Google+ Goes After Facebook

Despite Google's insistence that it wasn't trying to recreate Facebook, after months of leaks, everybody knew that the firm was definitely up to something.

Google finally unveiled its plans for a social network last night, and unsurprisingly, includes a whole suite of tools, just like many of its other popular services.  There isn't much hard and fast news about how it will all actually work, but yesterday's announcement covered most of the main features:

-  Circles: ''You share different things with different people. But sharing the right stuff with the right people shouldn't be a hassle. Circles makes it easy to put your friends from Saturday night in one circle, your parents in another, and your boss in a circle by himself, just like real life.'' - Sparks: ''Remember when your Grandpa used to cut articles out of the paper and send them to you? That was nice. That's kind of what Sparks does: looks for videos and articles it thinks you'll like, so when you're free, there's always something to watch, read, and share. Grandpa would approve.'' - Hangouts: ''Bumping into friends while you're out and about is one of the best parts of going out and about. With Hangouts, the unplanned meet-up comes to the web for the first time. Let buddies know you're hanging out and see who drops by for a face-to-face-to-face chat. Until we perfect teleportation, it's the next best thing.'' - Instant Upload: ''Taking photos is fun. Sharing photos is fun. Getting photos off your phone and on to the web is pretty much the opposite of fun. That's why we created Instant Upload: so that from now on, your photos upload themselves. You don't even have to say 'cheese'.'' - Huddle: ''Texting is great, but not when you're trying get six different people to decide on a movie. Huddle takes care of it by turning all those different conversations into one simple group chat, so everyone gets on the same page long before thumbs get sore. ''

Apart from the fact that it's presented as a bundle of services, rather than a single site, the biggest difference between Google+ and Facebook is the fact it's based around 'circles' of friends, bringing together and standardising the concept of 'lists' or 'groups' found on other sites.

Google's first two attempts at social networking—Buzz for ordinary users, and Wave for pros—were generally seen as flops, but Google+ seems to be one of the company's most well though-out projects to date.  What remains to be seen is what real users will make of it, but we'll have to wait a little while.  Like in the early days of Gmail, the beta version of Google+ is available only by invitation ...
You can find more videos on the project's official web page.


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