The hot technology event that is being watched by the whole world is the launch of the social network Google+, one of Facebook’s most formidable rivals. Google is a huge corporation involved in many businesses as it is the largest search engine today.
Google launched Google+ after much consideration and improved features to attract more and more customers on a brand new social platform. Google is trying to squeeze space in the for-profit social arena currently dominated by Facebook.
However, before you think about whether to quit Facebook to switch to Google+, let’s take a look at the unique features of Facebook that Google+ still doesn’t have.
1. Host games
Online games on Facebook are a basic feature and attract a large number of users. This social network offers users a wide variety of games with many genres for nearly all different audiences.
The fact that Google hasn’t integrated games into the social network is said to be a rather unexpected start, although there are still people who prefer to play games somewhere other than social networks. In the long run, Google+ will have to find a way to integrate gaming and player activities into Circle (the circle of friends) and Spark (the place to share information with friends).
2. Update your status with Twitter
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 sync pretty well, letting you auto-repost everything or just certain updates using codes (Twitter hashtags). Within the Google universe, you can sync 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.
3. Use third – party apps
Facebook provides developers with a set of tools that allow them to easily build apps. That is why there are now countless interesting applications offered on Facebook.
Rumors about the development kit for Google+ applications are floating on information technology forums. However, it is still just a rumor, so far Google has not had any official information about supporting applications developed by 3rd parties. Meanwhile, on Facebook, there are more than half a million third-party applications running.
4. Hide status updates from certain people, but see everyone else’s
By default Facebook displays the status of all your friends so you can regularly update their news. However, in case you do not want to see the status of a certain friend, or of those who regularly post advertising and spam information, you can choose to hide the status of those people. You can rest assured because the other person does not know that you choose to hide their status. With Google+ to do this, you need to do a lot of complicated operations.
5. Birthday reminders
This is a small but very interesting and useful feature for most Facebook users. When it comes to or near someone’s birthday in your friends list, Facebook will remind you and suggest that you wish that person a happy birthday. This feature helps you to maintain good relationships with people and also saves you a lot of time. Currently, Google+ does not have this feature.
6. Invite everyone to an event
Inviting to an event is a widely used feature on Facebook. People can share event invitations with all their friends, which helps information about the event spread quickly and widely. That’s why this feature is especially useful for large-scale events around the world.
With Google+ this is another feature to wait for, although with Google Calendar users can also set schedules and share with many people.
7. Poll your friends
Facebook allows you to create polls with open-ended or multiple choice questions, to consult your friends about a certain issue. This is a little used feature but very useful and easy to use.
Google+ doesn’t have this feature yet. Although many people think that you can argue or ask your friends about an issue by posting a question. However, it is clear that polls like Facebook’s are still much more useful and interesting.
8. Connect with friends (because they’re on Facebook)
All your friends are on Facebook and you can easily connect with them while Google+ has just been launched and currently has to stop giving users a trial subscription.
Google+ looks great right now, but no one knows what it will be like when each person has about 200, 300, 400… or more friends to connect with. Until then, will it still be simple and easy to use?
Hopefully the above article by Ola City has helped you understand more about the features of Facebook that Google+ has not yet kept up with. We hope you will have enjoyable relaxing experiences when surfing with friends on this social networking site!
Best regards,
Ola City Global
