Google Plus Do we need another social networking site

Did you hear the latest? Google, the great one of the search domain, has launched Google+. Plus what, did you ask? Just ‘+’ as in A+ or B+. 

This is Google’s first full fledged attempt at taking on Facebook. I guess Larry Page and Sergey Brin didn’t quite like the fact that Mark Zuckerberg has overtaken them on the billionaires list, and are now getting back. 

I am kidding, of course, this thing must have been in the works for years, but talk about timing. It was just a few days ago that Zuckerberg overtook the Google guys on the rich list. 

Not to be outdone, Zuckerberg has fired back today, with the promise that the company is going to "launch something awesome" soon. 

Google + is available thorough invite only and Google is not sending out many invites. The scarcity of invites has led to their auction on eBay, reports one website. Really? Yes, really. 

This is the classic case where a scarcity of supply is driving up prices, and it is a great marketing tactic. Remember the days when Facebook was limited to some campuses in USA? I really believe the exclusivity factor drove up interest in the site. In the film The Social Network 
Zuckerberg’s character asks the Winklevoss twins - when they propose a social network website for the first time - there are other websites out there, what is different about this one? It is the exclusivity of the address, they say. harvard.edu. Zuckerberg got that, opening up his website to Ivy league colleges step by step, letting the interest and the exclusivity factor of the website build up, before finally opening it up to the masses. And look what that did for Facebook. 

Google will finally release it when it thinks the interest is just at the right pitch, and millions will flock to it, out of curiosity if nothing else. 

But I am not quite sure. None of the websites that I went through seemed overly excited. No one seemed desperate to quickly go out there get a peek and review it. Wired even had a cheeky article on not reviewing it. Do we need another social networking website, asked one columnist sounding fatigued.

Till sometime back I used to check both my Orkut and Facebook profiles. Not anymore. Orkut is nearly defunct. It is in its death spiral. I do check Facebook, not as much a some of my friends and colleagues, who virtually are always there, but I do check. Sometimes I end up spending more time than I had intended, when a friend posts an interesting video or there is a discussion thread that I find interesting. 

Sometimes, I just surf, looking at what people I have not been in touch for a long time have been doing. It is not rare to find a long lost friend, or to get a friend invite from someone you knew as a kid but have completely forgotten....well you all know this part. The point is, there is definitely a place for a good social networking site in our lives. It is interesting, fun, and useful. Just look at the use that young arabs are putting Facebook to in the middle east.

But more than one? Is there a place for another site? Here one is not quite sure. That is why the ambivalence over the Google launch. The sale of Myspace, which was THE networking site before Facebook came on the scene, which happened yesterday, for less than one tenth of the price for which it was purchased, was there to sound a sobering note. 

Justin Timberlake, who is a stakeholder in MySpace now, wants to get the site to focus on music. This may be the right way to go. LinkedIn, which diffrentiates itself by focusing on business networking, is doing quite well. MySpace may well go the same way, carving out a niche for itself. 

Google instead has launched a full fledged website which competes directly with Facebook. To be fair it really didn’t have much choice. Google search used to be the most visited site on the web, it was the one on which people spent the most time, it was principle gateway to the web labyrinthine regions. 

Not any longer. Facebook has overtaken Google on all these counts. People spent the most time on Google and it received the most visitors. Increasingly people use the informal network of ‘friends’ to find information too. 

Google is already being deprived of this traffic. More than that, if Facebook becomes a site for searching information too, it will attack Google on its home turf. Google+ then is Google’s response to an existential threat. 

Yes. But do we reallyneed another social networking site?

Posted in: technology news