Since the day Google Plus was launched, internet analysts have compared it with its more established social networking peer Facebook, and concluded that both have advantages and disadvantages. But it is the user who would be the ultimate judge on where to stay longer.
Google Plus began with a bang in June, but since then the response has not been along expected lines with its 3.8 million users finding it hard to comprehend what the social networking site is all about. In complete contrast, the 33 million Indian users on Facebook seem to be showing no signs of tiring. In fact, users from India grew by nearly five per cent in the last 30 days, says data from online analytics firm Socialbakers.com.
To start with, Google Plus had captured the Indian audience with features such as Hangouts that facilitates group video-conferencing for free. “A group of people have even taken Hangouts to the next level by hosting the longest Hangout ever, which is still going on after completing a staggering 30 days (https://bsmedia.business-standard.comhangoutongplus.com/),” says Harsh Jain, founder & managing director, Red Digital, an interactive engagement specialist firm.
He says the most preferred activity on Facebook is sharing photos, which forms the site’s primary user engagement tool. “Third party games and applications have also been a preferred activity on Facebook and have helped it to exponentially increase its user base over the last few years.”
Himanshu Bias, a Bharti Vidyapeeth student who maintains an active Facebook account and recently signed on to Google Plus out of curiosity, claims: “The game apps on Facebook are not only much more diverse but more social since you can play in real-time with your friends online. Most games on Google Plus are already on Google browser’s Chrome app store so there’s nothing new to discover.”
But another Google Plus user, Ravi Kumar, a technical architect by profession, begs to differ. “The advantage for me playing games on Google Plus is the ability to rank and compete with other Google Plus users.”
Jain of Red Digital says: “Google Plus users are mostly early adopters and that means that they do not have their social graph in place on the site yet. This makes it impossible for users to use Google Plus as their primary social networking site, thus reducing engagement rates and hours spent on the portal.”
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Yet early this month, comScore announced that Google Plus had reached 25 million users within months of its launch, a milestone that Facebook took three years to achieve, while micro-blogging site Twitter touched the numbers in 2.5 years.
The war against Facebook, however, looks like a long drawn one for Google Plus. With over 40 per cent of 100 million internet users in India accessing Facebook, the site has enviable levels of user engagement. On the other hand, Google Plus has launched 16 game titles onto its platform developed by ten different companies.
Facebook rose to prominence last year with Zynga’s Farmville. The game alone boasts of nearly 80 million users from Facebook’s total user base of over 750 million. Shahana Chakraborty, a Pune-based homemaker and an avid Facebook user says: “I was one of the many thousands from India who played Farmville. It was addictive and I logged in several times a day to tend to my virtual farm and collect my reward points.” Chakraborty has now moved on to playing word and card games with her friends and relatives on Facebook, in real time.
In contrast, Google Plus is taking a more controlled approach when it comes to users endorsing an app on their profile pages. In Google Plus, most users’ posts are confined to a certain number of people. Users are allowed to choose which circles they want to develop (like game scores or information sharing) to be known. This is already a disadvantage for game apps that are micro-marketed as opposed to Facebook’s in-every-user’s-friend’s-face approach.
Chaitanya K, a Chennai-based web designer, says: “What I like in Google Plus is that it has kept users away from unwanted notifications and messages that game apps generate on Facebook. You can play games by just pressing the games button.”
But games on Google Plus have not increased the user’s affection for the site. “If I wanted to play games, I would have stuck to Facebook. I deleted my Facebook profile two weeks back as I was bored with the site and its spam updates on my wall,” says Chaitanya, adding that an active Twitter account and a Google Plus profile is all that he can maintain.
With more than 200 million Facebook users playing games on the site, the social networking giant spruced up its gaming experience soon after Google Plus announced games on its platform. The enhancements rolled out by Facebook are aimed at making games accessible to users, as well as making it easier for friends to share game activities.
To begin with, social games such as CityVille, Zoo World, Monster World and Mystery Manor can now be played on a full-screen gaming window. A gaming activity stream alongside the apps, which updates users on games their friends are playing and their progress, was also added. For Facebook, social discovery of apps like games is only driving its growth further. The top 80 games on Facebook have at least one million active users across the globe.
As Rohit Rakshit, another Google Plus user from Ranchi points out: “Google is obviously still tweaking its games and privacy changes are inevitable. Currently, after playing a game on Google, I couldn’t find an easy option to control the information the game provider could access from my profile page.”