Google‘s proliferation of the +1 button continued Wednesday as the company added the feature to image searches.
The button, which was introduced in March as an answer to Facebook’s “Like,” is equivalent to a stamp of approval from Google users. Over the past few months, +1s have appeared next to news articles, on websites and even in ads. (more…)
Google Plus started out growing faster than any social network has so far, but may not be able to compete against Facebook longer term.
The appeal is not sticking because many of the people that quickly flocked to Google Plus have made their way back to the comfort and familiarity of Facebook.
In fact, the inability to keep users engaged has some observers wondering just how long Google Plus will be able to survive.
What a day. In the space of a few short hours, Google+ wrenched open the floodgates, allowing anyone to sign up for the fledgling social network — while Facebook retooled its newsfeed so you won’t miss any of your friend’s vital updates.
Google+ managed to out-announce Facebook by a wide margin. The search giant offered a slew of new Google+ features, such as turning Hangouts into a bona fide broadcast platform. The search giant even added–you guessed it–search to the service.
For those of you not in Google+, which is most of you, this is a very big deal. Google+ has, by some measures, almost 20 million users and no way of finding anything. I have no idea why Google waited to introduce search until Google+ was out of the hands of Google’s more trusted Web cognoscenti’ audience. We could have debugged it for them. The company also managed to bury the lead, putting the fact that registration for Google+ is now open to the masses near the end of its announcement.
Google Plus has yet to launch pages for brands, but that hasn’t stopped people from making comparisons with the live version on Facebook, and now so will we. JWT New York emerging media strategist Zeny Huang penned one for Mashable, focusing on brand pages, and we beg to differ.
Huang zeroed in on four topics in comparing brand pages on the two social networks: search, customization, analytics, and the fact that Google can learn from Facebook. Again, Google Plus is still in beta, and brand pages don’t exist yet, nor do some of the hypothetical features she mentioned.
Google Plus is obviously still in testing mode, despite its impressive growth. But if the search-engine giant really wants to up the ante in its competition with Facebook, here are seven features the veteran social network boasts that are not yet offered by the newcomer.
Hey, did you hear? Google has a new social network!
It’s called Google Plus, and it’s kind of a big deal. At least, that’s what we’re being told. Over, and over, and over. Yep, Google Plus is the best thing since Facebook. In fact, it’s better than Facebook. And it’s better than Twitter. In fact, Google Plus is going to be the death of them both!
Poppycock. Not only is Google Plus one of the biggest examples of style-over-substance and over-hype that the Internet has seen, it will be prove to be absolutely no threat to the dominance of Facebook and Twitter within their respective niches.
Google+ is the newest social network on the block, and it’s gaining a lot of momentum. But it’s very much an unknown quantity for a lot of people, as many of its features are still being explored.
If you’re just figuring out Google+, this infographic depicting the features that it shares with Twitter and Facebook should help. The Tweetsmarter blog found this gem of an infographic on a post from Hutch Carpenter on Quora.
Google and Facebook are at war. We’ve known this for a while. Of course, neither side will admit to it, but they are. Winner takes the Internet.
After months of Facebook owning Google in just about every way imaginable (well, except search, of course — but the rise of social is slowly making search less important), Google has finally been able to strike back with Google+. And now a full-on social sharing race is getting underway. It may not be a winner-take-all race, but it will eventually be winner-take-most. We simply can’t share everything across 5 or even 3 networks. Google is fighting an uphill battle in this regard, but at least they finally have a weapon.
Google and Facebook are at war. This is old news. They both want to be the center of the Internet — but there can be only one center. For a while, it looked like things were quickly shifting Facebook’s way after years of dominance by Google. Then Google+ appeared — already the most compelling social experience Google has ever offered.
While it’s still far from clear what the actual impact of G+ will be on the Internet at large, it’s pretty clear already that it’s something Facebook is going to have to take seriously. And they are. Despite Mark Zuckerberg downplaying it, Facebook did just launch a video chat feature a week after Google did in G+. And last summer, Facebook rushed to get the new Groups done in time to beat Circles to the same punch.
by Nick O’Neill
One of the features found in Google Plus, the company’s new social networking product, is photo tagging. It’s a feature that Facebook was awarded a patent for just a couple of months ago. So will the social network send a cease-and-desist letter to the search giant?
Photo tagging was arguably the single most important feature on Facebook, as it resulted in users who were glued to the screen as they received email after email notifying them of photos uploaded from the night before. The feature has also helped the site grow its membership.
Granted, there are no widely known instances of Facebook using their patents as a means to shut down others, although the company has most definitely gone after companies with similar names. Patents have also become widely frowned upon, as they can stunt innovation.
If Facebook decided to send Google a cease-and-desist letter, that would also mean that the social network acknowledges a competitive threat from the search giant. Currently tech pundits have widely praised Google Plus but have yet to acknowledge the defensive assets that Facebook has available. Facebook already plans on making a product announcement tomorrow, and that could divert the technorati’s attention from Google Plus.
Regardless, the search giant still needs to deliver a high quality product that naturally spreads throughout its user base if it’s going to have any chance of competing. Photo tagging is one feature that is extremely valuable for accomplishing exactly that. If Facebook is going to step up it’s efforts to protect itself from Google Plus, it would seem as though preventing the company from using photo tagging would be a logical step.
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