Read the rest of this entry »

Google Plus started out growing faster than any social network has so far, but may not be able to compete against Facebook longer term.

The appeal is not sticking because many of the people that quickly flocked to Google Plus have made their way back to the comfort and familiarity of Facebook.

In fact, the inability to keep users engaged has some observers wondering just how long Google Plus will be able to survive.

A Closer Look At The Battle

Google Plus entered the social game at a time when competition was arguably at its fiercest. Facebook was just reported to have an estimated 750 million active users, while both Twitter and LinkedIn were making notable gains of their own.

In order to garner attention, Google would have to give users a different experience, and different is what it strived to be from the very beginning.

Even in its original beta form, Google Plus was equipped with a new friends system in Circles, a discovery engine in Sparks, and a group video chat tool in Hangouts, which recently made its way to the mobile platform.

Apparently all that wasn’t enough, as Facebook went to work with some countering of its own.

In addition to combating Circles with Smart Lists, and answering Hangouts with a Skype-powered video chat feature, Facebook rolled out some huge updates that once again made it the talk of the town.

The majority of the changes involved making the popular social platform more user-friendly, starting with the news feed.

The news feed has been designed in a manner that presents users with posts that are deemed to be most important to them, opposed to the most recent updates.

According to Facebook Engineering Manager Mark Tonkelowitz, the news feed experience is now like users having their own personal newspaper.

Despite not being embraced by the community as a whole, or at least not at first, the recent changes at Facebook have reclaimed the attention of both the general members and brands who spend their time on the site.

And while Google Plus still has some attributes that enable it to stand out, the lack of activity and return visits is a sign that users are having trouble justifying its worth in comparison to what they already have in Facebook.

Last Chance?

Google Plus is not the search giant’s first attempt at social networking.

If you recall, the company launched Google Buzz in 2010, which fizzled out due to a major privacy flaw that accompanied the initial release and the same issue the company faces today — being useful in what can be considered an overly crowded space.

Google Plus definitely has more potential than Buzz, but should it bomb, it could very well be the last shot at ever touching Facebook in the social realm.

Guest writer Aidan Hijleh is a freelance copywriter and serves as the non-profit partnership liaison for Benchmark Email.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Quick quiz: What was “Project Titan?” Doesn’t ring a bell? Well, about a year ago, the blogosphere was all abuzz in anticipation for it. Still don’t remember? That was the code name for Facebook’s “Next Generation Messaging” system — the supposed Gmail, or even email killer.

Read the rest of this entry »

Amid the discussion of data center specifications and other high-tech arcana, Facebook announced the formation of the Open Compute Foundation to lead the development of energy efficient hardware infrastructure.

Read the rest of this entry »

Members of the Occupy Movement believe that Facebook is deliberately censoring their posts, in what seems like an online parallel to the arrests of protesters in cities across the country.

Read the rest of this entry »

Facebook wants to continue to increase the amount of attention earned from its 800 million-strong user base. At this point, the only way to do that is to become more like a technology that’s increasingly feeling like a relic of the past: Television.

Read the rest of this entry »

The keyword used to be the exclusive province of Google, and one of the things that may ensure Google doesn’t become completely overshadowed by Facebook. But then Twitter’s trending topics began to eat into that monopoly.

Read the rest of this entry »

They say the only constant is change, and in the case of Facebook’s changes over the past month, local marketers might get the edge over their larger counterparts.

Read the rest of this entry »

Facebook is yet again in the news again over privacy concerns. This time however, it doesn’t revolve around obvious and clearly visible issues, but around the suspicious way they work with cookies, which form part of the the hidden tracking mechanisms of the site.

Read the rest of this entry »

The current flare in media coverage over the newly implemented Facebook changes has been filled withoutrage at the fact that Facebook seems to have a total disregard to its user’s privacy.

Read the rest of this entry »