As with many services made freely available in the past, I’ve become an early adopter of Google Plus, also known as G+. I become a lighthouse customer in order to reserve “my” username (the same one I use across as many websites as possible, for uniformity and ease of clients and friends to find me).
I’ve yet to figure out the “voice”, if any, that I will use there. Much like Twitter, I don’t see much use for G+ in my repertoire. I have Facebook for my personal output, this blog for my professional projects, I use Twitter to keep up with people, news, and companies who don’t have a strong presence on Facebook. I don’t yet know if, and where, G+ will fit in my usage.
Of all the social networks and services out there, Facebook is the one I view most often and spend the most time on, both reading and posting. I must admit that the availability of games do measure into my activities there. The news of games soon available on G+ piques my curiosity and gives me hope that G+ will have some pull on me in the future. It’s too early to say if it will replace Facebook as the place I spend the majority of my time upon.
Comparing the two, Facebook and Google Plus, Facebook has the very clear advantage of having existed and used by the public for a number of years. There is an established base of users who have registered with the website, update it with their photos, links of interest, personal information, and company profiles, who click on advertisements, and spend real life money on virtual goods and services, game currency and advantages. It will take time, perhaps years, for G+ to become as indispensable and essential to the average user’s daily online activities as Facebook’s status now enjoys. Time will tell if enough people will become accustomed to its interface and its offerings, enough to adopt G+ as their nexus of communication, amusement, and use, perhaps even to the detriment of Facebook’s current popularity.
G+’s only benefits at present are its newness, and adaptability to those issues plaguing Facebook, such as breaches of privacy. Such concerns are taken seriously by the Google Plus team, and belatedly and imperfectly addressed by the admin of Facebook. The emergence of games, and technologies yet to be unveiled, should prove interesting for G+.
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