You're reading: Gadget Guru: Only geeks need to use Google+

Everyone knows that Facebook – the world’s most popular social network– is inconvenient and messy. It’s hard to imagine anything else that could be attractive to 700 million users while being so ugly.

Everyone knows that Facebook – the world’s most popular social network – is inconvenient and messy. It’s hard to imagine anything else that could be attractive to 700 million users while being so ugly.

Social networks are the main trend of the web now, and there is no better social network than Facebook.

But some tech junkies think there soon will be.

Some experts have declared Google+, the new social networking site launched by the Internet giant in June, as the start of a revolution.

It has a clean design and unique features. With 20 million users signed up after just two weeks, could Facebook be in trouble?

No. Google+ is the perfect social network for geeks. And that’s it. Ordinary people will stick to Facebook until the trend changes and something new emerges.
Here is why.

Pros

“If Apple redesigned Facebook, it would save millions of hours of time every day,” famous film critic Roger Ebert once said.

Apple, of course, is too busy getting enormous profits from iPads and iPhones, and social networking is not something its CEO Steve Jobs has extra time to think about.

With 20 million users signed up after just two weeks, could Facebook be in trouble?

But it seems that Google has clearly understood what Ebert wanted to say.

Google hired Andy Herzfeld, one of the designers who invented the Mac interface back in 1980s, to create the unique look and feel of Google+.

The mission was accomplished successfully. G+ looks beautiful and it’s much more pleasant that Facebook.

Usability has also been taken into account. All the menus are in their logical spots just a few clicks away.

You don’t have to roam into meaningless corridors of Facebook settings to find something.

The core feature of G+ is what they call circles. You choose other users to follow and include them in circles. You can have as many of them as you want. And when posting you can choose which circles can read your post.

For example, you have two circles– friends and colleagues. You don’t want your colleagues to read your discussion about beer on Friday evening, and you don’t want your friends to be bored with your business stuff.

So all you have to do is just pick the right circle when you publish your post.

On Facebook you have almost the same functions available, but you have to be Sherlock Holmes to find the necessary settings menu.

One more thing. On Facebook, reciprocity seems to be the most fundamental thing. If you want to be friends with someone, you need his or her approval.

No such problem in G+. Like in Twitter, the friendship here can be a one-way street.

Group video chats (hangouts) are supposed to be the killer feature of G+. You can have a video chat with as many as 10 people simultaneously.

There’s no such thing on Facebook at all. They replied immediately with a video chat function a few days after the G+ launch. But it’s a tet-a-tet chat only.

Cons

Circles are good. But they can’t fix the oldest problem of Facebook and its clones – the trash in the news stream.

Some of your friends might often write about things you are not interested in. And you wouldn’t want to remove them. They are your friends after all.

In Facebook, there is no solution at all. In G+ there is only a partial solution. If you care about your friends, you will spread them into different circles so that you never bother them with unwanted information.

But 99 percent of ordinary users never even bother to change the default wallpaper after they buy a new computer.

Facebook might be ugly and inconvenient. But everybody is there.

Who could expect such a user to start sorting out friends in circles, especially if he or she has hundreds or thousands of friends?

My prediction is that most G+ newcomers won’t bother paying attention to circles.

They will use G+ exactly like they use Facebook and that will be the end of the story.

Circles as well as hangouts are features for geeks who care about technical stuff a lot. Those 20 million users who have joined G+ already are mostly geeks. There is no threat to the 700-million army of non-geek users of Facebook.

Facebook might be ugly and inconvenient. But everybody is there. You can find people and companies from any field of activity or interest.

There must be some serious feature to make you switch to something new. There is no such feature in G+.

G+ will be popular. But it is no threat to Facebook domination.

Kyiv Post staff writer Alexey Bondarev can be reached at [email protected].