Does Google+ Really Pose Any Threat to Facebook?

Google is great for search, great for email. It even revitalized the instant message with Gchat. But can it hack it in the social networking scene?

Since the announcement that Google would be rolling out the new Google Plus service, the internet has been buzzing with speculation that it may be the death of Facebook. However, that's a lofty claim considering how poorly some of Google's previous ventures into social networking have turned out.

Google is great at creating buzz for their products because of its invite only test runs that get people talking. Everyone wants their hands on the newest technology because it's exclusive, it's elite, it's cutting edge. It worked for Gmail, because Gmail is great. It provided features that other email platforms were missing. However, their other big developments haven't worked out so well and it's because they have a problem answering the two most important questions in technology:

What does it do? And why do we need it?

Take Google Wave, for example. Just like Google+, Google Wave came with a lot of fanfare but crashed silently. And it's because no one was actually sure what it was for or how it worked. And most importantly, Google was never really able to convince us that we needed it. Because we can already send pictures, video, and messages in real time.

Google+ is making a lot of noise but can it actually make a big splash? Probably not and here's why.

They claim that Google+ "aims to make sharing on the web more like sharing in real life." What does that actually mean? And how is that different from how were already sharing on Twitter and Facebook? If we can't figure out those answers after taking a quick look at their website, we probably don't want it.

So let's take the interactive tour. There are Circles, which sounds a whole lot like limiting your Facebook profile so that only certain people can see your statuses or pictures. There are Hangouts which is the lovechild of Skype and Tinychat, whereby users can join into video chat parties with their friends. That already exists and no one uses it unless they're traveling abroad and it's too expensive to call. Instant Upload is nothing we don't already do on Facebook, Twitter, email or text. Sparks is the new buzz-name for Google Reader. The one redeeming feature seems to be Huddle, because no other social networking site offers the ability to chat with more than one person simultaneously. And it seems unlikely that one interesting feature will make us collectively delete our Facebooks.

It seems like the cornerstone of Google+ is the ability to share things with only certain people. But it's already pretty easy to get around sharing things with your boss or your parents on Facebook, by simply not adding them as a friend. If there's something you really don't want people to see, you probably shouldn't be sharing it on the internet to begin with. On Gmail, these people are already in my contacts, as is anyone I've ever corresponded with by default, so having to use the Circle feature to prevent them from seeing something I don't want them to see is actually a bit of an inconvenience.

If Google really wants to break into the social networking market, they need to realize that social networking isn't really about friends at all. We spend our lives on Facebook looking at pictures of people we were never that close to in high school and then gossiping about them at brunch with our real friends. We don't share that much with our friends online. Real friends call on your birthday, they don't post on your wall. Real friends are busy, they are on the go and so are you. If your schedules manage to synchronize, you get together for drinks, not for a video chat. When I share something on Facebook, it's because I want the random people, whose profile I occasionally browse, to see how much fun I'm having. My friends don't care because my friends were probably there with me.

They fail to take into account that most of us don't have these grand social circles. An online social network is only as strong as its number of users and if three or four of my good friends don't buy into Google+, it's already useless to me. And that's perfectly fine, because I can reach them any time by phone, text, email, Facebook, Twitter, and, of course, in person. I know it's 2011, but I do occasionally see people face to face.