Ever since I got a beta invite for Google+ on 7th July 2011, I’ve loved every bit of it. I believe Google+ is the most complete social network yet. It was recently reported that it is unarguably the fastest growing social network website, currently standing at a staggering 100 million users worldwide. However, recently, Facebook has been slowly eating away the competition which Google+ posed by copying its major features such as video chat, friend lists and others.
In my blog post today, I am going to highlight some of the major features Facebook has taken from Google+, which I believe will cause some stirs in the Google camp. Like as usual, at Mr. Geek, we like to break down things into lists, so here’s number 1.
1. The First Kill: Facebook integrates Video calling
Although Google+ Hangouts is a much superior technology as compared to the Facebook Video calling, Facebook still did its part to integrate some sort of a video chat feature into the social network. Google+ Hangouts is superior in the sense that it allows you to video call with up to 10 users along with text-chatting, boasts a screen share and doc sharing feature and is well designed. Therefore, I’d say Hangouts is a much more robust application. Facebook on the other hand has joined hands with Skype to use their backend to enable video calling by installing a Java (.jar) plugin. It is a simple one-to-one video calling application, not even close to what Hangouts offers. However, Facebook still has overcome the threat Google+ Hangouts posed in terms of their advantageous unique selling proposition, which is quite not the case anymore.
Facebook Video vs Google Hangouts
2. The Second Shot: Facebook integrates Subscribe, Friend Lists and Interest lists
Just a few months ago, Facebook introduced a major redesign, along with launching the Subscribe feature and Friend Lists – and just over a few days ago, Facebook brought in Interest lists. If you are an existing Google+ user, or perhaps a major fan of its features, like myself, you might have probably realised that Friend Lists, Interest Lists and Subscribe features are one of the unique points for Google+.
Google+ has the 3-in-1 Circle feature which allows you to add people into your circles. This acts as the same for creating friend circles, interest circles and follower circles. In Facebook, the same features are replicated, called the Subscriber feature in which you subscribe to celebrity to access their public feeds. Secondly, friend lists and interest lists introduced by Facebook closely correleates to Google+ Circles in which you can create circles for different types of people like Employees, Friends, Close Friends, Business, High-tech, Celebrities and so on. Facebook does this but with a different name. You can create Interest Lists on Facebook here.
3. The Third Hit: Facebook brings in Google+ like Photo viewer
When Google+ launched, we all know how sophisticated and beautiful its photo viewing application was, allowing you to seamlessly view photos in full screen. Just a while ago, Facebook launched a similar photo viewer, allowing users to see photos in a light box and in full screen. To be honest, Facebook’s photo viewing application, at this current stage, seems like a complete rip-off from Google+. Come on, Mark’s guys could have done a touch different, but seems like they are going for the kill.
Thanks for reading this blog post. If you have any comments, please use the comment box below. If you think I might have missed something, again, feel free to add it in the comments box below. Till then, good bye.
About Ali Gajani
Hi. I am Ali Gajani. I started Mr. Geek in early 2012 as a result of my growing enthusiasm and passion for technology. I love sharing my knowledge and helping out the community by creating useful, engaging and compelling content. If you want to write for Mr. Geek, just PM me on my Facebook profile.
