Google+ social network explained

For a company renowned for its successes, Google’s track record in social networking services isn’t impressive.

There have been several ill-conceived projects to provide an alternative to Facebook, some of which were almost dead on arrival. For instance Google Wave and Google Buzz were both greeted with widespread confusion – or just ignored- when they started in 2009 and 2010 respectively.

Google’s single social-networking success, Orkut, has only taken off in Brazil and India, which together account for around 90 per cent of its traffic. Elsewhere, Orkut is totally unknown.

But, despite its growing list of failures, Google is now having another crack at social networking, with a service called Google+. And this time, it appears to be taking it rather seriously.

Google+ is the search giant’s answer to Facebook. In a lot of ways it is very similar, with the same kinds of features. So why might someone want to join?

Circles and streams
Using Google+ for the first time felt a bit like shouting in a very large, very empty room. If you don’t have any online ‘friends’, there is no point to a social network.

This is the key problem that Google faces: the majority of people in the West who want to use a social network are already on Facebook, so Google has something of a fight on its hands to get people to make the change or even to persuade new users to sign up.

Where Google+ differs from Facebook is in how it asks people to categorise one another. When Facebook first started, it was designed for keeping in touch with close friends and family.

Things have become a bit more complicated since then – Facebook friend lists are cluttered with random acquaintances, colleagues and even total strangers, making a mockery of the idea that it is a network for friends.

Google+ offers a very clear alternative to this: ‘circles’.

Google+ hasn’t set itself out as a social network exclusively for friends. Instead, users can categorise people very clearly as ‘acquaintances’, ‘strangers’, ‘online friends’ or place them under any other heading they fancy.

So when sharing photos or updating statuses, the user is asked to decide who they’d like to share it with. Consequently the way people post will become different: a user can post pictures of a party to their friends while an interesting website can be shared with colleagues.

While this is possible on Facebook, it’s much easier with Google+.