Google+ versus Facebook

Hello everyone, just like many of you I am a social networking guy by hobby not profession. I enjoy understanding and sharing knowledge with others. As a result I thought I would give you my analysis of social networking and why how I change from social networking site to other social networking sites starting from Hi5 moving to Bebo, Facebook, Hyves, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yammer and Google+. This post maybe long but I hope you too see your self in this analysis. At the end you will find my top 7 reasons that Google+ beats Facebook and why I moved to Google+.

Hi5

I remember in 2000 I was living in Portugal and the new craze was hi5, yes hi5. A social network page which mainly was used in south of Europe. Its philosophy, people could customize, add pictures and add friends. This was a huge hit. I started to use it as several of my friends were on it, and it became the first craze.

Where did hi5 go wrong?

Well, it was well programmed, lots of people were using it, easy to log on, but for some reason, Facebook was gaining territory. I personally stopped using hi5 as every time I travelled and met someone, outside of south of europe, no one knew hi5.

I then realized that the same way there was hi5, each country had developed its own social networking page: hi5, bebo, hyves, etc… They are all very similar in features but had no or very little value for those crossing borders. As students, cross borders it became clear that facebooks added value was the international community.

Bebo

I stayed with hi5 until about 2005, and then I moved to the Scotland, where hi5 did not exist…everyone around me was on bebo. So I decided to try it out. The challenge was, I could not get all of my 200 or so Portuguese friends on to bebo from hi5. Never the less the over whelming feeling of being left out, I gave bebo a try. At this stage some of my friends were already moving to facebook, specially those who studied abroad.

Facebook

In 2007, I decided, to also try Facebook, as I was travelling more and more and I wanted to keep track of my international friends. The cool factor was way great to say I met this Japanese dude in Belgium or in the Brazilian in France, and I was keeping tabs on them as well I could prove this to my other friends. So I eventually abandoned hi5 and bebo and adopted facebook. The single reason was to keep tabs on my international friends. Facebook was the first to cross borders from the us to europe, and to asia.

Hyves

In 2009 I actually moved from the Uk to Netherlands, where yet again I was confronted with another social networking page: hyves. This was mainly aimed at the dutch community, however it did not last for me. As an expact I began to connect to other expats and the common tool of making friends/integrating/being invited to parties was Facebook.

Facebook was the answer

So then I began to realize the power of facebook. It no longer was a tool for just keeping tabs on old friends, but a way of being invited to parties and events for expats here in Eindhoven. this was the greatest value of all, I could store my party pictures, make new friends, see how and who was living around me. At this stage I was hooked on facebook, going over 600 friends. Each journey I made, more friends, more facebook friends. When I got back, I would share my adventures via facebook and go to parties/events organzed by others. Every day, I could choose to go to some party somewhere.

In 2009 facebook had already taken over most of the world, but for me the greatest value was: Facebook events.

It is true around this time frame Twitter was emerging, but one could not organize events and see who was attending, it was true that doodle a even more powerful tool for organizing events locations as one does not need a doodle account where Facebook forced that upon us. Never the less it was being able to capture pictures of these events which lead to facebooks increased success. People are curious and love seeing other peoples pictures. In about 2009, facebook introduces tagging, so whenever someone took a picture of you he could tag you and others could see that picture. This became the thing at least for me, going to parties, and seeing what parties were fun. Making new friends as I went along.

Twitter

I did start to use Twitter, but I became an occasional user, as my passion was not following via text, but more following pictures, and being invited to events by friends, even though interesting things/conversations actually Twitter was easier to find people with common interests.

You see at this stage, Twitter, made an interesting breakthrough, by focusing not only letting people who know each other follow/read each others statues/comments, but why not let anyone in the world see what anyone else is doing. This made it success as people with interests in say photography or DSPs could connect much easier than via facebook. I had friends to started to follow “porn stars” feeling connected to these people made them special. Relations were being built but not at a personal level, I could not see pictures of my friends via twitter. So I focused on Facebook. But Twitter was and for sure is still widely used today, far more than any hi5, bebo or hyves website.

LinkedIn

As time went by more and more people around the world jumped on facebook, and we begun to find old friends from the past. At this stage many people used Facebook to find old classmates, which was the coolest thing. As one could see your friends, friends, and then add them as your own.

