First came the likes of
Hi5,
Bebo and
Myspace now comes along Google+ the latest contender against
Facebook, which boasts over 500m users.
Facebook, the most popular
social network site in the world, available on multiple platforms including your
computer,
laptop,
iPhone and even
Android, now has a new contender.
The latest contender comes from
Google who have released Google+ which allows individuals to share photos, messages and comments but also includes the company’s maps and images into the service.
However, numerous analysts have suggested that
Google have simply replicated the features of Facebook and included a video chat function. Yet, past attempts to take a stab at Facebook have failed including
Google Buzz and
Google Wave .
Now though Google believe the implementation of four new features included in Google+ could help make the company a social networking kingpin contender. These functions include:
- Circles - a function that allows individuals to group friends allowing users to share different forms of content with targeted friends
- Hangouts – live multi-user video conferencing that allows users to simply drop in and out of live group conversations
- Huddle – a group messaging system
- Sparks – a feature that connects individuals on the network to others with similar interests
Google+ has only been released to a very small number of Google’s users but Google hope to soon make the
social network available to the millions of individuals that use its services each and every day.
Perhaps this could not have come at a worse time for Facebook considering
Apple are set to launch there
new iOS, iOS5, which sees the integration of
Twitter, rather than Facebook, into the very fabric of its
operating system for
iDevices, including the
iPhone 4 and
iPad 2.
Nonetheless, Facebook is the strongest and biggest social network site ever and even though Twitter will be rolled out with Apple’s new
iOS and Google are attempting to challenge Facebook’s supremacy we reckon it will take a hell of a lot to shift a majority of the 500m users from Facebook.