Dylan Wittkower, author of "Facebook and Philosophy", has been on Google+ for about two weeks.
/ Lindsey Theis
From MySpace to Friendster, Twitter to Facebook, it seems like there is a social network out there for everyone. Now, there's a new one to add to the list from search engine giant Google, called Google+.
The latest numbers out show that one out of every 6 minutes spent online is on a social network of some sort.
"There are different settings and different ways to manage how we're sharing and what we're sharing," said Dylan Wittkower, author of "Facebook and Philosophy."
The key offerings that Google+ boosts are features with catchy names like "circles" and "hangouts". The Circles are ways for users to manage their connections, by grouping them based on relationships. For example, a user can have one circle of friends, another of co-workers, another of family members, etc. With the circles, different privacy settings apply. So if you don't want your boss to see the pictures of your crazy night out last weekend, they don't have to.
The addition of friends to circles is similar to the way a user might have followers on Twitter, Wittkower explained.
"In Twitter, you follow people and they might follow you back, they might not. Google+ works like that, you include somebody in their circle, maybe they include you, maybe they don't," he said.
The hangout function allows users to video chat with multiple people at the same time.
"Let buddies know you're hanging out and see who drops by for a face-to-face-to-face chat. Until we perfect teleportation, it's the next best thing," the Google+ website said.
This social network is still very new; it launched June 28th, and to join you need an invitation. The network is also still in the testing stages, and developers still have several kinks to work out in the meantime. For example, William Shatner was kicked off the website for a few days because he was replying too often to other users.
"Every time somebody included him in one of their circles, he actually wrote them and said hi. It tripped some anti-spam warning in Google's system and they banned him as a spammer, until they realized it was William Shatner and he was just being nice," Wittkower said.
Already 18 million people have signed on to the site, only 33 percent of them women. About two thirds of Facebook users are female. The male or female breakdown won't determine Google+'s success, Wittkower said. It will be establishing dominance over Facebook or Twitter.
"{The test} is really for people who aren't really highly motivated to move beyond facebook or to leave facebook. {If they} are going to make that transition," he said.
Does he think that will happen? Too early to tell, he responded.
We asked viewers on the NewsChannel 15's Facebook page what they thought of Google+, here is what a few responded:
"I'll be sticking with Facebook. I have a Twitter account and rarely check into it," Pat McLain Brigman said.
Patsy Driggers said, "Stay with Facebook, my computer doesn't even like Google search."
Kimberly Nixon wrote, "Tried it & don't care for it. I see nothing different from Facebook. Google+ is just a complicated version of Facebook."
What do you think? Does the online world need yet another social network? Or do you like the privacy option?