Facebook was growing, very quickly, and hit a problem, it became very personal, and not really professional, so LinkedIn imerged with the concept why not have a facebook for professionals… and it turned out that people really like to keep the two separate. Most people have 2 faces, what they do in their personal life, parties, pictures and then their professional life. Where you attended professional conferences, follow companies, look for jobs. This market was huge and I too jumped on LinkedIn. My friends were getting jobs offers via LinkedIn, so I boosted my numbers and hit over 800 connections. This was/is my way of staying connected to professionals outside my personal life.

Yammer

A relatively new one appeared for me inside the MathWorks. The idea of social networking in larger companies begun to make sense, however most companies do not have the time to create their own facebook, so Yammer, focused on facebook only for a particular company. So If i am on Yammer, I can only see and read what other people in the MathWorks are doing. It became a news group on steroids. I am a fan, as it does help me make new connections in my company but it is still far from being perfect.

Facebook Dominance

As time went on, I was more and more a fan of Facebook, I mean they were bringing social networking to a new level, one could play games with friends…. yup I was too a mafia wars geek, chatting became a reality in facebook, eventualy video call was also possible. Facebook made money with small adverts just like Google, Facebook grew and they were listening to what people wanted. News groups came, splitting your friends into lists, then finally the latest and greatest… TimeLine. Make your facebook page your bio… what a great idea. This became a very strong point for facebook. In 2011, I was convinced that Facebook would keep growing and nothing would beat it…I mean I have over 600 friends (there was no way I could move these people away), so Facebook had a monopoly. All the pictures from parties… were there… I could track my timeline back to Scotland… Why would I want to move? Facebook had a monopoly. I was using LinkedIn for Professional and Facebook for personal networking. I was a happy bunny, just like most other people around the world.

Google+

So then on June 28 of 2011, google announces Google+. The question then is why should one move away from Facebook to use Google’s version of the same? The answer is simple, Google will and could only beat Facebook, if and only if their features were better and far better than anyone elses, other wise why change yet again?. This week I have officially switched and adopted Google+, here is why.

I did not realize that there were a few things that I really did not like about Facebook, until I saw how cool Google did it.

1. Google Circles, you see when you get over 600 friends, they arent all friends, they are different groups, and one needs to organize them. It is a mamoth task to organize your friends in lists in Facebook, and Google from the start made it easy to create Circles, groups, where you could “drag” and drop your friends into the right circles. This way you can filter who to follow. Today when I log on to facebook I cannot keep track of all 600 friends. You can filter, if and only if you create these lists… It is easier to start from scratch.

2. Google Photos – even though I used Facebook for pictures from parties, I never uploaded my holiday pictures, I was a picassa fan. I always backed up my personal holiday photos on google. Google+ allowed me to integrate my albums out of the box. Picassa and Google+ Photos were the same, but now I could share the pictures with circles…. WOW. Great. Not only that but I had an Android phone, where I could log on and carry my pictures with me where ever I go. Then what happened was that Google+ allows me to upload any picture that I take from my phone to my account, and put it in of my albuns!!! GREAT. Not only this but I can now choose to follow my friends pictures and not text!! Google nailed this, as a result people with Pictures switched very quickly, as the picture management was far superior to Facebook. On top of that Google+ used their existing Taging, but automaticaly. Picassa had already had this concept that if you tagged someone, they would remember, so any future pictures of that same person would likely appear tagged automatically. WOW… Automatic tagging what a breakthrough.

3. Google+ Hangouts – So of course people who used Gmail, knew about the chat, they loved it as no company could ban this without blocking their own email. The chat was well developmed with video feeds, but when google+ came out they had to beat everyone hands down to get adoption…Hangouts. One could have more than 2 video feeds connected at once. Skype one needed to pay for this, now Google… one could have a 3 or 4 way video conference for FREE!!!!!!

4. Google+ Events- well one of Facebooks advantages was events, well google looked at this and made it better… why not integrate this with Google Calendars (as android becomes more popular this is a more attractive feature). I no longer need to log on to facebook, click events to see what is happening. Google+ one creates an event, it appears automatically on Google calendars of the people who are in your circles, it is integrated with Google maps (nice for setting locations), one can add pictures from the events and of course setup a live video feed!! Wow, beat that Facebook?! Of course the invitations are sent via email to those who do not use Google+.

