Oh Google+. You had great hopes to become the next big social media site. Has it happened yet? Well, not really.
Google+ is the social network brought to you by arguably the biggest Internet conglomerate of all time. When this brainchild of the Google brand was announced, many people thought it would be so successful that it could edge Facebook out of the social media market. While Google+ may be starting to catch up to Facebook on some fronts, it still has a very long way to go to compete with the original social media giant.
One of the key areas of competition between social media sites is time spent browsing. Reports suggest that Facebook users spend an average of about 2 hours per day on the site, with some age demographics trending towards as much as 6 hours of use in a day. While that may seem crazy, most of us have the ability to stay connected to Facebook 24/7 via mobile phone or tablet.
Google+ has recently introduced a few new features in order to lure users to their site more often and for longer periods of time. New features to the site include:
- Instead of a singular content stream (similar to Facebook’s Newsfeed) you’ll now have three different content streams on your Google + homepage.
- Google will be integrating photo editing capabilities right into the Google+ platform. This is a step ahead of Facebook.
- A feature referred to as “auto awesome” will help users to create new and unique images.
- Google has also added more free cloud storage for members, up from a free 5gb to a free 15gb.
- Google Hangout App – this app will be integrated with your Google+ Circles. Users will be able to chat with multiple people at once using the app, with the screen switching to whomever is talking at the time.
While it’s still not totally comparable to Facebook, Google+ does have some interesting features that are definitely a good idea to check out. It’s likely that in the near future, Google+ will be a competitor to contend with in the social media market.
