Google+ and Facebook Will Coexist

A few months ago, I was struggling through the last few moments at work and decided that I would do a little social networking on this particular afternoon. A phrase that seems so strange since it was something that did not exist until about eight years ago when I was a freshman in college. Back then social networking still wasn’t a commonly used expression, Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t a household name and smart phones were only for politicians and CEOs. I didn’t even want to join Facebook when I was a freshman. I was forced by a girl I liked back then and when I first joined it was a great place to be. It was cool. You could share a little information with people you had just met, check if girls were single before you asked them out, people couldn’t post their every thought and most importantly you had to have a college email to join. That really was the good old days of Facebook.

Then Mark’s eyes lit up with dollar signs. If tens of millions of college kids could make him hundreds of millions of dollars, then hundreds of millions of people from the rest of the world could make billions of dollars. That’s when things got bad for Facebook’s first users. Friend request started showing up from parents, grandparents and high schoolers. At first it wasn’t too bad. They just thought it was something silly that younger generations did. They asked questions like “What’s the point?” and “How do you keep track of that many friends?” They hadn’t caught on to the fact that it wasn’t keeping track of people for the long term. You just wanted to easily tell people about yourself and learn about them. Personally, after the first viewing of someone’s profile, I may only view it again one or two times. After about a year of Facebook being open, the older generations caught onto how to use network. And things were never the same.

Before Facebook became an open social network, there was very little fear of a parent or another adult viewing your profile. This meant that you could post just about anything you wanted. While in hindsight that’s a terrible ability, it didn’t seem that bad when only other stupid college students could see it. The only time my parent or grandparents saw my profile was when my cousins or myself were asked to show them. While this did lead to an awkward conversation where my Grandma called my posted photos “rowdy.” Her word not mine. But this was an isolated occurrence and was not a big fear of mine. Shortly after this event, the Facebook was open and college students were in a constant state of fear that their families, bosses or other authorities would see their photos, post, and other embarrassing information. There were stories of parents harassing classmates who had posted pictures from the bar the week before. Or a job offer was revoked because a hiring manager saw the pictures from two years earlier when you drank under age. The worst part was that Facebook did not give users an easy way to limit what information each of your friends could see. You have to set up viewing parameters for each friend you have. Not only that, the viewing parameters were fairly generic. You couldn’t let them view one photo and then later on view a different photo. It is all or none. But a lot of people outside of college joined and Zuckerberg was making his billions.

Things didn’t get any better from there. The Newsfeed was added. The place where people could post every detail of their lives and you were stuck seeing it when you logged in. I understand why people might post details about their wedding or new born baby but everything else was just nonsense. Guys would post about their awesome meal for the fifth day in row and girls would post about how they went out for the hundredth weekend in a row. And it was the first thing you read when you signed onto Facebook. Not only was there none sense about activities people were doing in the real world, there was constant request from people to help them “feed their hogs” in Farmville or steal something in Mob Wars. It all just became too much and I wanted something new.

After taking my first job, I started going on Facebook a lot less. I had no desire to be on it any more. While I still wanted them to have great lives, I just couldn’t stand hearing about what people from high school are doing. So, I didn’t do a whole lot of social networking. I was waiting for Facebook to give me greater control over what I let certain people see about my life and I wanted to hear information I actually show up in my homepage.

Then, I heard about it in the summer of 2011: Google+. Google’s attempt and competing with Facebook in the social networking realm. The feature I was most curious about was Circles. Everytime you +1 someone or something into your network you put them into a circle. The advantage of circles was that you shared information fluidly. If you wanted to share a certain picture with only a few friends then you just select that circle, but if you wanted to share a job promotion with the whole world then you just select Public. Unfortunately, when I first heard about Google+ was still in the “field testing” phase. So, I waited until it was opened to the public and immediately joined. When I started playing around with the site, I saw it’s potential, but like everyone else, I knew it’s fatal flaw. It was somewhat of a ghost town and needed more users to be a practical social network. I, again, was a man without a social network.

I did check out both Google+ and Facebook, but on a very sporadic bases. I would go on Facebook once a week and then immediately get off after I realized why I had left. Then, I would get on Google+ and see all my updates for the last week in about 15 minutes. Something was changing however. There started being ideas, topics and organizations. Google+ was just limited to people as Facebook seemed to be. NASA was on Google+ posting minute by minute updates of the Mars Rover mission. People created pages for topics like running, art and job searching. Google was helping Africa by creating +Google Africa to show some of the great work being done there. Google+ seemed to be the place where you discussed ideas and Facebook was the place where you discussed people. Also, about this time my Google+ time started increasing, I started using LinkedIn more often.

I had finally become fed up with my job and wanted to get something new. I had had a Linkedin profile for quite awhile, but gave no real effort to expand my network and have a well maintained. Like Google+, it originally seemed like a ghost town. Originally, most of the people I could connect with were classmates and teachers who I saw on a daily bases. I still didn’t see the advantages of the site during my first job. However, when I started my job search, I realized the potential. You could use the site to let recruiters see what you had been doing without sending a resume, quickly find jobs in your area see, let connections recommend your skills and vice versa. Also, LinkedIn today gave you the ability to quickly see articles that involved industries you were involved with. One other aspect I enjoyed about the site had nothing to do with its features. I loved that it was a professional website. This meant that you knew not post anything unrelated to your career. The information felt civilized. Again, not the nonsense that is found everywhere on Facebook. I, quickly, found a job through Linkedin and knew the power of the site.

My experiences have shown me that Facebook will not be the superpower of social networking. It, also, will not have a quick, sudden death like Myspace. With 7 billion people currently on the earth and more everyday getting access to the internet, no one site can make everyone happy. Some people want a site that will allow them to see what family and friends are doing (Facebook). Some seek out a place to discuss ideas (Google+). Others need a place to make business contacts (LinkedIn). And there are a thousand other social needs people need from the internet which means some other site(s) will come along to fill them. Experts that predict the continued dominance of Facebook or Google+ as the great Facebook killer are a little short sighted. No one saw the potential of Facebook in 2004 and people are still predicting Google+ failure after gaining 235 million active users.