5. Google+ Locations – as google maps grow, as companies want to be part of google maps, google created a framework for others to write and rank reviews. This is what Locations is all about, given your location you can see restaurants/shops near you and rank/write/rate them and make it available for others. As times goes buy, all review sites need to be careful. Not only can I see posts by my friends, by circles, but by location and see what is around me…Have you ever had that conversation… where should we go now with your friends?!

6. Google+ Explore – Whats hot? – We all know that Google is great at logging things, well they took the best from Twitter, and brought into Google+. Google logs on a daily basis, the posts which get the most +1, or likes equivalent from facebook and anyone can see this. The result is you can see the best daily post in the world, self voted, a bit like Stumbleupon, but without the subject. This is great as everyday I can see some cool picture, joke or something that the rest of the world likes. This is particularly useful for pictures, people taking the best pictures around the world, and sharing them.

7. Google Ripples – the last key thing for me which really got me on Google+ was the fact that I could share a link of someone elses post. So say a friends writes something, I can like it or +1 it, but I too want to share it with my other circles. This is possible and Google tracks this. As time goes on Google allows every single person to track that one post and see who shared it. This is Google ripples, you can see in time, who shared your post, and who from those shared it to. The outcome, you can find graphically who the most influential people are in Google+. Targeted Marketing on Steroids!!! Wow. This is great for companies… so guess what people now can create Google Pages, usually for companies to advertise for free and see who their key sponsors are. So if companies are on Google+ I too put my professional status there and create a circle for my professional friends…. Wow LinkedIn be careful.

 

Thank you for reading this post.

Why do I like Google?

Hello everyone,

 

I know that there thousands of critics and views on Google. Lately most of them point towards comparing Google either to Apple or to Microsoft. I thought I would put together my view on why I really appreciate what Google is doing. At the same time putting things into perspective of what Microsoft and Apple did too.

 

If you think about it Google has become in the last 10 years one of the most successful companies in the world. How did they do it? Here is the story from a Technical perspective…

Here is my view on the great technical milestones that they achieved which paved the road to their success:

- Google Search… beats yahoo coming out of the .com crash. Why? Because it was easy, simple no adverts, powerful, quick and appealing.

- Google creates gmail… Which is by invitation only! Great Marketing trick, you could only get a gmail account if a friend of yours gave you one… result… it was fashion to have a gmail mail account. Everyone wanted it! They were one of the first to say well you can have 1Gb of email storage: and each day it would grow slowly. People really thought this was a great thing which made it even more appealing. Several people at the time drew tha analogy between money growing and gmail space growingl.

- This was a period where google grew popularity and made their hiring process aimed at the very best… true engineers. It actually attracted a certain type of person, I would even say border line: geeks only. This proved to be a fundamental part of their success.

- Google maps becomes a reality. Independent if they bought this idea or not they managed to integrate it with Google search. Google Earth the next step was a HUGGEEE success. Around the world people were searching their homes, cities trying to see their pasts.

- With Google maps the whole world wanted to be on it, have their own place, and since Google has never been scared of overwhelming amounts of data they embraced this and said thank you to everyone.

- Of course there were multiple versions of Google earth came out, but the idea of having layers, measuring seeing anything anywhere in the world well that was a huge breakthrough. So they still grew even further.

- The company philosophy at this stage and still is today that everyone has 20% time off to be creative, which is amazing. With this free time there were several projects growing and becoming successful. The famous Google Labs was a reality. A very successful one. Innovation drives companies!

- Google decided to map entire libraries online… this got them into trouble but still is a valuable resource for them. Google Scholar and Google Read are examples of what came out of Google Labs.

- Google goes for YouTube, huge purchase but at the end of the day this was a great win for them. Not only web search, geographical search but now video were under their control. It is also integrated into their Google Video.

- At this stage critics begin to worry on the speed that the company is growing… but what do they do? Google Documents/Calendar all come together integrated with gmail.

