The Talented Mr Google

Over the past 24 hours, every one of my social networks has exploded with buzz and activity; everyone’s scrabbling for Google+ invites off the back of their recent announcement previewing their latest foray into social media. Don’t get me wrong - I’ve been trying to call in every favour possible to obtain an invite and managed to get one earlier today (thanks @steviehailey!) I’ve now had about 12 hours to take a look through it and to play with all it’s new features. And that’s where the whole thing falls down. New features.

At a first glance, the whole thing is as if someone has just reskinned Facebook. I could go on at length about the things that breed this familiarity, but its already been summed up perfectly by Business Insider in this article. It really doesn’t feel that it has that much new to offer. Yes, there are some nice touches (I’m looking at you Circles and your nice little HTML5 animations) but ninety percent of what I’ve seen in my first twelve hours feels remarkably familiar.

So what’s the key difference between the two? As I flippantly tweeted earlier today, it’s about 700 million users, and that’s the battle that Google+ now faces. Currently there’s no clearly identifiable killer feature that would help tip the balance in their favour and cause a mass migration of users from Facebook. It’s a social network, and for it to be social, the people you want to liase with have to be there, otherwise it’s just a ‘network’. Yes, it’s currently in a very restricted field test, but without my friends, colleagues and other people that I want to be part of those nicely animated Circles being there too, the need to visit again and again, and to invest the time in getting my head round its extensive functionality just isn’t there (of course overlooking the fact that I have a responsibility to do as part of my 9-to-5). The ever on the pulse XKCD summed things up pretty well in their comic yesterday; 

The sentiments right (and largely one that I agree with) but for the time being I think the actuality will be the opposite. Right now Google+ is Facebook without being Facebook. For anyone with an interest in tech, or a desire for privacy online, that’s a great thing. For the lion’s share of Facebook’s 700 million users, however, it’s a bad thing - right now, if it’s not Facebook, then the members of their social networks just aren’t on it and it’s just a fantastic piece of development that nobody uses. Without a killer feature I don’t see how that can be turned around in the short term but look forward seeing how Google try to do it. In the meantime, I’m off to check my Circles and see who’s managed to secure an invite.