Thursday 30 June 2011

Digging deeper into Google+ or why it can be very big thing

Simply put, Google+ is to fight Facebook
http://mashable.com/2011/06/28/google-plus/

Main business model is (well, who was doubting it!) - online ads
http://mashable.com/2011/03/31/googles-plus-1-and-facebook/

Why Google+ can be big thing?

Small story. Luckily I've received an invitation today to Google+ so I could try it out.
Invitation came from ... Won't tell the name, ok?
But he is a big guy (the big tech guy behind Red Hat, hi5, LinkedIn and now Google (10 months)).
Why would I receive an invitation from him? Well, he is the biggest guy behind Apache Shindig and
OpenSocial. That's why (I am also quite active here). When I entered Google+, I realized that he is in Google now and he is one of the people behind Google+ :). I got as well an invitation from another OpenSocial/Shindig guy who is also in Google.

As I looked closely at the interface, I realize that it is nothing but the implementation of OpenSocial specification.
1. Circles are exactly OpenSocial groups - Family, Acquaintances, Friends, Following.
That's the main (and cool!) difference from Facebook where everybody is a friend (which often does not make sense at all)
2. Activity Streams - standardized in OpenSocial 2.0. These Streams are connected to Groups or a Person.
3. Albums - standardized in OpenSocial

I do not know if they already opened the apis to these things, but it is exactly OpenSocial thingy, so I am quite sure they will.
This means their data is interoperable with LinkedIn, hi5 and all others OpenSocial compliant containers - all but Facebook.

That's about connections to OpenSocial. So why it can be a big thing?

1. OpenSocial gadgets and APIs are to come (for sure). They are open vs. closed Facebook-own APIs.
2. Google has a big luggage of cool things and services already and they will be integrating it within Google+.
    a) they integrated google talk chat already.
    b) Picasa photoes are integrated
    c) They integrated your contacts from gmail
    e) How about sharing a google calendar with a circle ?
    f) How about gmail, sending emails to a circle ?
    g) How about Google docs shared within a circle ?
3. A lot of people already use google tools and Google+ allows to take advantage of sharing these tools with people (circles), making these tools social. Facebook actually does not have any tools. I can't imagine using Facebook with my colleges, for example.
4. Everybody is using google as a start page, and now you get this Google+ at a starting page. Why would you go to Facebook ?
5. Google has very nice, simple and intuitive interface!
6. Google has a lot of data about his users, which means recommendations/suggestions can be very precise :)
7. Hehe - you can actually export all your facebook friends :)

In any case. As in any Google application, there are a lot of techy and nice visual things to re-use in building web applications. See multiple selections and drag-and-drop, for example.

Long life to Google.

I have no relation to Google (I'd like it to but I don't, at least for now)

1 comment:

  1. I really like to use Google + as its easy to use and yet so simple and organized. Thanks for sharing..!

    ReplyDelete