Is Google+ a Facebook killer???

Past couple of weeks in web space has been dominated by the Google+ mania. The search engine giant launched it’s yet another attempt to grab a wholesome pie of this social space. But this tie the approach is different. In past Google tried to instill a whole new social behaviour in its users and failed dramatically, this time though it has, with all its ears, listened to people and has tried to give users a place they would love to dwell.

I am not going to talk much about its features, many of industry exerts have already done that, and honestly speaking what Google+ is offering isn’t anything new. It’s more like an upgraded version of Facebook.

What I want to talk about is the most discussed question – Is Google+ a Facebook killer? by looking beyond its obvious features.

To put it in plain simple words, its NOT, Not yet! But Google+ certainly carries immense potential to be one. Google+ is smartly designed and aims to leverage Google’s existing eco-system which boasts of various products which already have a huge user base worldwide.

Google+ aims to leverage all Google’s products and imitate real life sharing. Facebook might have a huge base of 750+ million users and is cruising towards 1billion but Google+ has strong integration with other Google products which will help Google+ accelerate much faster.

Gmail, YouTube, Picasa, Buzz, Chrome, Android, Blogger….

Facebook doesn’t have any of these (maybe it doesn’t want to) but it has what Google doesn’t – Games, Apps, Brand pages. Social Gaming is one of Facebook’s key offerings, millions log on to Facebook just for that and they do so not just for the sake of playing those games but because of social interactions those games bring in. Google+ will have to work around this. Google+ may be lagging behind when it comes to brand pages but that shouldn’t bother Google much as its planning to launch brand pages somewhere around the end of this year.

Google’s access to millions of Adword users will allow it to take that one big leap. All Google has to do, is to offer brands some incentive like ‘search engine benefit’ to poke brands to use it.

One striking thing that I would like to highlight is that Google+ has turned Facebook’s algorithm on its head. As per Facebook’s egde rank funda, users see the items from people and pages they interact the  most. Default tab on Facebook is “newsfeed” and this leads to many items being unseen.

I may not interact much with certain people but that doesn’t mean I am not interested in what they share. Google+ allowed users to create Circles and dissolved the significance of Edge rank. I have created circles and grouped people as per my wish. Now, I never loose out on any update.

For now, it’s a wait and watch game. Too early to comment whether Google+ is going to give Facebook a tough time or even kill it.

Google+ is growing at a rapid space, launched on June 28^th it has already seen more than 10 million joining it and sharing more than 1 billion items

Will share more on Google+ in coming days.

I would love to know your thoughts. Please comment below. Thanks