Andrew's ramblings

My views on FaceBook’s latest changes, and Google+

Tags: General

Well unless you have been living under a rock then you would have heard that Google, a few weeks ago launched its version of its social networking platform. In the space of a few weeks it has been reported to have reached 20 million users, which I think is a huge kick in the teeth to someone like FaceBook.

The bad thing for FaceBook is that I foresee Google doing to FaceBook, what FaceBook did to mySpace, which one would think that would have to be worrying Mark Zuckerberg.

The problem that FaceBook has at the moment is that it needs to consider the needs, not only of the normal users but those who now use it for marketing and a presence for their business, personal page or even as a business presence which surely has to be a nightmare to manage on the scale it is.

Just recently there have been two changes to FaceBook that seems to have upset a lot of people, the first is the Apps Directory that used to be. One was able to go to this page and search for the application that would suit them, and the change now means that you can not do this anymore. That sort of impact on people who are using the pages option to get a presence on FaceBook, whether it be as an Artist, Actor or even a company, means that you have no way to look for what apps are available that you could use on your pages.

Instead the model now is that the only way to discover the app that you might need, is to wait till one of your friends starts using it, or if you are a business start looking at your competitors to see what they might be using. I think that this has got to be the worst decision that FaceBook has ever made, which I think is going to be the worst thing that FaceBook has done.

Another problem that I found very annoying over the last few years, was when they removed the privacy settings to Applications. Now most people might not actually know what that means, but if you take the average person who uses FaceBook a lot there was a time when this was a good thing. Before FaceBook changed this behaviour it meant that a user could load up an application or a game, and change the settings of the Application to post only to a certain group. With the ability to place people into groups this was a good thing back then, because it meant that me as a user for example was able to hide things from people that I knew would not be interested in these things.

Now what happens is that no matter what the application or game posts to your wall, and it is then up to your friend whether this is relevant to them or not, now I could argue that this is not a huge deal. But most people don't like seeing friends of theirs taking up their wall with stuff that hides what the user is really interested in. Personally I would have preferred to see it back the way it was and I think the reality is that this will never happen, which is a shame because now that Google+ is out in the wild for people to use, the amount of people who have signed up in such a short time has indicated that people have had enough of FaceBook, or could it mean they are interested to see what Google are doing.

Now in its current form Google+ is suffering from the same problem, we have the ability to create a circle and make a post that will be seen by that circle of people. It will be very interesting to see how Google will tackle this in the future, and I am sure that they have learnt a lot from what a lot of users have indicated in Google+ to date. Lets hope that what ever Google does come up with, that it ends up pleasing both sides of the coin, something that FaceBook have seemed to have lost over time.

Another recent change to FaceBook is with the Chat Bar, which I will admit I didn't use that often. However when I did use this feature, I actually found it work very well in its current form. I could see all my groups and who was online in those groups, and be able to go offline to any group with the easy of a single click. Now if you aren't into the games side of things, then you might not really care about this feature changing. The thing that I really liked about it was that I could very easily and quickly switch groups on or off, when I was about to spend an hour in a game or something and only wanted to be contacted by those people for sending items or asking for items if they are online.

Now as the games on FacedBook encourage you to add as many people as neighbours, it is next to impossible now to distinguish who is online and who is not online with 500+ users, why the developers at FaceBook made this change is probably something that most are going to keep asking. I would not expect that Mark Zuckerberg will every go back on these issues in a hurry, but if accounts are being closed left right and centre that would be sending a very clear message to the team at FaceBook very loud and clear.

So what about Google+ well I doubt that it will be the sole reason for people to be actually moving away from FaceBook, even though I have said above that this might happen, and I am sure that in time there will be a number of people who might just do that. The thing is that Google+ is not FaceBook and I doubt the team will ever want that to be a comparison between them and FaceBook, because they have made it very clear that model for Google+ is a very different model to FaceBook. If I was to make a comparison in its current form, Google+ would be more like somewhere between FaceBook and twitter, and I would more likely say it is twitter on steroids.

And even though Google+ is extremely young at this stage, it is maybe not very clear how it will be used, but what one can say for certainty is that there is a huge amount of people who are looking for someone to be in tune with its users. With the Google team announcing that there will be games on Google+ and that they want to get it right, as with business profiles also being talked about, I think a lot of people are hoping it can't come soon enough.

In closing I would like to say that Google has done a fine job to have what they do have out at the moment, and even though it is not for everyone just yet, I am sure in time it will be what people are looking for.

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