The Google+ experience

When we think of Social Networking it's difficult not to think about Facebook. I've heard very different and interesting perspectives about what is the best platform between Twitter and Facebook and I came to the conlcusion that there's no such thing as a "best platform". They both can be very useful, depending on the purpose you're using them.

Still, I always thought that the concept of friendship in social media platforms is pretty standardized. Basically on Facebook every member of your network is equally your friend, a situation that is very far from reality. In real life you may want your best friend to know how much your boss is pissing you off and what a dumbass he is, but you surely don't want your boss to know that.

The new answer to the human need to socialize is brought you bythe Google giant, its name is Google+.

Google announced the project launching yesterday on its official blog and I strongly invite you to go there and to take a look about it. Until now 3 are the features that stand apart from previous social networking experience: Sparks, Hangouts, and Circles. The first one is a feed of the content you're really into, so when you're available, there will be always something to watch, read, or share. Hangouts is a video conference systems that lets your friends know you're free to hangout for a video chat. Then comes my favourite: Circles. It allows you to put different friends together, you can organize your relationships into groups such as "saturday night friends", "soccer friends", "colleagues", and so on. This helps users sharing the content they want just with the people they want.

Here you can take a look at the presenting video:

Now, I am a social media person and I actually can't wait to try Google+ in order to review it right here, but I will leave my last question for you. Do you think that this new patform is going to compete and somehow to contrast Facebook networking structure? Or is it just the same old thing with some new sparkling features? Tell me what you think.