Google Plus

Google+ is Google's rival to Facebook. While skeptics believe that G+ will never match up to the likes of Facebook, I would like to remind them that people thought Google itself would never catch on. Bing is trying to give Google a run for its money but sometimes when you're set in your ways you can't be bothered because sometimes newer doesn't necessarily mean better.

Google+ seems very basic and clean and people are organised into Circles. You have four basic circles but you can add more if you like. The manner in which people are displayed in the circles is quite neat and I have no cause for complaints in that department.

Snapshot of G+ circles.

The photo department needs some tidying up. It's like one major collage of photos from people in my circles and I think Google could perhaps organise it a bit better because as a perfectionist I prefer if things were put in their place.

Photo page from G+

The profile layout is the same as Facebook so, slightly poor points there in taking a page from Facebook. However, it's a workable layout and I won't argue with it. The homepage layout is also similar to Facebook's but I'm not going to complain about that either because it's all done in clean, simple lines.

What I do love about G+ is that there is this hangout feature. I understand that recently Facebook teamed up with Skype but I hate Skype because it uses up so much of memory on my poor little netbook. Using hangout on G+ is better. I can start a hangout and add as many people as I want to it. It reminds me of Apple's Facetime. The best bit, no additional programs to open, it's all done with GTalk which is 100 times stabler than Facebook Chat. Facebook recently changed up some of its chat features and it's never felt more retarded. They put the whole list next to the scroll bar. Not helpful! Furthermore I despise seeing chat messages showing up in my Messages folder and I miss the whole idea of mass msging some people for example when planning a get together. Not cool.

In all I pretty much like Google+ but it's a bit slow because it isn't at the stage where everyone can join. It reminds me of when Gmail was join by invitation only and then as the storage space got higher they opened it up to everyone. However, I like that almost everything you can determine the level of security of it and who can see it. Being the internet all of that can not count but I like the idea of it.

G+ 3.5/5