I believe this comparison is the very first thing that came to my mind when I began exploring Google+.
Going into this weeks assignment Google+ was not entirely new to me. I have heard people talking about it before around campus. I heard they found features to be easier compared to Facebook and how other features seemed to be more complicated. I am still in the works of completely understanding this network, but I believe it is very similar to Facebook overall.
You have the basic posts from the page owner and the ability to interact with one another. The common ability to comment or +1 a post I find to be the most similar to Facebook. Although this is a very common theme among social networking sites.
The most innovative feature in my opinion are the circles. The ability to coordinate friends, family, organizations, acquaintances, news, and so forth is a feature I was not familiar with. I know other sites, such as Facebook, allow you to do similar lists with "friends," but this one is a little more unique. Google+ goes a little step further in coordinating who your following and who are in your circles. You have the ability to allow only certain circles to see a post of your choice.
A health organization would be able to segment their audience by using different circles. The array of circles a health organization might have would allow them to easily send messages to people who can relate.
The +1 option, I discovered, is more than just a "like" button for Google+. The +1 button allows you to bookmark articles you may run into throughout the internet. A health organization could utilize this +1 button on important article they may post anywhere online. The user can easily find the articles anywhere they can log onto their Google+ account. This makes finding the articles super easy for the user. The user doesn't have to worry about adding the article to their favorites at work and then having to email themselves the link to read it more in depth at home on a separate computer.
The health organization that I found on Google+ was the American Heart Association. [https://plus.google.com/u/0/?tab=jX#+AmericanHeart/posts] This organization keeps their posts up-to-date. They have only posted a maximum of three posts in one day the last three weeks. I see this as being adequate posts for an organization. A follower of the American Heart Association would not be bombarded with posts all day long from them.
Not only are the amount of posts important to me, as a follower of AHA, so is the content of the posts. The posts most commonly are questions or short facts/statements. These are the type of posts that we spoke of in class today. These type of post make it short, catchy, and to the point.
AHA asks questions of followers that pertain to heart issues as expected. But also other posts are catchy such as the following that was posted on September 17th:
"Where would Rocky be without “Eye of the Tiger?” Sometimes
a good song provides just the boost you need to power through a
workout. Tell us what’s on your workout playlist! http://bit.ly/AHASongza."
This post itself speaks for itself. It is suggesting a workout, yet mentioning music to go along with it as inspiration.
Looking over the AHA Google+ page I do not see a lot of post activity from users. Some post do not have any activity at all. Others have just one comment, one share, or a couple +1's. I'm not sure if this is due to Google+ still being new or anothe factor. Maybe it is due to the post only having text, and their page not being as catchy unless you read over and over again. AHA has only posted two pictures in the past couple of weeks; this may be prevalant as to why they do not have much interaction among followers.
At the end of the day, it can be agreeable that Google+ still has a few tweeks to work on. As the popularity grows I can see where Google+ may overtake Facebook in the future. I do not think it will be in the next or even the year after that. Who knows when it will be exactly, but I think it will happen. The combination of Google products that are being used is of a wide variety. Google search, RSS, gmail, docs, calendar, blogger, and more. Why not combine them all into one social network?
So are you Mac or PC and what will the world be, (Mac or PC) say in another ten years?
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