Google+ is better for the web than Facebook
I’ve always been a bit of a outsider. I’m partially naturally inclined that way and partially fond of being interested in things that a minority is, which is why I’ve been questioning whether I really do think Google+ is superior to Facebook. And I do.
I grew up in the age of Facebook. I remember the summer before I started college there was some kind of strange compulsion by the incoming freshman to friend each other and check each other out on Facebook. It was really more of a way of possibly skipping all the awkwardness of trying to find your place in the first few months of college. Or at least it seemed that way. In truth I think Facebook only prolonged that process by making us think we were supposed to or (even worse) should be friends with the people we seemed to like over Facebook. Perceptions like that come from Facebook’s emphasis on creating a profile that you think is representative to yourself while also being attractive to other people. The whole emphasis of Facebook really is on creating an appearance that you think represents yourself accurately while also appealing to other people. Connecting people and creating a place for comfortable interaction is only secondary.
By contrast, Google+ is much more about interacting with people. Like with Facebook, part of the full Google+ experience is creating a profile of yourself for other users to see but the emphasis is not on displaying how attractive and wonderful your life is, how sexy you look in your Halloween costume, or how many inside jokes you have with your equally cool and sexy friends. The focus is on the Google+ stream, which is how you share content and comment with other users in a similar way to Twitter. For Facebook, there’s the News Feed but that serves more as a teaser for what your friends’ profiles have to offer. The Google+ stream is the main event of Google+.
Now, I do realize that the thing about social networking sites is that users decide what they are. Twitter wouldn’t be such a useful tool for disseminating and receiving breaking news if users didn’t collectively use is it that way. MySpace wouldn’t be such a good website for creating really tacky pages and stalking underaged girls if users didn’t use it that way. And Facebook wouldn’t be such a useful tool for browsing an endless sea of pictures of other people if users didn’t use it that way. I’m not quite sure how Google+ can best be used and I don’t think I’m alone in that. It depends on how users use it when/if it grows. But I do think it’s place on the web will be far more valuable than Facebook’s.
I’ve been using Google+ a lot lately, probably more than I use my Facebook and I’ll say I just come away more satisfied because most of what I do is interact with people and share with people. On Facebook I, as I suspect most people do, spend most of my time checking out other people’s profiles. Seeing what they’ve been up to. Part of this is curiosity but I think that curiosity is based on a deep-seeded quest for confirmation that the party isn’t being missed. If one were to make a list of some of the worst results of successful social networking websites like Facebook, it would have to include users paying more attention to how they are projecting themselves than actually, you know, being social.
Google+ isn’t totally exempt from that but it is way more focused on sharing content than displaying an attractive self, as a social networking website should do.
The only problem I have with G+ so far is that it’s still somewhat difficult to find people. It’s nice that joining conversations is so easy, but unlike in Twitter, I cannot find new people by watching the conversations of the people I am already connected to – because I can only see conversations started by people I am already following.
And, for example, even though you mentioned in this post that you’re on G+, I can’t find you. Even though it’s likely that you already follow or talk to at least one of the same people I do.
This is the biggest flaw for me right now as it severely restricts the growth of the network in a way that Twitter is awesome at promoting. And it probably wouldn’t be too hard to implement — something as simple as an ‘also show comments’ option when looking at someone’s posts on their profile would do it (so as not to clutter up the main feed).Report
Hmmm, that’s a good point. I’m betting though that will be optimized if more people use Google+.Report
“[P]art of the full Google+ experience is creating a profile of yourself for other users to see but the emphasis is not on displaying how attractive and wonderful your life is, how sexy you look in your Halloween costume, or how many inside jokes you have with your equally cool and sexy friends.”
There’s nothing about Facebook that either requires or emphasizes that, either.
The fact that most people use it that way says a lot about people and very little about Facebook. And, to be honest, if Google+ doesn’t allow people to describe “how attractive and wonderful their lives are” then it’ll wind up in the same bin as Friendster, Tribes, and all the other failed social networks.Report
I completely disagree with that. Like I say, the appeal of Facebook is that you can make a self image of yourself and use it interact on Facebook with other people. Users are inclined to make their profile in a way which they feel is an accurate depiction of themselves, even though that’s not necessarily true.
But I do agree that how people use Facebook and Google+ does decide what it will become. Facebook has pretty much taken its shape. Google+ has not.Report
I find Google + works a lot more like the way I’ve organized my real life. It’s easy to seperate the trivial parts from the serious bits. Facebook is a lump sum. I know you can divide friends into groups etc but I never took the time. With Google + you don’t have to Circles does it for you.Report
So far I have manged to stay hopelessly behind the curve on facebook, twitter and the whole social network phenomena. As such, I’m reluctant to venture a guess as to the motivations of people using the service or it’s their intentions. My sense is that when it was exclusively a college phenomena, the primary purpose of its users was to get laid. I’ve been using it primarly to pimp my blog, which I guess is a variation on a theme.
I recently signed up on G+ in the hope of being on the leading edge of on of these services for a change. Your post gives me some inkling of what I am supposed to be doing with it. Sounds like it’ll be a better fit for me.Report
I definitely think that Facebook’s primary function has changed from a way to “get laid” to something else, something a bit more amorphous.Report