I must say here I AM A GOOGLE FAN... because i find the company creative.... but that does not mean i dont admit their failures... and here's to how i will ALSO criticize upon flaws on Google+ and their improvements needed... but i can assure you, theirs are lesser than that of Facebook's...
I was not a hater of facebook... in fact im a user of facebook since 2006 and facebook established at 2003.. Facebook snatched their triumph-card from friendster at around 2008....where most people join... when i was already inside... i was even the earliest facebook user compared to most if not all my friends i currently have inside that social networking site... it was all good converting from friendster to facebook... all was NICE... very nice until the games and spams come in... irritating as they can be... they've made facebook complicated.. rather untidy...
As most of us know Google Wave has failed... But the fate of Google's new project the Google+ (Plus)... as much as i wanted to say it is a success.. it is unknown...
Many of them says it's the Facebook killer.. some says it will just be another failure like wave and buzz... others dont bother and use both..
Here's though, what i come up with after seeing, testing and reading about this two social sites...
Now, I'll start of with Google+ because that's the newer site and that's what people are comparing it to Facebook....
Why Google+ :
- Quick access from all Google related pages
- Google creates almost everything you need for the internet... Be it Groups, Calendars, Blogs, Videos, Translators, Images, Documents, Browsers, OSes etc. I dont know about most of you but i'm all Google when i can... My perspective towards them is that they are creative... providing something new always... I own an Android phone, started gmail about 5 years ago, used chrome since it's Beta, introduced Wave to people, synchronized calendars, creating IT groups among my friends, uses translates all the while.. and now Google+... G+ has this +Lim thingy as my first link at the top most bar and most of the pages Google own, eg, groups, picasa, docs, gmail, etc. The common Google owned pages now has this same bar on top, which allows you to share/post on Google+ and still keep track of notifications even though you are not browsing the Google+ page. My friend and i had the same thought.. and we tested it out whether is it a strip down version for a simple quick share and notifications for the other pages? The answer is NO, it has the same Share function you can find on the original G+ page, with quick attachments ready and the same notification area where you can always leave comments directly on the notification area itself without the need of redirecting. Think of Google+'s top bar as a not changing bar no matter how you change the content page or refresh.. as long as you are using google's services...
- Better notification area
- You can now leave comments directly on Notification area without the need of redirecting or pressing the middle mouse button/wheel just to get it to a new tab so that it doesnt interrupt whatever you are doing, say, watching a youtube video or something... you can leave the comments on the notification area.. and continue doing what you were doing... all in the SAME PAGE/TAB
- Post or Comment editing
- Ever encounter cases like shoot i posted the wrong thing or i Tagged the wrong person or OMGWTFBBQ TYPO! on facebook? Google+ lets you edit your post and comments... so say bye to deleting and retyping.. say bye to being unable to correct accidents....
- Better photo tagging and video sharing
- Now, as all of us know, photo tagging is a TREND, video sharing too.... but what makes G+ having a better photo tagging machine is that first it uses Picasa, pictures are NOT stripped down to a lower resolution just to ease upload, yet not too slow on uploading speed. Picasa for you.
- Besides, tagging is the same as facebook, except you can resize the tagging frame if the picture is taken far away,say, a group photo, or near such as self-shot.. I think most of us know what when it's a group photo on facebook, you usually dont even bother to hover your mouse over just to see which name belongs to which face... because they can be the same square size and you wont know which is the one being focused...
- Resize tagging is awesome i can tell... but the best thing yet is tag approval... facebook does not notify you about tagging until it is published... then you will remove tag just because you doesnt want mail spams from comments or you simply look ugly in that pic... or those stupid Apps that sounds like "my top 10 best friends"... Privacy score? +1
- Video sharing are made easier... first off, how would you share a video on Facebook if it's not a reshare? you have to go youtube, or a significant video site and copy the link, paste it on share post and facebook will detect it automatically... or press the share button on youtube.. a facebook window will pop up and bla bla i dontyoutube.. Google owns youtube... so sharing vids from youtube is all done in the social site itself... just SEARCH and share... you dont have to navigate away to a different tab/page always...
- Circles
- The thing about circles is extracted from meet the fockers/meet the parents... something called "The circle of trust" created by father in-law of the focker... now YOU decide who to be in WHAT circle.. people dont have to know... is that good? i dont know.. but what i know is that.. for one thing, sorting and categorizing is a very neat thing to do on friends list... so it is good... Sharing on Google+ must be specified who to share and thus enhancing the privacy, or so i think... since Google+ doesnt have a private profile... anything shared to the public (tagged as Public in green) will be seen by the internet, as long as they can search your profile.. the idea is simple, share things within your circle... make sure the information is suitable for that particular circle.. or share it with all your circles with the category "Your Circles"... doesnt mind going public? Share to "Public"...
- Now people would NOT know whether they are in what circle of yours... but put simply, people in your circle are what streams you will see in your page... it's not necessary that they have to add /approve you just to let you see see what they are saying... it's like following on twitter.. but unless it's a public post.. you'll see nothing... so i'd say it's like enhanced twitter on a facebook page... same thing though, your public streams will be shown to god knows who, as long as the person added you into his/her circle... so think twice before sharing to public.... of course, if both parties added each other... it has no difference from the facebook friend's add and approve...
