The Social Network Feature War Heats Up: Google+ Goes Open & Adds New Features
With Facebook’s F8 conference under 48 hours away, Google’s launched a preemptive strike in the social network feature war with a host of new Google+ features.
The first batch of Google+ features rolled out overnight consists primarily of a slew of updates to Google+’s video-chat feature Hangouts. Hangouts gained the ability to go mobile, stream video and go public as well as boosting its business usefulness with screensharing, sketch functions and Google Docs support.
Google also launched Hangouts’ APIs at feature 98, giving developers access to build on top of Hangouts video-chat infrastructure. Hangouts was useful and fun already but with todays updates, Google moves quite a few steps ahead in social networking video chat against Facebook’s Skype integration strategy.
Moving down the list we see Google’s search expertise being applied to Google+ at feature 99. Jim talked at length about Google+’s new search function on today’s video blog and explores it far better than I’d be able to so check it out and I’ll wait right here… Done? He’s good right?
While anyone who wanted a Google+ account already has one, Google’s big 100th feature was the opening up of signups. Moving from field trial to open beta, Google+ has opened its doors to the masses, a turning point that will test whether Google+ sinks or swims. The exclusivity of a Google product launch builds buzz and adoption quickly, but will the general public find the space for another social network in their lives? Only time will tell.
But Google weren’t done at feature number 100, announcing another 7 ‘features’ that see Google more or less playing catch-up with Facebook and Twitter. Minor changes such as improved SMS notification and messaging support, improved +mentions functionality, the ability to +1 comments, profile photo enhancements, customisable notifications and SD storage capabilities on Android devices round out the second batch of features Google rolled out today.
Last but not least, Google renamed Google+’s group messaging Huddle to Messenger for feature 107. I guess Google didn’t get the memo on Facebook’s group messaging app also named Messenger just the same way they didn’t get the memo on Huddle’s copyright ownership of the name when they first launched Huddle. Get creative guys. The rename also comes with photo-sharing abilities, giving it the slightest pass as a feature.
Overall, some great features and news mixed in with some enhancements that give Google+ a head start going in to what will undoubtedly be a Facebook dominated news week. With Facebook teasing some big news at this years F8 event, Google+ is readying its troops and digging its trenches for the social network feature war.
What do you think of the new features? Does Facebook have a fight on its hands? Let us know what you think!
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
