at full steam here to make the competitor look bad.

i'm not a huge fan of facebook but i am not bothered by any of it's flaws because i don't enter all my personal data, don't go around adding "friends"of which i have no idea who they are, don't use any games or apps and really don't care about status updates which 9 out of 10 times boil down to non-information. i just like it to stay in touch with peoples, chat or message with them and share pics or the occasional link to something interesting. also i know your privacy has proven to not be safe on facebook but i think the healthiest approach is to assume that this really goes for anything you do online and the worst possible thing you could do in my view is put it all in one place and entrust one single company to keep it safe for you, especially one that i suspect already knows a lot more about me than i think. not that i don't trust google but that information is apparently worth enough for google to be as big as they are today and the more desirable it becomes, the bigger the odds of it being used for things i don't want it being used for are.

so if this where launched by anyone but google i would be more than interested but for now, if i really do see friends migrate there, i will have to think twice if i will follow.

I barely use social networks as is. Google isnt going to convince me to start being more social.

I have my doubts as to whether or not it will catch on, but competition always makes big entities reevaluate their products so I assume facebook will act to preserve it's dominance of the social space. What it does to achieve this will be interesting.

I put my name down for a beta invitation so i can have a look at it and see how itdifferentiates from Facebook, but i don't see myself using it any more apart from that unless all my friends start using it as that is my main attaraction for facebook is its socialisation.