google+ vs facebook

Posted by Jamie Townsend - 238 days ago

The Battle between Facebook and Google has taken one more step closer to full blown war of the social network with the field trial of Google+

Today I was sent an invite to the Google Plus system, please click here to see the screenshots I took while playing with it.   My first impression was that Google had just basically re-skinned the Facebook design as you have the navigation at the top which includes notifications and links to modify your profile. There is then a 3 column setup just like Facebook with the left hand column used for filtering the "Stream" - Which is Google's name for the "News Feed", and a Chat feature below.  The middle column is made up of all your friends posts which you can 'like' or 'comment' on. Finally the right hand column contains suggestions to who you may know, a list of people in your 'Circles' and 'Hangout'.

Circles I can only describe as Groups.  By default you have a 'Friends', 'Family', 'Acquaintances' and 'Following'.  You can also create your own Circle. When you are posting anything to your Stream you can pick which Circles can see the post.  See the photo gallery for some pictures of the awesome drag and drop UI the Circles system uses.

Hangout allows group video chat, I have not tried this yet but it looks like it could be a key factor in persuading Facebook faithful over to Google Plus.

Huddle is the Goolge Plus version of Group Chatting.  Again it is all based off your Circles.

For more information see the Google Plus website:-  http://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/+/learnmore/

Tags: Social Network, Facebook, Google,