Google started, less than a couple of weeks ago(i), a revolutionary service: its social networking platform: Google+.
Of course, what it looks like at first, is that it is just a variation of facebook [1].
Given that critics have been extremely positive about the product, newcomers often get puzzled: what is so cool about something which is like... finally, an empty facebook?
For facebook is full of people, estimated at 750 millions at the time of writing, and not only does it have all your techy friends, it also has the other friends, the computer illiterate(ii), and beyond that, also your parents, grandparents, sisters and their children, the whole family.
And people like this, of course, because it's nice to see pictures of relatives or places, bars, museums your friends go to (some people get sick of it, they are just not growing with their age, newspapers, trains, the radio, etc., also made this class of people sick when they appeared).
If it took years for your dad to "get his facebook", how is he going to migrate to G+? Or for that matter, why?
That is the major asset of facebook. It has seven years or so of advance, that is, in a field that grows at the speed of the internet, an eternity. It's hopeless to overtake them, unless they collapse... or unless you're Google.
I don't think they would collapse, although I think facebook is rotting. Still the mass of people, which is the market here, has propensity to accommodate itself to shit, to accept all sorts of abuses, low quality and even degradation of service, flooded by aggressive advertising, all sorts of scams, confidence tricks, bribery, bullying, intimidation, theft, copyright abuses, etc. I've read recently facebook is about to lunch "facebook money" so that the mass can start paying cash for all the silly apps that circulate around. The list could go on forever. Facebook is essentially an evil product.
It's an evil product based on an obvious, natural, genius idea, that of social networking. Something a technology-oriented humanity wants (and there's not much of an alternative even if we would want to). Something that will be as natural in 20 years than a book appears to be now, so common, nobody would even question the concept.
That's why facebook is so popular. They did something that had to be done. It filled-in a gap, everybody rushed, now they have the monopoly.
That's where Google will save the day. I'm not going to list why Google is way better than Facebook Inc., I'll keep it to their "you don't have to do evil" motto. I'm going to list the key points why G+ is, even at this stage, infinitely better than its corrupt and nauseous precursor.
The concept of circles
I don't care myself much about privacy, but of course it's a fundamental concept. In facebook, everything is locked down.
Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the web, wrote a nice article in Scientific American [2] where he explains the philosophy of the wonderful tool he created, allowing interconnection between people. I'll reproduce the parts I like the most:
<quote> The Web is yours. It is a public resource on which you, your business, your community and your government depend. The Web is also vital to democracy, a communications channel that makes possible a continuous worldwide conversation. The Web is now more critical to free speech than any other medium. It brings principles established in the U.S. Constitution, the British Magna Carta and other important documents into the network age. </quote>
<quote> If we want to track what government is doing, see what companies are doing, understand the true state of the planet, find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, not to mention easily share our photos with our friends, we the public, the scientific community and the press must make sure the Web’s principles remain intact. </quote>
<quote> The goal of the Web is to serve humanity. We build it now so that those who come to it later will be able to create things that we cannot ourselves imagine. </quote>
In this article, Berners-Lee warns against sites like facebook, which "wall off information posted by their users from the rest of the Web". That is the very thing that I realized with facebook and kept me away from it for years. You have to log-in, have an account, to get inside. Nowadays, a typical facebook scenario is that someone will post something to share with others, but to see it, you have to "like it" first. Bullying and insulting your intelligence.
If I make a search for a friend from the past, someone I've just met and that could become one in the future, a guy who's going to give a talk in the weekly seminar, anybody, well, forget about facebook, they will tease you with "this guy is on facebook" but unless you're part of their game, they won't let you see it. That's a scam, that's immoral, and I hated it from the beginning.
Google.
There is below a snapshot of my Public G+ page as it appears now:
You don't have to be logged-in, you can be paranoid, have the CIA on your tracks, that's for everyone to see, that's like my webpage, Google is making everybody open to the Web again.
Of course if you don't want to share stuff with the World, or if the people with whom you interact are of this type, then fine, keep it in a private circle. Herebelow is what the page looks to me, rather than to everybody:
My public Google+
I cut it to the beginning only, not that there is offensive or really private stuff(iii), but you get the point.
There is the first post that you know already from before. The second is "Limited" and shared with the circle of "friends", the last is extended, it would not reach the wide public but anybody remotely connected to me (being acquainted to someone in my circle, by the rule of six links, that makes virtually anybody part of G+).