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Social Media - Search Engines - Browsers => Social Media => Topic started by: javajolt on July 01, 2011, 09:44:34 PM

Title: Social Networking Showdown: 8 Facebook Features Google+ Doesn't Have - YET
Post by: javajolt on July 01, 2011, 09:44:34 PM
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Host games

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Playing games, such as Words with Friends, Zynga's Farmville or the subversively funny Cow Clicker, is a signature feature in Facebook and accounts for a ton of activity on the site. Mum's the word on games in Google+ so far, although the search engine giant has been toying with social games on Internet TVs using mobile devices as controllers. Not including games as part of the core social networking experience on Google+ would be a surprising departure, although certain kinds of users would likely prefer that their friends' gaming activity took place elsewhere. Google+ could leave the question of how to handle games to the user, letting them cordon gaming activity and players into Circles (subsets of your friends) and Sparks (topics of interest that you can save to your account). As of now, however, Google+ hasn't mentioned games at all.

Update your status with Twitter

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Those of us who tend several social networking gardens enjoy the ability to post on one platform and have it automatically repost to other sites as well. Facebook and Twitter synch pretty well, letting you auto-repost everything or just certain updates using codes (Twitter hashtags). Within the Google universe, you can synch between Buzz and Twitter, which will bring the post to your Google+ profile page, but you can't automatically route it to also appear in your post stream.

Use third-party apps.

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When it comes down to it, games and syncing with Twitter are nothing more than a product of third-party apps that you can use within Facebook. And there are plenty of other apps. Facebook gives developers a kit that makes third-party apps possible—Google+, so far, does not. But developers are ravenous for one to appear. Forums are already buzzing with speculation about when an API for Google+ will become available. Some developers have gone so far as to guess the URL that Google will use to post news of the developers' kit if and when it becomes available. But for the time being, Google+ has nothing, while Facebook has more than half a million apps already in use.

Hide status updates from certain people, but see everyone else's

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One criticism PCMag news director Peter Pachal had with Google+ is that creating Circles, or subsets of friends, is tedious. While I personally don't agree, I can see how Facebook's "everyone by default" approach is more appealing for others who might also hold this opinion. Facebook also has that lovely ability to hide status updates from any individual, letting you pretend to play nice with annoying long-lost friends from grade school while actually ignoring them entirely—without hurting their feelings. Hide people from your Facebook stream—they have no idea that you've done so. Deciding whose status updates you don't want to see in Google+ takes more management.

Birthday reminders

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If your Facebook friends want you to know it's their birthday, they can make it available in their privacy settings. Facebook will automatically remind the right people when a birthday is near and when the day arrives. When it comes to maintaining happy friendships, that little birthday reminder has saved my hide plenty of times. We haven't seen this feature in Google+.

Invite everyone to an event

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In my social network, people have definitely gravitated toward sending event invitations through Facebook. Facebook is especially good at spreading word of large-scale events because you can easily invite everyone you know. For Google+, it's another wait-and-see, although the possibility for leveraging Google Calendar for this kind of a feature is very intriguing.

Poll your friends

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Facebook lets you ask your friends questions, both open-ended ones and multiple-choice questions in which you supply the choices. It may be an underused feature on Facebook, but it's there, built in, and very easy to use. Google+ doesn’t have a polling feature, although just as in Facebook, you can simply debate a question with your friends in a chat or with posts. Still, the Facebook poll can be a lot more fun.

Connect with your friends (because they're already there)

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Everyone is already on Facebook, while Google+ has a very small starter group. As we at PCMag have been playing the Google+ "field trial," one stopping block for truly testing it is there aren't enough people signed up to get a good sense of how it will be used.

It looks interesting right now, but how will it look when users have to manage 200, 300, 400 or more connections? And as a brand-spanking-new social network, the amount of content remains light. On the other hand, Facebook is jam-packed. Count it as either a curse or a blessing.