Techtechnology Google Plusgoogle

Google+ Review Roundup: Critics Have Mixed Feelings About Google's Newest Social Network

Reviews Of Google's New Social Network
By 

Technology reporter, The Huffington Post

|

Google+, Google's latest foray into social media, has only been out since Tuesday, but there is already no shortage of reviews.

For those of you without one of the coveted invitations to test out what Google hopes will be a formidable challenger to Facebook, here are the basics from The Huffington Post's Catharine Smith:

The Google+ network is designed around users' social circles (called Circles) and lets users selectively share with specific groups within their personal network, rather than sharing with all their social connections at once.

The search giant emphasizes Google+'s privacy customizations and hopes that users will choose to use the new service over more established networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Technology reporters and bloggers from the Guardian, PC Mag, Read Write Web, PCWorld, Wired have mixed feelings about the news social network, ranging from "complicated" to "really, really well done," and everything in between.

Check out the slideshow for some reviews of Google+. And if you're one of the lucky few who've used it, let us know about your experience in the comments.

The Guardian(01 of05)
Open Image Modal
The Guardian's Charles Author gave the desktop version of Google+ two of five stars, writing that the "new social network lacks the social aspect of Facebook and the speed, and simplicity, of Twitter."Most of his criticism centers on problems he had signing up, including issues uploading his photo and entering his résumé information.While he called Google+'s Circles " promising," he was overwhelmed by the number of contacts: "Quite quickly the Circles dashboard starts looking like the cabin of a 747," he writes. "All those buttons and dials, and one gets the uncomfortable feeling that you're never quite going to be finished with doing it. In which case, might it be simpler not to start at all?"Author loves the Android app, though, saying "it's smooth and fluid, and everything that the desktop version isn't." (credit:Google)
PC Mag(02 of05)
Open Image Modal
PC Mag's Mark Hachman reviews Google+'s Stream, Hangouts and Sparks features. He likens the Stream to Facebook's Wall, although his Stream quickly became "clogged" with long posts from, of all people, a senior vice president at Google.Hachman praises the video-chat feature, writing that Hangouts "may be one of the killer features that prompt customers to leave Facebook." He contrasts Sparks with Google Alerts, but writes, "I regret to say Sparks is nowhere as effective." He signed up to follow "tech news," but only saw four posts that were somewhat relevant. "Maybe Google+ should use Google for its search algorithm; I hear it's pretty good," he concludes. (credit:Google)
Read Write Web(03 of05)
Open Image Modal
Read Write Web's Marshall Kirkpatrick spent a few hours on Tuesday night using Google+ and calls it "a very compelling experience" and "an attractive, intuitive, intelligent service that's fun to use and speaks to a deep human need for contextual integrity of communication." He calls the privacy controls of Google+ "the opposite of Facebook and Twitter's universal broadcast paradigm."He had positive reviews of Circles, calling it "a smart, attractive, very strong social offering from Google," but like PC Mag's Mark Hachman, he found that Sparks left something to be desired, calling it "the least developed part of the site so far." (credit:Google)
PCWorld(04 of05)
Open Image Modal
Megan Geuss and Mark Sullivan at PCWorld write in a lengthy review about the service. "Google+ has a few rough spots, but is, overall, a strong start to the search giant's challenge to Facebook," they say.Unlike The Guardian's Charles Author, Geuss and Sullivan found setting up Google+ to be an easy task, noting that with the "bragging rights" field in the About Me section, it's clear that "Google is trying to be a little saucier than Facebook, or at least have an edgier personality." PC world says that Hangouts "could really put Google+ ahead of Facebook," calling them "a kind of mashup of video chatting through Gmail, and the old "chat rooms" of the days when AIM was our only chat option."The reviewers conclude that "Google+ is a solid start to an incipient rival social networking platform that is sure to be enhanced rapidly over the coming months, and it could soon offer a solid alternative to Facebook. [...] Still, I'm not sure that Google has given us the deep privacy controls that we might need."
Wired(05 of05)
Open Image Modal
Ryan Singel's review in Wired focuses on the privacy differences between Google+ and Facebook. He spends much of the review explaining what Google currently does with the information it has about its users, and exploring where Google+ will fall into that. He notes that Google's policy has generally been that it does not use data from users' search activity and Gmail to customize display ads on third-party websites. Similarly, Facebook only serves users ads based on what they post to Facebook and "Like" on other sites; that is, Facebook doesn't track where you go and what you do outside of Facebook.He concludes:
But if Google mines what you do inside its social network to create a behavioral profile for ads outside of the social network, or use the profile they've created about you outside Google's walls inside its social network, Facebook would have good reason to say that it's ahead in the social networking privacy battle. In other respects, however, they are neck-and-neck in unexpected uses of your data.

Click here for nine things you need to know about Google+.

Suggest a correction
|
Submit a tip