Last week I received my Google+ invite from a friend of mine.  The last two weeks has been filled with Google+ hype.  If you searched the term ‘Google+’ on Twitter, chances were good that there we tweets from people asking for an invite.  What came as a surprise to some was Google and their age limit.  One teenager tweeted “GRRR!  I GOT GOOGLE PLUS!  THEN I PUT MY REAL AGE AND WAS LOCKED OUT!  FML.”  He was 15.

Google+ brings something new to the picture with such features as Hangout and Circles.  Now Google has attempted to get in the social networking game twice, once with their service Okrut and their Twitter imitation, Buzz.  What really separates Google from sites like Facebook or Twitter?  Well, Google.

Google has over 20+ services that they host ranging from Google Maps to Google Voice.  But their crown jewel that will help them in the long run is what made Google what it is today: search.

Google’s search engine is used over 2 billion times everyday.  While yes, that is a very impressive number.  There is a problem.  They might be visiting Google, but how long are they staying on the site?  Well, just this year alone in January, Alexa reported that people are spending an average of 13 minutes on Google.  That’s alright but compared to Facebook, that’s nothing as Facebook users are spending over 33 minutes a day on their site.  The other number that proves a issue for Google is that approximately 1 in every 13 people on earth are active users on Facebook.  So how does Google compete with Facebook?

They created Google+ as a challenge to Facebook.  Google hyped their new product with the same tactic they used with Google Wave, a failed Google product they had a great concept but not enough users found it to be what they were looking for.  The tactic used is by giving Google employees + accounts, they would distribute their invites to friends, then their friends would pass it along, and so on and so forth.  The idea is by having Google employees starting the chain, they would hope their friends would be tech savvy and could thus better Google+ feedback/suggestions during its beta.

So how has Google+ been received by the users lucky enough for an invite?  Look no further then Twitter.  Most of people have been praising + as the next big thing.  One tweet did catch my eye while reading through the rest of the Google+ related tweets.  Twitter user Joshen McEwen or as he’s named on Twitter, @JoshenReborn  Joshen tweeted out “I want more connectivity out of Google+ make it easier for people to bump into each other.  I shouldn’t feel alone on a social network”.  He has a point, either you know who you are looking for on Google+ or your kind of stuck waiting for those that know you to add you to their circles.

Now, moving on to features, Google has offered quite a few.  We will start with one of the most important: Circle.

Circles on Google+ has allowed users to categorize their friends in circles with labels.  You can add your family to a specific circle and maybe college buddies to another.  This feature has proven successful as it has kept the friend interface very organized and overall just fun to use (especially when deleting a circle).

Another feature Google has added is Hangout, a basic group chat but what made it unique was the ability for video.  It’s group (video) chat.  This is what had Facebook rushing to make an announcement regarding their new partnership with Skype to provide video calling on Facebook.  Unfortunately for Facebook, Google beat them to the punch.

Sparks is a feature I’m hesitant to eve talk about, it’s basically RSS but for search regarding news with the search term you used.  Not really sure why it was added.

Overall, Google+ is a great social network and has a lot of potential.  It’s too early to tell if it’s a Facebook killer but we will know soon enough.  All we can do is wait while the rest of the world waits for their invite.