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Search giant Google unveiled its latest initiative designed to grab a piece of the social networking market, from which it has been mostly excluded to date. After the anticlimactic introductions of Wave and Buzz, Google has to overcome apathy and inertia with Google+, but initial responses seem to be positive.
So what is Google+? Well, according to the explanatory blog post from engineering SVP Vic Gundotra, "Today, the connections between people increasingly happen online. Yet the subtlety and substance of real-world interactions are lost in the rigidness of our online tools. In this basic, human way, online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it."
That's a hell of a claim from a company that has been largely a bystander in the social networking market while Facebook has grown exponentially since its launch, and now poses a very real threat to Google's ad revenues. But then again, if Google doesn't think it can improve on what Facebook offers, then it has no business dabbling in social at all.
While this unveiling has received a fair bit of attention, Google seems to be deliberately downplaying it as a ‘launch'. That's probably quite wise, considering the apparent failure of many other Google launches in recent years.
It's also an acknowledgement that you don't build a great social networking service overnight. By definition a social network has to grow as people adopt it and shape its functionality by their activities. Initially Google+ is a ‘field trial', which is some kind of pre-public beta stage, and is invitation only.
But, as ever, Google has released a bunch of vids explaining what it is. We won't editorialise them much, as you can make your own mind up from the vids embedded below, but on first impression the UI and user experience looks a lot slicker than we've come to expect from recent Google product launches.
The first one feels the need to explain the benefits of having a social life, which is perhaps necessary in these ‘always connected' times. There's also a level of acoustic guitar-driven superciliousness to the narration in all the clips that is very reminiscent of Apple - perhaps no accident.
Circles refers to social circles, and is a tool to help you subdivide your entire friend list according to whatever arbitrary status you give each one. This could get awkward if someone discovers you put them in the ‘loser' category.
Sparks seems to be a tool to help you start conversations online about things that interest you. But if you can understand what the narrator is talking about we'd appreciate a translation.
Hangout is a tool to enable the easy creation of multi-user video chat-rooms. The narrator sounds like that woman out of the original CSI.
The mobile-specific features are the ability to geographically tag whatever activity you perform on Google+, and the ability to instantly upload images taken on your phone. Although the clip itself serves as a great reminder of why you might not want to do so.
And finally there's a group messaging tool called Huddle (in reference to the group chat sports teams have immediately before a game). You can find out yet more here. Let us know what you think of all this new Google goodness and whether you think it might have finally come up with a viable alternative to Facebook.