- The concept of having gmail as a hard drive or even using the web as a development environment comes back to reality. The push the documents, spreadsheets, forms, colanders, drawing, presentations all online for free. Because it is for free Microsoft isn't worried…

- Then of course the idea of having their own browser becomes a reality… why? to better integrate online development in their way. A baby step to creating their own OS. At the time it was a myth or a rumour that Google would ever create their own OS.

- Google Chrome took the world by surprise, the fastest, easiest, simplest Browser… and guess what… that is what the world wanted. IE was too heavy. Firefox still had the majority because of the flexibility, so who ended up loosing users?! Microsoft!!!

- All of  sudden Google becomes a threat do Microsoft.

- In a few years Google then launches: Google finance, on a par with yahoo finance…if not better in many ways.

- they give the possibility to the world to use their graphs open source!!! This is great because there has never been an easy way of plotting online. They created it for Google Finance and let the world use it… great:)

- Google also made available to the world of who and how people used Google itself with Google insight…. get a report of how many times someone types in a key word in your region. That report of course has the same graphs as Google Finance.

- Given that their main activities or revenue came from advertisement, they said hey why don't we let anyone use us and we will pay individuals… for revenue we get… What an idea!? Adsense was born and their revenue skyrocket. AdWords was the natural extension to this.

- With Adsense of course tools were needed on their side to analyse web traffic… so they then make Google Analytics available for the world!!!! Everyone could create and track web traffic to their websites companies. What a success that was! What a great service for free!

- On the Social networking front Google purchases Blogger. People could now create their own blogs… a baby step to Google sites. Google now would also allow one to create their own websites. Giving people a VERY simple approach to this. At the beginning no one really thought anything about this but…they had a hidden agenda… they wanted to be able to create intranets for companies!!! This was the first baby step. When Facebook became so popular they came up with Buzz. Not that powerful in comparison until you tie that together with where people post thing. Now they have a true advantage over Facebook from a marketing perspective.

- Of course their next great achievement, not sure if this happen before blogger was purchased was Picassa!!! This appeared at a very similar time to Flicker. What was powerful was that because gmail had the space, every user could upload all their pictures and share them with the world. Web Albums now existed!!!

- Picassa was also born to help integrate that process of uploading and managing the albums online. The interesting thing was that Google had other plans for picassa… integrating it with blogger, making simple image processing algorithms for the pictures. This was great and simple to use. No one really predicted where it was going….

- Today Picassa identifies faces and you search your photos based on faces… not only that you can tie your photos to positions which can be placed on Google maps AND your contacts can automatically have pictures that you took. GREAT!!!

- Google then realized that Microsoft still had a competitive advantage: Messenger, there were and are many instant messaging services around the world… but Google noticed that most companies could block Messenger or AOL or Skypess due to the ports and settings… So they took email and converted it into the Google Chat. Now everyone who had gmail, which at this stage is most of the world could talk online via there email account to their friends. No company could block this without blocking all emails!

- Recently they added the capability to add video feeds from webcams and now you can even make phone calls to mobile numbers… Skype watch out. Google has now taken on Skype with one huge hammer!

- Street view was the next amazing thing, even thought Microsoft had something similar, the moment that Google had was overwhelming and when they brought out street view around the world… well everyone was crazy about it…Google sends cars around the world to take pictures of all the streets and then allows you to see your street! This was the next step to the Google Maps. No one at the time really realized that this was the building block to take out TomTom, with their own Navigation program. Now you could get directions on Google maps from A to B (recognizing all the places that people put on there) but now you could get pictures of the intersections where you need to turn. Not just a map but a real life photo!

- There was more to come… Android.. the Google OS for mobile phones. Now this was a surprise because the mobile phone market was really dominated by Nokia (Symbian) developed from QT, BlackBerry and of course the iPhone3. Windows CE was clearly struggling here. So what/how/why did Google take this on? At the time a lot of people did not really believe that this would be a reality or a good idea….But looking back they had this GREAT idea. I believe the thought process was as follows: we will never bring Windows down for desktops, but for mobile device the market is full BUT nothing is for free… And free is where Google rules.

