Google Plus has the full backing of Google behind it and evidence of it is how many people have adopted it in its early stages. Google+ has raced to 10 millions users in 2 weeks. This landmark took Facebook 852 days while it took Twitter 780 days.
Here is a nice presentation Leon Håland on Google+ brings out the contrast between the initial growth chart of Google+ compared to Twitter and Facebook. What is more incredible is that Google+ is invite based and not open to everyone.
This proves that Google+ is being accepted and looks like they have finally a winning social product on their hands. It might be interesting to see the strategies adopted by other companies who might be threatened by Google+.
What are your views on this phenomenal growth of Google+? Do drop in your comments.
Facebook just launched a new feature which is to show a preview of the link that we share in comments. It’s obviously a good feature but good for spammers as well. This ‘preview’ of the page contains in a link shows a small randomly selected picture, which makes the comment as well as the link attractive so spammers can take advantage of it by using attractive pictures in a link so that more and more users will click it.
This ‘preview’ of links is working on comments made on a profile, page or a group. All you need to do is type a link including the http:// part and hit enter. It will automatically select a image from the shared link. Check out the screen shot below.
You can see the additional information with the link like a pic, blog’s name and info. There’s also an option of ‘remove preview’ as you can see above. Clicking on that link will remove the preview and only link will be shared like it used to be.
When two giants end up fighting the earth shakes. It can lead to a lot of upheaval and there can be a few unexpected casualties. In the tech world these giants are Facebook and Google with is new social product Google Plus.
Google Plus seems to have been created with a lot of care and a single-minded focus on a goal. That goal being to get Google a popular and first class social product.
Google Plus is powered and made more potent thanks to all their various products. Here are 5 online services or companies that could be seriously hurt in the future with the rise of Google+.
Google Plus has something called Hangouts. This allows group video chatting for free. This stands in stark contrast with Skype which charges for group video chatting.
Skype is backed by Microsoft and unless Microsoft does something spectacular, there is a good chance that Google+ will gobble up Skype users slowly but surely.
#2. Yahoo
Yahoo it might be argued is going downhill considering they have gone from being a $100 billion company down to $22 Billion over the last decade. But its demise could be hasten with Google Plus which might challenge their popular services like Flickr.
Picasa never took off but now as part of Google+, it has got a new lifeline and might dislodge Flickr. With a coming together of all Google Products in Google+, might simply be too much for Yahoo to survive.
#3. Linked In
Linked In is a professional network and has great advantage over Facebook and other social networks because in it’s niche there is none like it. Linked In is a must for anyone who is a professional as it becomes your professional social network.
Google+ and its rise is also promoting the idea of Google Profiles. Not many people took interest in creating Google Profiles but it automatically comes to the fore with Google Plus.
If Google+ becomes a place for putting up professional resumes, then there is a good chance it might challenge Linked In over the next few years.
#4. Twitter
Twitter is a gold-mine of real-time reactions from literally millions of people around the world. It has become a news source for many. The big plus for it is that is so easy to use with mobile phone, which has driven its growth exponentially. Google+ is also targeting mobile users aggressively and also follows the Twitter model of separation of following and followers (unlike Facebook where both contacts have to accept each other as ‘Friends’).
The early rise of Google+ might not wean away people from Facebook as much as it could from Twitter.
#5. Facebook
The big fish of social network, Facebook may not become extinct or may not be defeated by Google Plus anytime soon. But last year, Facebook has tried to branch out into messaging. This was feared to be Gmail killer and Google must have felt nervous.
With Google+, the issue is settled. Gmail will not be threatened by Facebook as it will have to keep improving essentially as a social product to stave off competition from Google+.
This might be good news as Facebook was taking its users for granted with privacy and design changes. Next time with Google+ around, it might be that easy at all. Also competition is always good for the end users, that is us.
What are you views on Google Plus? Will it seriously challenge these companies? Do drop in your comments.
Here’s is a 3rd party application that allows you to migrate all your facebook friends into your Gmail or Google+ (actually to Google Contacts) account.
Just follow the step by step guide to use Friends to Gmail, a Facebook app that extracts your Facebooks contacts in .CSV format and then lets you save it on your computer and then tells you to import it on Google Contacts.
Moving Facebook Contacts to Gmail Contacts
Go to friendstogmail website and click on “Connect with Facebook”
Make sure you are logged on to your Facebook account and now authorize this app to use yor personal information.
Now wait for a few moments while the application processes your friends
Copy the data now generated and save it in a text file with the extension “.csv”.
Now point your web browser to http://www.google.com/contacts/ .Sign in with your desired Google Account and select Import. Browse to the facebook.csv file and click on Import.
