It's been a desirable year within the social networking area, as heavyweight champion Facebook fends off some solid blows from muscley contender Google plus. but over the past week, it has been nearly all Facebook - with the discharge of the Subscriber button and vastly improved lists (akin to Google plus "circles"). This week, or maybe I ought to say spherical, is additionally shaping up to be a giant one for Facebook. Its annual developer conference F8 is on this Thursday in San Francisco. in step with uber-blogger Robert Scoble, "Facebook has one among its biggest releases ever returning in the week." ReadWriteWeb are going to be at F8 to hide no matter massive punches Facebook delivers.
Meanwhile the Google plus team has been fairly quiet lately, apart from the announcement of a (limited) API last week. Here are 5 things we tend to want Google plus would do, each to boost its still nascent product and to form Facebook stagger to a small degree against the ropes!
1. Automate creation and maintenance of Circles.
This has been my most wanted drawback with Google plus thus far: the massive quantity of effort it takes up front to form circles of individuals (a.k.a. friends lists) and then the continued problem of maintaining them.
Facebook showed the means forward for Google plus, by launching improved - and semi-automated - friends lists last week. Facebook currently automatically creates lists primarily based on your location, workplace and one or two a lot of bits of knowledge from your profile. It's still comparatively easy and not perfectly implemented. however it is a damn sight higher than ranging from scratch, that Google plus causes you to do.
2. Add a special search box for Google plus.
While any public content on Google plus may be searched using normal Google search, any non-public post or knowledge regarding Circles is hidden from Google.com. The Google plus team is aware of this can be one thing their users wish, thus it's possible they are acting on an inside Google plus search as we tend to speak. it'll be a good addition when it finally happens, as a result of neither Facebook or Twitter will an honest job archiving and surfacing previous posts.
Twitter contains a notoriously short memory, whereas Facebook has (up until now) been happy to form its users 'live within the moment.' a good Google plus search can build Facebook reassess that, as a result of suddenly Google plus would become quite a memory bank for its users. The success of Evernote - a note-taking app that markets itself as an "online brain" - is an indicator that social networks would like a extended memory.
3. Open up the API!
The Google+ API is restricted to public knowledge, thus external developers will not be ready to faucet into non-public knowledge or info regarding Circles. it is a no-brainer to eventually open it up and also the Google plus team has stated this may happen. provided that the complete Facebook platform is based on third party developers accessing non-public info regarding users, this cannot return soon enough for Google plus if it desires to rapidly build its platform.
(If you are not certain what I mean by third party apps accessing your non-public Facebook knowledge, simply recall what percentage times you have clicked "yes" to an online app that requests to be ready to write to your Facebook wall and seemingly do something it else it pleases along with your knowledge.)
Update: Google engineer can Norris questioned the higher than statement, in Google plus of course: "remind me once more why it's in users' best interest to rush out and enable that on Google+." My response: it's in users' interest as a result of they will get a large amount of nice third party apps that do wonderful things with their knowledge. (and yes I admit it is a double-edged sword)
4. Hurry up with pages for brands.
It's common data that Google plus is functioning on implementing pages for brands, which is able to be kind of like Facebook Pages. i might prefer to see these pages be far more simply surfaced and arranged in Google plus than they're with Facebook. I usually realize myself 'liking' a complete page on Facebook, then never beholding it once more as a result of it's hidden away. Why cannot I place my favorite complete pages in my main Facebook menu? Why cannot I add it immediately to an inventory once I 'like' it (instead of getting to manually attend the list and place the new Page into it, that is time consuming).
Google plus has the chance to form far more user friendly complete pages, which is able to solely profit each users and types.
5. Realize how to entice my family and non-geeky friends onto Google and.
This may be the foremost necessary challenge that Google plus faces if it's actually reaching to challenge Facebook. whereas Google plus contains a fervent base of early adopter users, it hasn't managed to draw in mainstream folks nevertheless. i do not have any statistical proof of that, however you merely got to cross-check who you are interacting with on Google plus. on behalf of me it's all trade folks, that makes for a good social network if you would like to debate work matters. that is why Robert Scoble loves Google plus such a lot.
So far just one of my relations is using Google plus - my iPad 2-toting brother. And he is using it mainly to form humorous references regarding the shortage of individuals he is aware of on Google plus. In distinction, all of my immediate family and an honest portion of my nuclear family uses Facebook. Sure, it took years for all to arrive there. however the purpose is, Google plus has to eventually realize how to entice them onto its service. or even the very fact that Google plus are going to be such an intricate a part of the longer term Google product line (search, e-commerce and thus on) is what is going on to eventually get my family and others using and.
Those are five things i might like to see from Google plus, as soon as doable. i have not even mentioned the massive grievance from recent weeks: Google plus does not permit folks to pick out user names that are not their real names. This has been a controversial issue and it too has to be resolved.
What else does one suppose Google plus ought to do so as to stay the pressure on Facebook? And by the means, this 'battle' is nice news for us customers - because it forces each corporations to offer us what we're clamoring for. and that we will not mind if a little of bigco blood gets spilled within the method.
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