Social media is the new mantra of life, irrespective of the sex or age group. You name any Tom, Dick, and Harry; you will find him or her on the popular social networking websites like Facebook or Orkut, LinkedIn and so on. If the sweet memory of your lost school or college friend is haunting you, then be a part of social networking sites and find your lost friends.

The war

The front runner among these social networking sites are the Facebook and newly added Google plus (as Orkut isn’t really working anymore). Facebook is being called a giant in the kingdom of social networking, however, Google Plus joined the global collection last month with a big bang having many more additional features than we see in Facebook. In no time, a battle had started between the two, one being a giant and other being a social networking Titan. Privacy is the biggest challenge of social networking sites. While sites such as Facebook have tons of tools to manage, it still at times falls into the allegation of abusing the private life of its users. Google Plus promises more privacy, which users will certainly find attractive. However, Google is still known for maligning the privacy of their users, remember someone sued Google when Gmail was launched.

Google Plus seems to have an edge over Facebook

Its barely one month since Google Plus was launched. Google was lagging behind in terms of social networking, finally managed to come up with Google Plus and launched with great fanfare. Features such as circles, where you can add your friends and can video chat together are a significant advance. Google plus has all the features big and small more than its rival Facebook, yet, it also seems to have successfully played to the gallery with more privacy options, biting its rival where it hurts the most. Users were amazed to see how Google Plus was more advanced than Facebook, emerging with better and more privacy controls and other features, even though it still resembles its rival in look and feel. There are studies and surveys that have assembled comparisons and are calling Google Plus better than its rival. In order to compete with the new features of Google Plus, Facebook has produced its own chat application in association with Skype.

Dual platform users

Google Plus claims to have crossed the ten million figure of users, which is still a small figure compared with Face book’s 750 million. In a span of just one month, the Google Plus figure isn’t bad. Nevertheless, the interesting aspect, which the analysts seems to be ignoring is how almost all the Google plus users are still on Facebook and are active there even though they like Google Plus. It will take some time for a complete paradigm shift.

Conclusion

The creation of membership numbers and new registrations is often a PR blow-up to hype the growth of the network.. Many of the new users are not aware how social media or any website manipulate the data during the registration or sign up procedure. However, the things that need to be noted are that although Google promises a better privacy policy for its users, the fact is that they would certainly find ways and methods to use their user’s information for Google’s own interests. It is up to potential users to decide which way to go and how far to go with this new buzzword of life – Social Networking.

About the author: Amanda Kidd is an avid blogger who likes updating herself with new technological innovations. She recently bought a cool thumb drive for herself and learning more about the HubSpot software is the new entry in her personal technology guide.