Google has unveiled the latest weapon in its battle with Facebook, a social networking tool called Google+. The new tool is designed to provide users with more control over how they share information with friends than its rival.
Central to this control is Circles, a method of splitting friends and family into groups so that you can elect to share content with only family, or only work colleagues, for example. ‘From close family to foodies, we found that people already use real-life circles to express themselves, and to share with precisely the right folks. So we did the only thing that made sense: we brought Circles to software,’ said Google senior vice president, Vic Gundotra, in a blog post.
In addition to Circles, Google+ has tools for; directly sharing photos from a mobile device; automatically delivering a stream of ‘highly contagious content’ based on a user’s interests; group video chat; and messaging.
Google+ isn’t the first time the search giant has tried to enter the social networking sphere, but it will be hoping that its latest attempt is more successful than previous efforts, such as Buzz.
While Google has made billions of dollars selling advertising alongside search query results, on third-party websites, and in Gmail, it doesn’t have a competitor to Facebook’s advertising product which, according to USA Today, makes $2bn revenue per annum. The key to the success of Facebook’s advertising is that it can target specific groups of people based on information it has gathered about them through their activity on the site.
Google wants to do the same with Google+. So much, in fact, that Business Insider reported that when Larry Page replaced Eric Schmidt as Google CEO earlier this year, he immediately sent a memo to staff telling them that 25% of their annual bonus would be tied to the success of Google’s social strategy, whether they were directly involved in it or not.
Google+ is currently available only by invitation.
