I started this blog assuming that the whole world knew about Google+ by now, turns out that I was very wrong. After asking over 30 friends and associates whether they are on Google+ yet, I was again greeted by a puzzled look and shake of the head each and every time. This has made me realise that it can’t just be my “circle” of friends (like what I did there?) who are oblivious to what Google+ is; after speaking to a considerable amount of people in America it seems that this is the case across the globe.
What actually is Google+?
So you may be reading this thinking, “Well I don’t know what Google+ is either…” Don’t worry as now is the time to find out!
Google originally released their own social networking site called “Orkut”. You can be forgiven for not knowing this information as it was a bit of a flop in comparison to it’s rivals: Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Despite it being very popular in Brazil and India, Orkut never really took off on a global scale and was greatly shadowed by Facebook to the extent of not even being recognised by the majority of social network users.
Rather than trying to fix something that was broken; Google designed, built and recently launched a brand new social networking site called Google+ which managed to acquire 20 million member sign ups within a months period… under an invitation only release. Armed with a fairly simple (and familiar) interface, innovative features and groovy navigation style, Google has given itself an incredibly good chance of competing against Facebook with Google+. The social networking site allows you do to anything Facebook does minus applications and advertising (at the moment) which is more of a positive factor in my book! Gone are the days of Farmville requests flooding your feed…
“So why move to Google+ if it’s just a clone of Facebook?” I hear you asking. I have personally been explaining it to my friends as a less spammy version of Facebook with excellent features used to make online interaction better between social groups. It is not restricted to the average social network user though, it could be used as a very beneficial tool for businesses and independent freelancers who want to keep their contacts organised while being able to hold meetings in a simple but efficient manner across the net. Either way, I recommend that you at least try to interactive tour found here https://plus.google.com/ or request an invitation to use the full service on our forum.
Google+ anyone? Yes please!
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