SALON

Thursday, Jun 30, 2011 12:30 AM UTC

What’s the buzz on Google+?

The search giant debuted a new social media service yesterday. Here's what the experts are saying

By

Topics: Google, Facebook, Social Media,

What's the buzz on Google+?

After three failed attempts at starting its own social media tool (including the much-maligned and privacy-challenged Google Buzz), Google has launched one more, ambitious effort to steal Facebook’s thunder: Google+. The new service, now in test trials and available to a limited number of Google users, boasts some intriguing features that have the blogosphere a-buzzing, including Circles, which lets users choose exactly which groups of friends they want to communicate with; and Stream, an analogue to the Facebook “News Feed”; and Sparks, a social-ized Google News. Most notable, however, is that Google will bill the tool as an alternative for Facebook-wary consumers who worry about that network’s use of personal data. 

Opinions on the service run the gamut. Here’s a look at key early reaction:

The New York Times’ Claire Cain Miller notes that Google’s difficulties in the realm of social media have already taken a toll on its status as “entry point” to the Internet, and wonders if Google+ can really help make up for lost time:

Google+ may already be too late. In May, 180 million people visited Google sites, including YouTube, compared with 157.2 million on Facebook, according to comScore. But Facebook users looked at 103 billion pages and spent an average of 375 minutes on the site, while Google users viewed 46.3 billion pages and spent 231 minutes.

Writing for Reuters, John C. Abell, of Wired, praises Google+’s emphasis on privacy, but wonders if it can really catch fire:

Google aspires to come up with the magic formula that doesn’t raise our privacy hackles, and doesn’t make it hard for us to share just what we want, with whom we want.

Some may consider this alchemy, but it’s a laudable pursuit. Now we just have to see if enough people care and want to trust Google with one more, truly overarching aspect of their digital lives. 

Steve Kovach at Business Insider laments that the new social tool is mainly composed of “recycled features”:

Save for some minor improvements, Google+ offers nothing groundbreaking enough to drive the masses from Facebook. Almost every feature … has a counterpart feature in Facebook.

The only notable exception is “Hangouts,” the feature that lets you host group video chats with your friends. It’s pretty cool, but again, I can’t see someone ditching Facebook just so they can video chat.

 MC Siegler at Tech Crunch lays on the superlatives:

Google+ is easily already the most compelling social project Google has ever done. 

Alexandra Petri of the Washington Post praised what she called a more “adult” approach to social media — particularly the fact that Google+ boasts functionality that lets you speak to friends without shouting at your entire network:

Google Plus isn’t the new Facebook. It’s the grown-up Facebook. Perhaps this makes it the anti-Facebook. 

The Guardian’s Charles Arthur says Google is trying to do too much, too fast:

“[B]eing social” isn’t just about involving lots of people in things. It’s also about getting out of the way. The irony is that Google’s biggest product, its search page, is a classic of simple design. But everything else it does becomes too complicated. Google+ might work better if it tried to do less, and then built it up.

Time will tell, but if I were offered the choice of this or Facebook, I’d take Facebook. 

The Houston Chronicle’s Dwight Silverman says Google+ is on the right track, steering toward a convergence of slick design and intuitive user experience:

It is possible for great engineering and smart, elegant design to co-exist — Apple is evidence of that. CEO Steve Jobs has frequently referred to the company as being engineering-based, but he’s also said that Apple “lives at the intersection of technology and liberal arts”. That’s a neighborhood in which all tech companies should aspire to live.

Is Google moving in? Maybe.

Gizmodo’s Mat Honan applauds Google’s ambition:

Google wants to get to know you, and help you to get to know yourself. It wants to be the go-to place where you show who you are and what you care about to your friends, your family, your coworkers and the entire world. It wants to be the key you use to unlock the Web and the internet as a whole, the passageway through which all your interactions flow. Today is a big step in that direction.

But it’s possible that ZDNet’s Andrew Nusca makes the best point of all when he notes that it’s impossible to judge the value of a social media tool in its infancy:

[H]ow can you possibly consider a social service before people are using it? And moreover, how can you assume that how it’s intended to be used will actually be the reality?

 

More Peter Finocchiaro.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 15 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations