Why Google Plus is not a Facebook Killer today

July 1, 2011 5 Comments

I am an avid social networking user and got on board Google Plus on the first day of Launch through the help of my dear friend Aditya Sharma . This post is my feedback to what I felt about Google Plus. Google is shouting from roofs about better privacy options in Plus but only those who don’t  know how to use Facebook Privacy settings can agree to it.

Statuary Warning : The post might sound greek to normal users and all those are not Privacy Freaks.

 

Nice things -

1) User Interface

2) Ability to see updates of only a specific Circle ,  Facebook fanatics will shout Facebook Groups , but they also know their state. I had 20 friends of mine adding me a group ny name of my university and it is too frustrating until I turned off all those Groups. This was one real nice feature I feel Facebook can learn from.

3) Heard a lot about Video chat stuff, not tested it out , still  Hopeful

Things I didn’t like ( this one is a longer list)

1) No way to import friends from Google contact to Circles on a category basis. I know it sounds confusing let me explain.

I have X friends from my University in my contact list of Google which I have maintained very religiously as the central repository of my friends. I have a Contact list called JIIT ( my university Name)  with 600 members and when I come to Google Plus I want all of them as and when they come to stay in a Circle called JIIT.

Now Google expects me to drag and drop 600 contacts … wow …  Even Facebook allows me to Import a CSV file and it goes into a specified Friend List. Why can’t Google give such a simple option and it has to make it miserable for people to bring in their friends

2) No way to selectively remove circles or groups from viewing your activity.

Google only provides for adding names of Circles who should view it. What if I want something to be visible to everyone except one/two Circle.   The MINUS sign  Google pioneered in search box and Facebook nicely copied allowing you to selectively remove people of friend list from watching your activity.

Google, You just can’t make a horse cart with light reflectors at back and say like your car we also got Tail Lights.

3) No way to ensure spammers don’t add me to their circles. WTH. Google on its forums has replied that you have the right to block them. Why in first place I should get them . Why can’t I chose not be sent random invites.

 

I have not taken a Technical or Creative View on Google Plus,  It was just the pure truthful frustrations of a Dedicated Google Bhakt who expected Google to do it better or at least now I hope they fix it ASAP

 

 

Filed under Brand Talk, Opinion Uncensored, Reviews, Technology Tagged with , , , , , , ,

RIP Flock – First one to throw towel in Browser wars

April 18, 2011 3 Comments

This week I got an email saying Flock will be killed ( jargon – support discontinued) on 26 April 2011. Contents of the mail were as follows -

New Flock Beta
Flock Official End of Support Notice

Support for Flock browsers will be discontinued as of April 26th, 2011. We would like to thank our loyal users around the world for their support, and we encourage the Flock community to migrate in the coming weeks to one of the recommended web browsers listed below.

Our Recommendations

Since no further security updates will be provided to keep you safe on the web, we encourage all Flock users to upgrade to either Chrome or Firefox. Both are based on the same reliable technologies as Flock, and both are being actively maintained and improved. Also, each of these browsers has a broad selection of add-ons and extensions to customize and extend their capabilities.

For more information (including notes on how to migrate to other browsers), please see our FAQ.

Thanks,

The Flock Team

On hearing about the news of Social gaming giant Zynga buying out Flock ( read here) I was quite hopeful of getting to see a social gaming based/themed browser after the social networking browsers like Rockmelt.  Moreover since Google had invested 100 million USD in Zynga (read here)  and Flock had shifted its platform from Firefox to Chromium ( read here) , so all dots seemed to connecting into a story for me .

Google —-> Chrome —>Chromium<—Flock (Dumps Firefox)<—- Zynga<—- Google ( 100m mln $) 

What is intriguing for me here is that whether this decision of zynga to kill support for Flock precursor to roll out a full fledged, new branded social gaming browser or Zynga is feeling Flock is not good enough to be carried forward. Zynga is well aware of banking too much on an third party API like that of facebook for revenue in the aftermath of the still unhealed wounds of vendors and application makers usign twitter API ( UberTwitter are you listening) . Only the coming few weeks or months will tell what Zynga has in mind.  The actions of Zynga will be highly important in order to see how the current disputes between application developers [ Zynga, Ubertwitter] and platform owners [ twitter, facebook] will play out.

Stay tuned for more updates on the ongoing technology news …

Filed under Brand Talk, Technology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Why is Google afraid of Facebook

July 31, 2010 Leave a comment

Premise: Google feeling increasingly threatened by Facebook which has just been claiming to have 500 million users

Why is , if at all Google afraid  ?

Facebook has already moved in to the areas of

1. Advertisements – Directly hitting Google where it shall hurt most. Google still has over 90% of his revenue in the form of ads.

2. Docs – Though not a core business for Google but still infuriating, especially with open Microsoft backing to FB.

3. Facebook Credits – Hitting the Google checkout and PayPal.

4. Social Networking- Google is already loosing the grip orkut had in the few markets to Facebook.

Areas it is trying to establish itself

1.Marketplace – Directly hitting out at e-bay and amazon

2. Facebook Answers – Directly hitting yahoo answers and google answers.

It is here where there is bigger danger for Google lies. If people start getting answers to their problems from their networks then first casualty will be Google’s search business. Moreover being actively backed by Bing , Facebook can dent Google core business even harder.If search goes down so will advertisement revenue and maybe Google itself.

THE BIGGEST QUESTION IS CAN GOOGLE FIGHT BACK OR IT WILL BECOME VICTIM OF ITS OWN SUCCESS

Filed under Brand Talk, Marketing, Technology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

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