As This Is My Next reports, Facebook just announced that they’re adding Skype to their chat options, allowing you to video chat with your Facebook friends. (Facebook didn’t announce that they’re making it harder to export your friends’ information to, say, Google+. I’m sure that must’ve been some kind of an oversight.)
I’m still enjoying Google+, although the sparse population continues to be a problem when it comes to things like, oh, say, trying out the Hangout feature, which allows you to video chat with up to ten people at once. (My profile is here.) It really does look like Google is reworking the company from the ground up to push their social media site: Rumors broke yesterday that they were going to rename their Picasa and Blogger services into more brand-friendly Google Photos and Google Blogs. And the redesigned Calendar and Gmail pages are beautiful.
This makeover is no doubt intended to deflect complaints that Google has become too fragmented and aimless, and it’s probably preparing the public for tight integration between Google+ and all the Google services. Google has to work cautiously, here, to avoid another Buzz fiasco; they can’t just suddenly dump everything in one bucket or else the media will declare them to be bad on privacy. But if they redesign everything and introduce services to Google+ slowly and transparently, they’ll be able to woo the public that way. I think the biggest change at Google over the last six months must have been in the marketing department.
Pretty? How about UGH? Did Google get the same idiots who designed the new Skype for Mac, that takes over your entire friggin screen, to do this? I LIKE that my email is all compact. I don’t have a giant wall-sized monitor.
The thing is I think they’re just a bit too late. I have a feeling this will eventually take off, but if they had launched a quality product when everyone was pissed off about Facebook and people were leaving by the handfuls they might’ve stood a decent chance. As it is, I know several people who gave up Facebook, but eventually came back because they didn’t have a decent alternative. Obviously they didn’t have the service ready, but there was a good few months where people were hoping and waiting for an alternative, and one never came.
That being said, when more people show up on Google+, I think it’ll be way more fun.
It is unfair to critique Google+ for lack of people until signups are open to the public. As it is now, of course there wont be all your friends on there.
Even in the early stages Google + is better than Facebook.