Sep
21
Google + Opens Its Doors – Facebook Reacts!
Posted in: Web
The gloves are officially off with Google and Facebook.
Yesterday Google+ opened the floodgates for anyone to sign up to the service, after being in field trial/invite only for 3 months and attracting some 20+ million users the service can now be used by everyone over the age of 18.
As Google have been slowly rolling out updates to its new Google+ social network (100+ so far), Facebook have been making some improvements of it’s own. Facebook have now launched a number of features that challenge what were initially the main selling points of Google’s service. They have revamped the friends list and also made changes to the news feeds which effectively brings Googles circles feature to Facebook.
It has been widely reported that although Google is attracting users the amount of activity on the site is declining. The traffic peaked on the 21st July, roughly 1 month after the field trial started. So does this mean that Google is not sticking for many users and is in jeopardy? Certainly not yet, now the service is open to everyone this may mean that there is another surge of users and another wave of excitement about the service.
Although I certainly would like Google to win this one, I am wondering if Google have done enough to advertise the service outside of the technology world. I also think that compared to Facebook, Google+ user interface is not nearly as intuitive as Facebook is and takes a lot more getting used to which may put the casual Social Media enthusiast off.
AH
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