After Google’s largely failed attempt at social networking with ‘Buzz’ (their answer to twitter) and ‘Orkut’ (?) they have hit back with their latest foray into the scene with Google+ (Google ‘Plus’). This is Google’s answer to Facebook and while it replicates many of the features of Facebook, with excellent web design and extremely useful features, it does have some very interesting extras that many Facebook users have been crying out for. For one thing, Google have got the privacy right. With Google+ you are able to decide who sees what for virtually every piece of information you put up on the web. This means you can have private photo albums, status updates that your boss can’t see, ‘circles’ of friends with specific privacy settings and much more. And what’s more – unlike Facebook's awful privacy settings - this feels extremely intuitive and very simple to use.

Google+ has some really great new communication features that can only really be explored when all of your friends are on there and aren’t really attractive if there is only a small number of users for you to communicate with. The ideas of live video chat built-in (which Facebook have recently announced) and ‘hangouts’, socialising with multiple friends via webcam are both great ideas, but time will tell if they are good enough.

Advertising via social networking relies heavily on the clever psychological profiling of users and serving them ever-more specialised adverts. While Facebook does this well, Google have had to put up with a lot less information with which to profile people and yet they have done a pretty good job at advertising online in the past (with Gmail for example). What Google really want, is to try and claw back some of the revenue they have lost to Facebook advertising and trying to grab a great big slice of the social networking cake is the best way to do that. Facebook however, is the most successful social network in history and subsequently is the cake - it’s going to be really hard for Google to make users switch from one social networking platform to another. The classic ‘invite only’ marketing tactics are a favourite of Google’s but in the end it will come down to how many people choose to adopt it in the long term, rather than signing up out of pure curiosity for its features, many of which could simply be cloned by Facebook anyway.

One thing that might change the stakes is how Google+ handles business. Google’s long history of working with businesses might shine when they reveal their businesses pages – currently still in closed beta. At the moment, Facebook still lacks somewhat as a platform to advertise your business and communicate with your users – it’s got the right idea but it’s just not as polished as it could be. Depending on your business, many people are shying away from traditional web design and turning to pure social networking in order to promote their business online. With the lack of features in Facebook’s business profiles and not many alternatives, there is a lot of area for growth in this department and it’s just possible that Google might bring out with something clever.

In response to Google+ having video chat capabilities and slick new features, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg decided to invest in some fresh new web design, unveil that video chat capabilities are coming to Facebook (a collaboration with Skype – shortly to be owned by Microsoft) and there are rumours that a music service may be launched on Facebook. All exceptionally terrifying stuff for the Google executives to get to grips with. Let’s see how this all pans out….