Now all your contacts have been uploaded into to your Google Account, which can be accessed via Gmail or Google+. You might also be in can also move all your Facebook albums to Google+ with a Chrome extension.
Facebook Inc., world’s number one social networking website is still top on the lists of Social networking websites but it’s loosing it’s popularity rapidly. And no one is responsible for this except the design team of Facebook which introduced some disastrous new features which we definitely didn’t like. There are few reasons posted below due to which Facebook is loosing it’s popularity, don’t forget to add yours.
1. New Facebook Chat Design:
One of the most recently launched and most hated change is the new chat box design. In this new fb chat, it’s compulsory to keep a chat sidebar opened while chatting with somebody which makes the whole Facebook page smaller. Earlier it was a very clean section with just the name of friends and an on going chat window which can be minimized.
2. New Photo Viewer:
Opening a temporary tab for watching a picture on Facebook is what Facebook called it’s new theater photo viewer which is again not liked by most of the Facebook users. Thought it’s much more convenient to see pictures with this new way but still it resulted into a depressing black colored window and some bugs with Facebook design.
3. This Friend Request can’t be sent:
The worst and most annoying feature of Facebook is the new policy due to which we can’t send friend requests to strangers. Well, if we can’t add strangers what’s the use of Social networking then. And what if I meet a new person and wanna add him/her on Facebook but I can’t cuz I don’t have a mutual friend on Facebook. Read more about it here.
4. Fake profiles:
The same reason why Orkut lost it’s popularity, people started making so many fake profiles of users of Facebook and even the reporting system sucks. There are thousands of fake profiles on Facebook used for spamming or promoting abusive content and Facebook is doing nothing for it. And even if Facebook is taking serious actions against fake profiles, what about these users on our website?
5. Bad privacy policy:
Facebook is a social networking website known for it’s good privacy policy, but we’re not anymore sure about this thing specially when Facebook started recommending it’s users to keep their profile photos open. Also the privacy features are so confusing, there’s always something that user couldn’t figure out and keep that data unprotected.
6. Bad theme/design changes:
The best Facebook design was the one Facebook was using at the time of it’s launch. After that each change in design resulted into a new community page on Facebook which says “we need the older Facebook back”. Most of the changes in design was to make the page lighter and consume lesser bandwidth and hence lesser cost of running the website. Also there some minor changes like making the font of statuses smaller e.t.c which users didn’t like.
7. Errors and Bugs:
Sometimes our profile isn’t available and sometimes Facebook is not able to process our request. We have seen so many bugs in the past one year may be due to the changes in it’s design or due to excess of profiles.
8. Spam:
Last thing but not the lease, Spam on Facebook is spreading like a fire in jungle. ‘Like this page to see this video’, ‘Like it to see who viewed your profile’, ‘Like it and see girl changing clothes’, ‘Facebook new version’, there are so many ways by which spammers started spamming on Facebook and mainly it target users by using Facebook pages. And what Facebook does in return is to block the links that a normal user is sharing.
Facebook should really do some changes else we have a new option of using Google+ 😉
Did I miss any point that you don’t like about Facebook? Do post it in the comments section. 🙂
Personallly I never really liked Facebook, but because all my friends are on it, I caved in and got myself an account. This also meant that when it came to sharing photos with friends, I chose Facebook. Now we have Google+ which I have started to like a lot. I wanted to move all my Facebook Albums on Google+ and needed a quick automated solution.
Thankfully, I use Chrome as a browser and the Move Your Photos extension is perfect to move my albums from Facebook to Picasa.
Moving from Facebook to Picasa
First download and install the Move Your Photos Chrome Extension. It’s icon should appear next to the address bar on Chrome.
Login to Facebook from the Chrome extension. Also make sure you are logged into Picasa or Google+ account on the same browser.
The “Request for Permission” page loads up for accessing your Facebook Albums. Click on Allow and new page loads which might take a few moments.
This new page has all your Facebook Albums listed with all photos in them being displayed as thumbnails. Users can select each album or even single photo from a particular album. After you have selected the individual albums and photos in them, click on Upload.
This will create the Albums and transfer the selected images with the same album names as they are on Facebook.
This simple extension on Chrome, can quickly transfer and move your Facebook profile to Google+ and would suit ideally people looking to upload images in both services or planning to use Google+ albums as some sort of backup of Facebook photos.
A few days ago, Aditya covered 5 advantages Google+ has over Facebook. Last week during the unfortunate serial bomb blasts in Mumbai, Pratik Parekh pointed out to another advantage Google+ has over Facebook. This advantage is in link-sharing feature present on both sites.
If you followed social-media after Mumbai Blast closely, then you might have come across Wikipedia article links to Ajmal Kasab’s page being shared all over. Some miscreant had modified Kasab’s date of birth on his wiki page making it 13th July’s which was the day the serial blasts took place in Mumbai.