- Android was created, now the powerful thing was that they said you know what anyone can and should be able to develop things for a phone. They opened Pandora's box. Apple wanted to keep control over this but Google launched Android and allowed the world to contribute. At this stage they have embraced JAVA (Apple disregarded JAVA from Sun now Oracle), for the plotting their online services, wanted to work cross platform, and people began to show some curiosity. Nothing special. Not an easy battle. But within 2 years of this, Google took a lot of good ideas coming from Apple, and made their OS attractive for Mobile phone companies: its free, easy to use, you can integrate gmail, calendar, pictures, movies, GPS, download any app, its easy to use, multitasking, it will improve faster than any other OS…and ANY mobile phone provider can use it…. HTC jumps on this and starts to sell phones with Windows and Android. At the beginning clearly iphone was still way ahead of the game, the look the style, the ease of use. All of which Google embraced and is moving faster than Apple I would say…

- Samsung then realizes that Android is powerful enough to use, and they bring out the Galaxy. This is a turning point. It beats the iphone, on techs, ease of use, and it on par with the iPhone4…Just cheaper and anyone can use.

- The important thing here that due to Googles moment of the last 10 years people really get on board and took it serious. Android supports JAVA, flash, and it integrates all of Googles products better than you would expect: picassa, google chat, google talk, Google earth, Navigation + street view (ooohhh by the way be careful TomTom), calander, email, contacts, documents, spreadsheet…

- And of course the concept of the iTunes which worked so well for Apple… Google decided to create Market place… and guess what it is growing exponentially faster than the iTunes store.

- All of this is interesting however the concept that I notice is that Google took on the iPad at the same time… so tablet PCs could also have an OS based on Android, but now ANY hardware provider could use it…What does this mean, tablet PCs are faster, slick and can be used as large phones… iPad was a huge success but did not support flash or have have a web camera. Google was not bound to this and because any HW provider could use the OS… Samsung and many others have begun to use Android for Tablets not only mobile phones…

- The question I ask myself now… is what about desktops… well if you can have a tablet PC running android what is stopping you have your desktop to the same? Microsoft…takes another huge hit!

- Some people always state well Google is always aimed at the user and not really for companies so Microsoft will always be alright… well a couple of years ago that changed. Google create Google apps which is basically the whole Google tool chain that could be installed on internal server for companies so no data would be exchanged with the real world. It is cheaper, easier to use that than what Microsoft provides. I agree that it is perhaps not scalable today but due the the huge success of Google the integration of ERPs, finance tools, marketing tools, email, tracking graphs, makes it so attractive for start-up companies. So now most start up companies embrace this as web pages can be created quickly and easily, pictures, documentation, shared and stored (actually SharePoint be careful). version control on top of all of this comes for free.

- So what is the next step for Google? Well my personal favourite is Google Goggles, so with your phone one can always take a picture, but Google then scans it and search based on the photo, weather it is bar code, a art, a street, a name, a picture… it is all there. What an amazing way of searching.

- If you integrate Google translator into this the sky is the world… say you are in a different country you see a billboard in the street, take a picture it gets translated automatically for you and you find out where where that show, movie is showing and for what price!!!!

 

Given all of these technical functionalities that Google provides what is the catch?! Well the truth is, Microsoft has been a dominant player in the software world with no real competition for several years, it is really good to see someone step up. The problem is that Windows is GREAT, and everyone will use it. Specially windows 7, however if you take into account how Microsotf tried to copy Google with more resources with the MySpace concept they failed. And Google grew faster than anyone could imagine. They took advantage of the world giving them data. They just organized it. Of course with new monopolies there are always people who dislike this, and Google clearly is at that stage. Bing - Microsofts search engine tried to take out Google’s popularity and did to a certain point specially with their Bing Travel, but this is still only available in America. Microsoft has done some great things in the last decade but I for see that things might change….

With all of this there is the Apple story, which cannot be ignored in this analysis…Steve Jobs took a different approach… and did so very successfully, ipod, iphone,itouch, ipad, itunes, Quick Time, iMac, all of which were huge success. The Company really did reinvent it self which does not happen that often in the software world. How will Apple continue? Well they do look good their products are good and easy to use. Their name too has a huge moment that even Google cannot take on. An Apple Product says something and looks great wherever you put it. It works and is maintained by Apple guaranteeing that everything works. Apple only needs to support what it wants making it easier to maintain. But this comes at a cost. Google does not charge people so no one can really complain!

Let me finish this entry with one single question:

Have you ever given your credit card or any money directly to Google?

 

Gareth