Q: How is Google+ Doing and Will It Be Able to Topple Facebook?
As Google+ continues to grow—it recently hit an astonishing 25 million unique visitors since its introduction on June 28th—the future of Facebook as our go-to personal social networking portal is in serious jeopardy. But will the two be able to co-exist, or will Google+ entice so many users away from Facebook that it will cripple its competitor?
It remains to be seen whether the majority of these users are making a definitive switch, or if they are simply trying out the new network with intentions of keeping up accounts on both sites.
The rush of new users on Google+ must also be at least partially attributed to its ingenious invite-only launch: the sense of scarcity it created generated so much buzz that people were going crazy to get an account.
Although it is too early to tell exactly what the future will bring to the two networks, Google+’s wealth of features including privacy-friendly circle sharing and group video chats are impressive and fill in a lot of Facebook’s holes.
Meanwhile, it is certain that Facebook is hard at work on something big to combat Google+, but for the time being, they haven’t done much.
Facebook did unveil a revamped sidebar chat interface, which, according to thousands of users, “sucks” and is not much of an improvement at all. They also released Facebook for Business, a series of tutorials designed to assist businesses on using social media more effectively, but this will not impact the majority of Facebook’s users. And according to the 2011 ACSI E-Business Report, Facebook’s customer service ratings are extremely low.
Seamless Integration Could Give Google+ the Upper Hand
Additionally, Google+ has a major advantage in that is so integrated into core applications we’re already using every day on the web, from Gmail and Docs to even web search. You don’t have to log-in separately; all you must do is see the little red notification on the top right of your screen. This is a powerful feature that Facebook will not be able to offer. (At least at the moment.)
Check out this interesting infographic comparing the social networks and let us know in the comments what you think will happen with Google+ and Facebook.
Nice write-up! I’m dying to see what Facebook will come up with to raise the ante–they’ve got to do something!