Like many people, I fell for falsehood and shared the wiki-link over Facebook as well as Google+ at the same time. After few hours, when the error on Wikipedia was resolved, Google+ shared link preview showed corrected date of birth while Facebook link-preview still showed the wrong date of birth.
You can see screenshots below:
Facebook Link Cache
Google+ Link Cache
Is this a big deal?
No. Not at all IMHO. But it certainly shows the care with which Google+ has been designed! 😉
I have been using Google+ for almost a week now and there is still a long way for it to go before it starts really competing with Facebook. I think they have really integrated Google products and services nicely into a social network.
I felt there are 5 key advantages that Google+ has over it Facebook which might just cause a lot of headaches to Facebook over the next few months and years.
#1. Money
Yes, Facebook also has a lot of money but Google has a lot more than Facebook. Google can invest half a billion dollars for then next 5 years in Google+ only to make sure Facebook’s rise is kept in check.
Facebook does not have that sort of portfolio and will have to out do Google+, as it cannot outspend it.
#2. No Dependence on 3rd parties
Facebook depends on Skype for improving it’s chat services along with having video chatting via the browser. This is mutually beneficial to both Facebook and Skype.
Google+ depends on technology they have built with Gmail and Google voice for powering chatting between Google+ friends and groups. Google also owns Android, Google TV and Chrome OS which can power a successful social product even more.
#3. Standalone products
Google+ has been built more like a common meeting point for all their services like Gmail, Chat, Maps, Voice, photo sharing with Picasa and YouTube. This means it’s a social network made for bringing together different services offered by Google.
With Facebook there are no standalone products for video or images. I cannot share images and albums with people without a Facebook account all that easily like I can with Picasa.
#4. Search
Google has its own search engine which everyone considers the primary source of traffic for almost any website. Facebook has some integration with Bing to have Social Search but the results are not as powerful as yet to really get Google worried.
But a powerful search feature built into Google+ will certainly give Facebook more headaches to deal with.
#5. No Pressure
Facebook started as a college product and with its founders quite happy to see it spread across universities in the United States. Facebook evolved without the pressure of competing with the big boys of social networking. MySpace and Geocities were the social services back then.
The lack of pressure to beat these large companies meant Facebook could keep innovating and changing without upsetting too many users. Now Google+ is in the same situation. It is not expected to defeat Facebook in a face-off and it can quietly improve its service, without worrying too much about how users might react.
Facebook’s really big advantage…
I do not mean that Google+ has won the fight against Facebook. Not by a long shot, as only recently Facebook announced it is used by over 750 million people. So how many people use Google+ will finally end up deciding it’s eventual success or failure.
What are your views about Google+ and Facebook when compared? Do drop in your comments.
Facebook has been working a lot with Skype recently with it allowing users to use Skype to chat with friends on Facebook. Last week, Mark Zuckerberg had claimed that there would be something new and awesome unveiled by Facebook.
That announcement has been Facebook Video Calling. The video calling will allow Facebook users to chat with friends via a browser using Skype.
Then you be prompted to choose from your friends who you want to start a video chat.
Click on the video icon and download the one time plugin for your computer.
This way we can start video calling our friends right from the browser and no need to use Skype software.
This is obviously a new feature that targets Google+ service called Hangout. It will be interesting to see how this plays out and how Facebook reacts to challenge thrown at it by Google.
Google Plus has been around for a couple of days and it being still a little too exclusive, which has meant that a lot of my friend on Twitter and Facebook cannot be found on Google+. Also services like Hootsuite and Digsby which are useful for managing and sharing updates across two or three different social networks have not yet integrated Google+.
With Google Plus Extended Share extension for Chrome, users can share something they see on their Google Plus feeds and share it on their Twitter or Facebook accounts.
Google+ to Facebook and Twitter
The extension adds a new ‘Send To’ option with your Google Plus updates. Clicking on it will give you the option of sharing the link to that update on Twitter and Facebook.
I found that the options with “Send To” showed up with any publicly shared Google+ post which means I could share posts by my friends on Google+ too.
I am sure that once Google+ is out of beta, users will get a lot of integration options for sharing one update across many different social networks.
But for the moment this extension seems to be nifty for cross-sharing across profiles on different networks.
Do try out the extension if you are using Chrome and drop in your comments.
Facebook Inc., world’s number one social networking website is still top on the lists of Social networking websites but it’s loosing it’s popularity rapidly. And no one is responsible for this except the design team of Facebook which introduced some disastrous new features which we definitely didn’t like. There are few reasons posted below due to which Facebook is loosing it’s popularity, don’t forget to add yours.
