Google Plus

Google Plus is a new social media venture by the team at Google. Google has tried before with Orkut and Google Buzz but they never took off as planned. Buzz has been ditched in favor of Google Plus, however Orkut is still popular in Brazil but never took off anywhere else.

Google plus is a mixture of different social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and others. Like Facebook it allows people to post statuses, pictures, videos, edit your profile and the +1 (like Facebook's like). So like any other social media platform it allows for two way communication.

One unique thing that Google Plus has that blends ideas from most social network sites is Circles. Circles are the Google Plus way of following someone, however you can sort them into different categories like a Facebook list. You can sort whose posts you see by these circles or you can post things just for certain circles. So it makes communicating more efficient if you want to get a message out to a certain crowd. Say you're having a birthday party and you want to let your family know, you can post it just to your family circle, easy as that.

Google Plus also has a tool called Hangouts, it allows for 10 people to video chat at once. The people in the chat can also jointly create a document, draw or share pictures. This allows for easy collaboration and communication through webcams and the use of the different things you can do while video chatting.

Google Plus however has an identity crisis however. Is it a social networking site like Facebook where it's about your actual self or is it an open identity where you can post content or whatever you feel like Twitter or Blogs. It appears as if Google Plus wants to go towards more of an actual self with deleting pseudonyms on the site. But with the new What's hot on Google+ it seems as if they want more of an open approach.

Google Plus is trying to put all of the best features of Social Networking sites that allow people to communicate easily. However the site isn't the best utilization since not everyone isn't on it. Google is the leading search engine in the world but most people don't think of it as the communication hub of their life. Google Plus could be great for all kinds of computer mediated communication but with Facebook, Twitter and all the other Social Networks out there it kind of falls flat. People are already on one place and they don't need another for the same exact communication features.