Thanks to Andrew Mager, this blogger has spent much of the non-sleeping, eating, and socializing 14 hours setting up his presence on Google + Social Network.
If you do not know by now, Google + Social Network is really just that: it ads a user interface that works and looks like a combined Facebook – Friend Feed platform. But can it supplant Facebook? No, but it can potentially take away enough Facebook users for a time to cause some alarm with Mack Zuckerberg and company .
What I said Google + must have to be a viable alternative to Facebook, the “news feed” or what I like to think of as that central town hall where stuff’s happening, it has. It’s called “Stream.”
While trying it, and at the same time setting up my “circles” of relationships and my profile, I was thinking: “You know, this is not so bad.” Then I realized that between the Stream and Circles, and the other elements of Google + Social, I was participating in the newest time sync, an addictive practice, drawing you back and back again.
So then I clicked over to my Facebook profile and realized something: the Facebook pages are easier to see.
One major problem with Google + Social is the font size is about a half-point too small. Maybe a full point. Facebook doesn’t produce the kind of eye-strain I get after using Google +.
As much as I like Google + Social, and I do, Facebook has the edge. I also miss the intuitive “like” button. Google’s 1+ alternative to the Facebook “Like” button is more machine than human. Facebook wins here.
But, given that Google + Social Network is still in a kind of beta stage – not ready for wide use, but ready enough for a small community to form – it’s on a good track to be something special.
The “Circles” function just allows you to slot your contacts into different categories. If you’ve imported several thousand friends, this process is time-consuming to say the least. But it’s addictive – once you figure it out.
It’s not that it’s hard to do, but it’s so different and requires object-oriented program movement of blocks to circles- it takes a few seconds of study or just (as I do) “trying something” to figure it out. TechCrunch asks if people will “figure out” Circles, and I have to say I think it’s just different enough for some people to decide not use it.
The problem is it take a number of steps to start using it, so many that, if a person’s not added and the user thinks they should be, the user may be turned off from more visits to Google + and turn back to Facebook.
But think about that: “turn back to Facebook.” That, for Facebook, is the problem. Or will be.
And faster than Google realizes, because you can transfer your Facebook contacts to a new Yahoo email account, then use that to add your Yahoo contacts to Google +, effectively bringing your Facebook contacts to Google +.
Stay tuned.
Bill Carroll