Wondering why the usually pristine-white Google homepage is now sporting a black bar across the top? It's all part of the search giant's new social networking initiative, Google+, which aims to keep us using Google products by prising our eyes away from the likes of Facebook and Twitter.
Google+ is invite-only at the moment so you can't try it out for yourself, but the company has released a number of videos explaining what's on offer. The service has everything you'd expect from a social networking site, like the ability to chat or share photos, and the interface is actually very Facebook-like.
Where Google+ differs is philosophy: while Facebook wants you to share everything with everyone, Google+ recognises that the labels we put on our social relationships are often more complicated than a simple "friend". Its solution is "Circles", which lets you place people into distinct groups and only share items with them, keeping your drinking buddies separate from your co-workers and hopefully avoiding sending drunken photos around the office.
Segmenting your network isn't a new idea, as Facebook lets you do the same thing with its group privacy settings, but Google's approach seems more user-friendly, a natural metaphor for the social circles we move in every day. Google has also learned from the failure of its previous social networking effort by requiring users to build their own circle of friends, rather than automatically generating them as it did with Google Buzz. But really, Google+ is essentially Facebook for people who don't like Facebook - a sentiment nicely summed up by webcomic.
And what about that black bar? It's there to make Google+ ubiquitous across all Google sites, constantly alerting you to your friends' updates. Find it hard to tear yourself away from Facebook? Heavy Google users will find Google+ even worse, with a constant stream of interruptions in your email, calendar and documents - exactly what Google wants, of course.
Google+ is invite-only at the moment so you can't try it out for yourself, but the company has released a number of videos explaining what's on offer. The service has everything you'd expect from a social networking site, like the ability to chat or share photos, and the interface is actually very Facebook-like.
Where Google+ differs is philosophy: while Facebook wants you to share everything with everyone, Google+ recognises that the labels we put on our social relationships are often more complicated than a simple "friend". Its solution is "Circles", which lets you place people into distinct groups and only share items with them, keeping your drinking buddies separate from your co-workers and hopefully avoiding sending drunken photos around the office.
Segmenting your network isn't a new idea, as Facebook lets you do the same thing with its group privacy settings, but Google's approach seems more user-friendly, a natural metaphor for the social circles we move in every day. Google has also learned from the failure of its previous social networking effort by requiring users to build their own circle of friends, rather than automatically generating them as it did with Google Buzz. But really, Google+ is essentially Facebook for people who don't like Facebook - a sentiment nicely summed up by webcomic.
And what about that black bar? It's there to make Google+ ubiquitous across all Google sites, constantly alerting you to your friends' updates. Find it hard to tear yourself away from Facebook? Heavy Google users will find Google+ even worse, with a constant stream of interruptions in your email, calendar and documents - exactly what Google wants, of course.
Excellent Blog..and Lot of Information...
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