- Hangout
- How does it feel like having 10 people video conferencing at ONCE? Hangout does that and i find it funny Facebook have to immediately come up with FBSkype which are not even near to what hangout provides but instead, also screwed up the chat system... why are they so not confident in the first place? Articles said that Facebook SHOULD BE SCARED... so that's why they are?
- Hangout with your circles or a particular gmail (if you want a 1 to 1 webcam chat)... you can also hangout with all your circles, making anyone in your circle can see the hangout and join it if they want... you then can play a youtube (a function inside hangout) and everyone gets to watch it at the same time... (unless restrictions on one's connection)
- Sparks
- Google is well known for its search engine... Facebook has fan pages or things that needed searching for.. Say, i wanted to search for news related to Android on facebook, i can type in android at the search bar and what i get is some groups, some official, many not.... i get no information and no updates until i join the group or whatever page that comes out form the search...
- Sparks work like an automated live update on your google search... once it's there.. you can add it to your sparks to serve as a quick-search-like button... so everytime i hit the button.. i get every news i need to know about android... on the spot itself..
- Phone App and features
- Facebook's phone app is awesome... it does EVERYTHING facebook does....
- Google's phone app is EXTRA AWESOME... it does things that even the site cant do.... all you need is a phone..
- The current phone app is only available for Android phones and i've tested it out thoroughly what the app can do.. it has the typical check-in with no idea how to add new venues.. a big fail here.. but since it can do that, it detects where you are at the moment... what's good is, you can even see what's happening nearby you.. as long as the post is public... Say im in Melaka... it detects where i am, and share public posts posted in Melaka... I've even found friends or acquaintances there...
- The app provides photo instant upload with settings to disable it or enable it only when WiFi... whenever i took a picture... or even screenshots of my ROM, the pictures are uploaded to my Picasa under phone's upload... but that doesnt mean it's shared.. to be able to share it, you will need to click share. then the photo will go public.. so rest assured about privacy here AGAIN....
- What's better is, whenever i already have new photos from my insta-upload, when i wanted to post something new, Google will ask whether this post has something to do with your newly added photos or whether you wanna share them now, or hey are you forgetting your photos? something like that.. at the bottom right of your post editing, first attachments are photos and it will show small thumbnails of your latest instant uploads.. one click on it and you can share it right away...
- The App comes with widget and huddle.... admit it android phone users, facebook app can be good but the widget is a failure... a big one it is, 4x2 dimension, but does nothing but show you ONE news feed... press next to get to next feed... G+ widget is simple, 4x1 dimension, one very similar to Tweetdeck's Post widget... with instant upload photo capturing or just simply share a post... it also comes with another app called huddle, which you can have group messaging with up to 6 person.. add and remove messaging contact is made easier with Circles... something like whatsapp...
- Neater without games, apps, and spams
- Needless to say, G+ is neater and i hope (or i think so) that they will not include these things inside... It's shits like that made me hate Facebook...
That's all for G+, now there are things G+ has yet to achieve... so dont tell me that im biased or something... but im telling you google is fresh and if given the same time Facebook has, it will surely be a better social networking site...
Why Facebook:
- Groups
- Circles cannot simply replace groups...
- A group are a smaller community that althought does not need to your friend but share the same objective or topics... you WILL KNOW who is in the group and who is not... in other hand, circles cannot achieve that because circles are people you think you will like to follow, you follow, whatever you share to a circle, you simply trust them... but who is in their circle when they re-share it? you dont know.. So facebook groups are still important and are still why i am navigating to the site, haven be able to totally move on to G+....
- Im not forgetting google groups though... and they successfully implemented the groups into wave as a contact.. so can they do the same in g+ so that whatever we share, we only have to share with this google group and everyone inside will be able to see? and google groups is the same... you have a manager.. you know who is in the group... so i hope to see that being implemented..
- Events and fan pages
- i dont care about fan pages.. if Linkin Park has google+ i just simple add them into a circle called Following.. i dont even have to add fan page... many might be asking now, why i put it in the facebook's strength then? because they are people... that prefer fan pages.. it's not better.. it just a majority chosen thing...
- Events are still Facebook's strength point though... but google is still too young for that... however, facebook's events are on dates and will only notify you when you browse facebook itself... but once i exported all the events to my Google calendar... i get all the reminders and updates on my phone.. so in between, i still used google as a platform...
- Birthdays and calendars
- Reminders are still better in Facebook.. we do not know who is having a birthday today or tomorrow on G+....
- Games (for some people)
- for some people... perhaps the same as those who prefer fan page than circles... people that find it hard to convert to google plus.. because they really CAN give you a very simple question/reason... rather retarded..... "NO GAMES.... AND I PLAY MY XXXVILLE EVERYDAY THERE..." seriously... fuck you...
Question is, which is easier for one side to achieve whatever that is better on the other?
The answer is obvious enough... Google already has all the things... just not yet implemented... mostly because of stability issue...
But Facebook, Facebook has nothing Google has... and when tries to implement one.... it's weaker, worse.. and even have the ability to screw things up.... with also a bad NAME... FBSKYPE WTF..... Rush work is OBVIOUS...
Google need a better server for G+ though... updates are weird or rather unstable... on both circles and the feed.... or maybe they are migrating to a larger server once G+ is public? I dont know..
It's all up to the people whether they wanna convert or whether they see them as the same... to me google+ has a brighter future despite whatever failure risks they may encounter... Facebook should meet its downfall like how it gave it to friendster years ago...
Cheers,
Y.K.Lim
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