Though Facebook’s members will certainly be pleased with the increase in the number of privacy controls that have now been made available to them by the social networking platform, most experts are agreeing that this likely won’t have any direct effect on the popularity of Google+.
At the very heart of the social network run by Google is the ability of its users to have a direct control over who will be able to see the various elements of their profiles. The “social circles” feature of Google+ allows users to carefully organize their various contacts into groups.
When Facebook announced the latest privacy controls, they posted on their blog, they entitled it “Making It Easier to Share with Who You Want.” What users are finding amusing about this is that the title was pretty much the foundation of Google’s primary goal with its own social network’s development. Sooner or later, Facebook’s options for sharing will broaden and will more closely resemble the Google+ social circle controls.
That said, because Google+ has already hit the ground running – with over 20 million new registrations within the first 21 days of its existence – it isn’t likely that the privacy changes at Facebook will present much of a threat. Moreover, because Google has so many other well established services, such as Gmail, Google Docs, and YouTube, then Google+ has the potential to grow in helpful ways that are not available to Facebook.
The intentions of Google+ are to improve all of those services by way of social circle integration. This will make it easier to share using their social network than any other, drawing many people to join simply due to the basic convenience of integrating with all of Google’s various products.
