I hate Google + . Yes I do. You may call me a noob. You may call me old fashioned and orthodox. I don't care (I am not supposed to). To the best of my knowledge, I love technology and new things people make from it. But Google + something different.
I know you have read rave reviews that Google + has got in the past weeks. It may be the first time you are reading something like this. First of all I want to say that this is not a review. I respect all reviewers and they are all good and technology learned people. I am just something like you. A common internet user who falls like a pawn at all the new things that come here. First was Hi5, that I was addicted to in class 7. Then came Orkut in class 11. After half a affair, a full breakup and may be a dozen of crushes there, I moved to Facebook. (Come on. Not even a full developed geek cant resist the sweet and smiling girl you saw in your friend's profile). Then came Twitter. Now the thing about Twitter is there is nothing like Facebook you can do there. No photo tags (thank God!), stupid comments or groups to bother you. So the only thing people do there is one : post. (that's mostly spam nowadays). Now I am really bad at writing witty things (you may have already guessed that after reading till here), so somehow, I feel ignored there. And one more thing. I don't have any fans (pun not intended) nor I am a big fan of someone that I have to be in Twitter to follow her. And there is one thing in twitter that really annoys me. That's everyone can see you what you do there. I have a thing called privacy, and I am not open to all people, so why should my ex check what I talk with that hot girl? Really Twitter would had messed my life a lot, thank God I open my account only once a week, that also to check whats trending so that I can relieve myself that I am not outdated.
I am active in Facebook, but not really a Facebook fan. May be I visit the site at least half a dozen times a day, but what I really do there is to check whats everyone is doing and reply my notifications and photo tags. I am not addicted to games, left Mafia Wars and Farmville ages ago, and also reject all the game request I find (thanks to my immensely slow dial-up connection). If some of my really good friends are not online there, I spend not more than 20 minutes.
I always believe that there are three reasons that Facebook is surviving.
- Some game addicts who cant live without growing corn.
- Some loser guys who need to find a girlfriend at any cost, even if possible in virtual world (like I was before).
- People are more interested in what others are doing than their work.
I fall in category three, chiefly because I have no work of my own.
What common people want is a good way to communicate with other people. For that e-mail is enough. But for techies and half geek like us, we need something advanced, that can equal our technology thought. Like all the techies, when Google + released on 28th of last month, we went hunting for invites to get ourselves registered and try the “brand new and wow” thing. Some of my friends got a earlier, I got on 3rd. My first impression was really disappointing. All my friends had praised it so much that my expectation levels had grown beyond imagination. All I found was usual things from other social networks, merged and mixed up. Truly speaking, Google + is 80% of Facebook, 10 % of Twitter, 5% of Skype and 5% real innovation. You can do the same things in others, nothing special.
- Stream : Just like other networks, G+ has this thing called stream, where you can view what all your non-worthy friends are doing. But the fact is that G+ stream is not only new, but also more irritating. There is no top news like thing here, where you can just have a glimpse of most important things of your close friends when you don't have time. Moreover, whenever a post gets commented, it gets to the top of your feed, so its possible that you will view the same post again and again and may be even miss the new updates. Also, like Twitter's retweet, you have this share thing here. So nowadays, the only thing that I see in my stream is the same old Facebook vs Google + images like this one, that all my friends have decided to share even after seeing that most people are doing the same.
- No friend requests : Excuse me!! Why should that guy see what I am posting, that also without my permission? That's the thing I hated in Twitter, and sadly its here too.
- Circles : This is the thing that's thankfully here, which you cant have in Twitter. With circles, you can customize what you want to show to others. Sounds funny, but you can do the same thing in Facebook. With circles you can organize people in groups, only to get more confused as what to share to whom. I really have complicated relationships in my life. And maybe I can share the thing with my mom, I cant do that with my sis, both of whom who are in the same family. And when it comes to a social network, I would better not share it on the web at all instead of tearing my hairs and biting my nails as what to share to whom, calculating the consequences.Facebook has a better way to handle these things. You can share a status update with only a few people. Better than that, if you respect your privacy more, you can send a “full 100%” private message to him/her. I don't find a message like thing in Google+, only a email thing, for that I have to visit the persons' profile and click on that. Don't to how to send a group message, and more than that, don't know if my email will ever be read. (I never open the email I have registered social networks with, thanks to large volume of notification mails I receive from them).
- Sparks : Truly speaking, I am better of reading news from RSS feeds, blogs and news sites, than from a social network. I haven't tried it that much yet, so cant comment much on it. Only thing i doubt is that will i be able to find all the information from it, and that also the things that I will be able to understand?
- Hangouts : I am on a slow dial-up connection, so I don't need G+ for this. Even those who need it are better off with Skype, I guess. Heard that you can have group video chat here. Now that must be really cool.
Google + has hit 10 million user mark already, but mainly because people are seeing it as a 'forbidden apple'. I know that Google is desperate to create a mark in social networks. But I don't really call G+ a Facebook killer. Rather it gave Facebook to improve itself, like introducing group friend chat and video chatting. They have a tough task ahead, attracting over satisfied users of three giant networks, Facebook, Twitter and Skype. Developers have done a good job copy pasting the features of all those, now its time to see people will prefer the originals or the mixed up versions. Also, there are no apps there, so some people may find it boring to spend time there. Its hard to comment now, as its still in beta stage, but seeing the beta time of Gmail, its harder to comment when this beta will end.
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