Sparks looks cool. Sparks is the sort of thing where Google really have the experience, data, and competitive edge. Some of the other ideas seem pretty stupid, to be honest (sorry).
"Instant Upload" really depicts what I dislike most about Google's software at the moment. I already have two separate sync mechanisms on my phone from Google (contacts and apps), now they're making a third. Why can't they just make one simple sync thing?
It feels like they're just launching a smattering of separate vaguely "social" 20% projects at us, when really they should have taken the best bits and integrated them into existing applications. Huddle, for example - doesn't Google Talk already have this functionality?
Circles is where I think social is going to be heading, but being first doesn't mean being best. Facebook has been headed towards this sort of thing for a while now, and once they have this feature why would anyone use Google Circles?
When I look at this demo, I just think about sporks.
Sporks are so cool! They are a spoon AND a fork! But they never replaced actual spoons and forks. Because while sporks are an improvement over the old design, they just weren't better enough for people to bother to switch.
People moved from myspace to facebook because myspace got too slow and spammy. Also facebook was "cool" because initially only kids in prestigious colleges could get an account.
Google+ needs either some killer feature that is so much better than facebook that it compels people to switch (if they have one they haven't shown it yet) or facebook needs to become unusable in the same way myspace became unusable.
While I mostly agree with you, I hope this makes Facebook sweat a little bit. They have been doing a lot of things lately that a lot of people have not been happy with. But if Google is willing to throw their full weight behind + and improve upon where Facebook has fallen short, I don't think Facebook is too big to fall.
I personally think the "circles" concept is going to be the killer feature, at least for me and my wife. Being able to easily post things that not everybody on your list will be able to see is something I wish Facebook had, especially for those of us unable to resist the guilt-pressure to accept family members into our friend list...
This is the thing Facebook got never right when they opened from college to everyone. It was obvious for so long and they never did anything about it, i mean the word "friend" alone is limiting the whole concept.
"Instant Upload" really depicts what I dislike most about Google's software at the moment. I already have two separate sync mechanisms on my phone from Google (contacts and apps), now they're making a third. Why can't they just make one simple sync thing?
It feels like they're just launching a smattering of separate vaguely "social" 20% projects at us, when really they should have taken the best bits and integrated them into existing applications. Huddle, for example - doesn't Google Talk already have this functionality?
Circles is where I think social is going to be heading, but being first doesn't mean being best. Facebook has been headed towards this sort of thing for a while now, and once they have this feature why would anyone use Google Circles?