Google+ (or G+, g+, googleplus) is the social network coming straight from the Larry Page mind. After being reinstated as Google CEO, Page's very first goal was to give a social aspect to his company. And so here we are, two months after this took of power, a new Google app, maybe THE app which will rule them all.
After few hours of fun, I'll try to describe this product and give my opinion about it.
Google+ : What on earth is this ??
How explain G+ in few words :
Google+ = facebook.googleizeThat();
As I said, G+ is a new social network and is well known target is Facebook, the most famous social network isn't it ? So If you're familiar with "Like", "Wall", "Friends" and all this stuff you'll found your marks on G+.
 |
| The G+ interface |
The personal data is masked to get in trouble with lawyers ;) But as you can see, it's very Facebook-like. There is a Facebook-Google+ translation guide:
| Google+ | |
| One Wall | Many Streams |
| Friends | Contacts |
| Like | Google +1 button |
| Groups | Circles |
| Embeded Chat | Gtalk |
| Poke | No equivalent :( |
| ? | Hangouts - video chat |
| ? | Sparks - RSS Agregator |
To try it you need an invitation. That's a Google strenght, the tester felt privileged, and the others felt frustrated. So creating a need, Google+ create the buzz, everybody wants to be invited to be in the circle. This is the famous marketing technic based on the Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And as a movie trailer we have an interfactive demo : http://www.google.com/+/demo/
Google+, a new Big Brother ?
The key point of a social network is to link persons together. Where facebook uses friends and list to sort them, G+ uses contacts and circles.
The circles are your social circles In Real Life. I mean, you will add your brother profile in the friend circle and your boss in your work collegues circle. All this stuff is well designed with fancies animations. The circles are useful when you will post your status, you will choose which person will be notified by your last post. Maybe your boss is not the perfect viewer for your last Not Safe For Work video, or maybe you want to broadcast to your friends your photos of the perfect sunny day you spent in your pool.
This is the main difference between the two products. Google is well known for its intrusion in our privacy, but with G+ the can really parametrized our online life and that's pretty cool.
My feeling
After playing a little bit, I've the feeling that G+ is much more "adult" than facebook. I mean, I think G+ will not be used by teenagers or younger, we will not found a dog fan page or games such as "Miniville". The standard user of G+ will be and 20+ years old, which will keep his facebook to have fun with his friend and will attempt to be an adult person in G+. For me, the first thing I have done was not to search my lol-friends but to add my Twitter "contacts", to be 'connected' with my profesional network.
The circles mechanism, is defintively as useful as the Twitter subscription mechanism. There is not automatically birderectional relations, you can be in ones circle without adding him to yours circles.
So, it's much more easy in Google+ to broadcast to your circles than established friendship relations. You're free to post without the 140-char limit and anime/moderate its comments without polluting your streams, I think we are all bored to see too much personnal tweets in our timelines.
One thing freak me out with G+, it's well integrated in Google app even too much integrated. Since the standard search engine page to the Calendar, this famous new dark bar appear and it's embedding the G+ notification and a quick-post input. So to sum up, Google can interact in my mails, in my maps, in my calendar, in my rss reader, ..., even my girlfriend can't do that.
The seconde thing I don't like is the "+1" button, is the "Like" equivalent but IMHO, is too much present and it's polluting the UI.
Concerning the Android app, it's very "clean" I "
Conclusion
Google does a bet with social networks. Does Google+ be the next, Wave or Buzz ? Will it be the facebook killer ? I don't but until them I play with it and it's a really pleasure. But I feel frustrated to doen't have an API to extend it. Google mashup possibilities are infinite, an API will be for me the killer functionality !
That's the end of my first article, please forgive my english mistakes and I will be happy to have somme corrections :)
Aucun commentaire :
Enregistrer un commentaire