Google+ (also known as Google Plus) is a social networking service operated by Google Inc. The service launched on June 28, 2011 in an invite-only testing phase. The following day, existing users were allowed to invite friends, who are above 18 years of age, to the service to create their own accounts. However, this was quickly suspended a day after there was “insane demand” for accounts.
Google+ integrates social services such as Google Profiles and Google Buzz, and introduces new services Circles, Hangouts, Sparks, and Huddles.[3] Google+ will also be available as a desktop application and as a mobile application, but only on Android and iOS operating systems. Sources such as The New York Times have declared it Google’s biggest attempt to rival the social networkFacebook, which had over 750 million users in 2011. [wikipedia]
Top 10 most followed google+ users
It’s a surprise to me seeing Mark Zuckerberg as the #1 here. There has been a rumor around the web wether this is really Mark’s profile on google+. Perhaps Mark is just checking what google+ has to offer.
Recently Facebook changed their TOS that resulted in the ban of popular Chrome extension Facebook Friend Exporter. Followed by another personal data migration tool, Open-Xchange, has also been deactivated. Open-Xchange is a free open-source tool (http://ox.io) created for users so that they can store their personal contacts in a central location and sync them across various social platforms. Via the official Facebook API, Open-Xchange allows users to export their Facebook friends lists, but doesn’t harvest email data. Instead, it only exports first and last names so that they can be matched to the emails in the accounts that the user has given Open-Xchange the permission to access. It’s clear that Facebook is taking actions to counter Google+. Interestingly, Google+ users is increasing rapidly and set to hit 20 Million users in its first 3 weeks. The battle between Facebook and Google+ had just started. Let’s just see in a couple of months who will win.
Checkout some screenshots of Google+
