Monday, July 18, 2011

Google+ Usability



After the launch of Google+, users everywhere predicted that the newly released social network would be short lived, much like Google’s previous attempts at social networking. The usability experts didn’t take a risk by creating a brand new environment. Instead, they took the fundamental aspects of Facebook (which has already been “tested” by millions of users around the world), but they made it simple.


To new users, Facebook looks complicated, and it is. On the other hand, Google+ offers a user-friendly interface that puts it several steps ahead of Facebook in terms of aesthetics and usability. Thus, new users would likely choose Google+ over Facebook. However, if Mark Zuckerberg makes proper changes to the Facebook interface to make it more clean and user-friendly, he will most certainly win the social networking war.


In today’s fast-paced world, users love to be the first to explore new games and technologies. They expect the unexpected, and they love to be surprised by ingenious products that they can interact with in an exciting new way – a breath of fresh air, if you will.


If Google wants to beat Facebook at the Social Networking game, it must work very hard to improve itself. A very important aspect of this improvement is to maintain its current simplicity without over complicating its vision or scope.


And what about a public API for developers? Let’s wait and see…

1 comments:

Sam said...

I disagree with you about the simplicity of G+, in my opinion, it's not simple at all. Everyone is talking about how G+ will overtake Facebook, but I can't see that happen. There is not enough on G+ to persuade millions of facebook-people to move. Privacy? Meh, if you want privacy, you shouldn't sign in to a social network, or the internet at all. Circles? Well, a minor facebook-change could do the same.

In short, in my opinion, the number of facebook-users might decrease because of G+, but G+ will never overtake it. Since facebook innovates constantly, I think the real losers will be twitter.

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