John Mackay

Ok, so I’ve had both for a while now. When Google+ first hit the scene I really liked how it integrated my photos and other Google related assets into my Google+ space. I liked the design and I especially liked how I wasn’t being bombarded with inane Game requests (read: social profiling) that was becoming all to frequent on FB --until I my wife showed me how to turn those off I was also grateful to not have to deal with the shotgun ads approach of FB where as a married man I had to put up with the plethora of Dating site ads even though my profile status was set to married. That being said FB seems to be working on this by letting you turn certain adverts or advertisers off--good on ya FB.

But at the time Google+ looked like it was going to be a real contender to replacing my Facebook with its killer feature “circles” --assuming I could get all my friends to move there of course. I guess that’s when you find out who your friends really are :-/

But then FB introduced their new Timeline feature and at first I thought --Whatever?! But then I rolled over to it and discovered it was really cool--sorry no more valley girl, I promise. But, for me it gave FB a whole new lease in life. I liked the expanded profile section which has the potential to start replacing my LinkedIn content as well as how it merged into my timeline. I also liked how FB introduced Covers allowing me to personalise my FB home page--just enough to express a little of “Moi” without breaking the familiar flow of the FB UI for myself and other users. These guys and gals are really smart.

And to be honest this is where I think that on the social networking side of things Google is pushing it up hill. Google started as an Apps platform and is trying to build social networking into it. FB on the other hand started as a social networking platform and is now starting to build apps around it. The point is that it is much easier to get punters to leave their apps provider than to leave all of their friends. FB has a captive market. People are on FB because that’s where their friends are. Now that FB has instagram and all our photos are merging into our FB Timeline i.e. we don’t have to work to get our friends to see them because again, FB is where our friends and family already are.

Blogs will become the purvey of serious and wannabe writers (that’s me) with most being content with their FB Timeline as being their blog.

I see the instagram purchase as impacting both Picasa and Tumblr where punters will again decide that getting in their friends faces is much easier at FB. Mind you that can end up being both a blessing and a curse--only time will tell.