Facebook has recently made some pretty decent tweaks into their existing interface. All of them aims at the popular features which had been giving an edge to their closest rival Google Plus. These changes come at a time when people are in two-minds which platform to use. Facebook is trying its level best to provide its users with best in-class experience.
Facebook Privacy Concern
Some of the most noticeable changes are the privacy controls for each status update (a 99% copy of Google Plus), privacy settings for each of the account information that an user can have in his or her profile (100% inspired by Google Plus) and a nice tweak to the apparently horrible theater mode photo viewer. In the photo viewer, the previous and next arrow have been aesthetically placed with the ‘Like’ and ‘Comment’ buttons finding a place a notch inside the photo thus saving some vital space below the pic.
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It is obvious that Facebook users will be finding the changes very helpful and might just keep them a few days more from shifting to Google Plus. It will be a treat to watch what happens. Do you use Facebook or Google Plus more often? Are you planning to move to the other soon?
Here’s the continuation:
The truth is, Facebook has been watching Google Plus very carefully ever since its launch in late June. Google Plus came out with a set of features that hit Facebook right where it hurt the most. The Circles feature was a direct answer to the one big complaint people always had about Facebook - that you cannot easily control who sees what. On Facebook, your colleagues, your college friends, your family members and that random person you met at a party two years ago all sit in the same bucket. Google Plus changed that game overnight by letting users drag and drop contacts into different circles and share content selectively. It was simple, it was visual and it made a lot of sense.
Facebook’s response to this has been the introduction of Smart Lists. These are auto-generated friend lists based on mutual information like workplace, school, city and family connections. The idea is solid but it feels rushed. Smart Lists try to do automatically what Google Plus lets you do manually with full control. The problem is that automatic categorization is never perfect. You might find your landlord sitting in your “Close Friends” list or your best friend nowhere to be found. Google Plus gives the user complete ownership of their circles from day one. Facebook is playing catch-up here and it shows.
Another major change that Facebook rolled out is the Subscribe button. This is clearly inspired by how Google Plus handles public profiles and following. On Google Plus, you can add anyone to your circles without them needing to add you back. This means you can follow public figures, journalists, tech personalities and thought leaders without the awkwardness of sending a friend request. Facebook never had this concept before. You either had to be someone’s friend or you had to “Like” their fan page. The Subscribe button now lets you follow someone’s public updates without being friends. It is a neat addition but again, it is not something Facebook thought of on its own.
The timing of all these changes tells a story by itself. Google Plus opened up to a limited audience through invitations in late June and within weeks it crossed 20 million users. That kind of growth was unheard of for a social network. It took Facebook itself years to reach those numbers back when it was starting out. The invite-only model created a sense of exclusivity and curiosity that drove people to try the platform. Facebook clearly did not expect this level of interest in a competing product and the rapid feature updates are proof of that nervousness.
One area where Google Plus genuinely innovated is Hangouts. This is the group video chat feature that lets up to ten people join a video call together right from the browser. It is smooth, it is free and it works remarkably well. Facebook’s answer came quickly in the form of a partnership with Skype for one-on-one video calling. But one-on-one video chat is not the same as a group hangout where multiple friends can drop in and out casually. Facebook’s video calling feels more like a formal setup compared to the relaxed nature of Google Plus Hangouts. It will be interesting to see whether Facebook expands this to group video in the coming months.
The interface changes on Facebook also deserve a closer look. The news feed has been getting small but noticeable updates. There are now options to sort your feed by “Most Recent” and “Top Stories” which gives users slightly more control over what they see first. The idea of surfacing the most relevant content is good but Facebook’s algorithm has always been a bit of a mystery. Many users complain that they miss updates from close friends while seeing status updates from people they barely interact with. Google Plus has a cleaner approach here because the stream is organized by circles. You can click on a specific circle and see only updates from those people. There is no algorithm deciding what you should or should not see.
The photo viewing experience on Facebook has been a sore point for many users. The theater mode that was introduced earlier received quite a bit of criticism for being clunky and taking up too much space. The latest tweaks have improved it somewhat with better placement of navigation arrows and interaction buttons. But Google Plus came out of the gate with a beautiful photo viewing experience. The way photos are displayed on Google Plus with the dark background and generous spacing makes them look significantly better. Google also offers free storage for photos up to a certain resolution which is a strong incentive for photography enthusiasts.
What makes this rivalry fascinating is that both companies are approaching social networking from very different positions. Facebook has over 750 million active users and the advantage of being the established platform where everyone already has their friends and family. Switching costs are high. Your photo albums, your event history, your messages, your groups - everything lives on Facebook. Google Plus on the other hand has the advantage of being fresh and well-designed with tight integration into other Google services like Gmail, Google Search and Picasa. For people who already live inside the Google ecosystem, adding Google Plus to their daily routine feels natural.
The real question is whether Google Plus can sustain this momentum or whether it will go the way of Google Wave and Google Buzz. Both of those products generated initial excitement but failed to hold user attention over time. Google Plus feels different though. The level of polish and thought that has gone into the product suggests that Google is treating this as a serious long-term play rather than an experiment. The engineering talent behind Google Plus and the integration with Google’s massive infrastructure give it a fighting chance that Wave and Buzz never really had.
For now, most users seem to be maintaining accounts on both platforms while they figure out which one serves them better. The undecided phase will not last forever though. At some point people will settle into one primary platform and the other will become a secondary check-in at best. Facebook knows this which is exactly why they are shipping changes at a pace we have never seen from them before. The race is on and it is far from over.
