Google's Google+: Yet Another attempt by Google to take on Facebook

Google has made several attempts till now without much success to take on Facebook. On Tuesday, it has come up with one of its biggest attempt. The Google+ project, which is initially available to a group of Google users who will soon be able to invite others, will let people share and discuss status updates, photos and links, much as they do on Facebook.

However the Google+ project will be different in one significant way, which Google hopes will be enough to convince people to use yet another social network. It is meant for sharing with groups — like colleagues, roommates or hiking friends — not with all of one’s friends or the entire Web. It also offers group text messaging and video chat.

“In real life, we have walls and windows and I can speak to you knowing who’s in the room, but in the online world, you get to a ‘Share’ box and you share with the whole world,” said Bradley Horowitz, a vice president for product management at Google, who is leading the company’s social efforts with Vic Gundotra, a senior vice president for engineering. “We have a different model.”

When users visit their Google+ home page, they see three columns and a stream of status updates in the middle that looks remarkably like Facebook. But Google said that besides an easier way to share with select groups, Google+ has several other features that distinguish it from competitors.

                             

It offers group video chats, called Hangouts, that other members of a group can join as it is happening. Users can search a section called Sparks to see articles and videos from across the Web on certain topics, like recipes or ailments, and share them with relevant groups of friends.

And on the Google+ mobile app for Android phones and iPhones, people can chat with groups using a feature called Huddle. Photos and videos shot with cellphones are automatically uploaded to a private album, so Google+ users can quickly view and post them from their phones or later on a computer.

                           

With these services, Google will compete with a host of start-ups, like Path for sharing with small groups, SocialEyes for video chat, Flipboard for articles on certain topics and GroupMe for group texting.

facebook to launch a music dashboard.

Soon: Listen to music via Facebook

Apparently, Facebook, the social networking giant, is planning to capture more time of yours by introducing your favorite element: Music to its features kitty. Facebook is reportedly getting closer with Spotify and other music companies to bring this feature to its users. The feature is expected to hit the audiences by the end of august.

As explained by gigaom's Om Malik, the Music Dashboard will have the following features:

• Music Notifications: here you have notifications that show if your friends have listened to songs recommended by you or on your profile.
• Recommended Songs: You can get a list of songs heard and recommended by your friends. You can also play them back by clicking the play icon.
• Top Songs from friends.
• Top Albums from friends, with cover art.
• Recent listens from your friends.

In the upper-right corner there will be a “happening now” ticker that shows what is happening in your social and musical universe, including songs that your friends are playing. There is some talk that this “Happening Now ticker” would show-up all throughout your music experience and not just on the music dashboard.

Facebook launches new messaging service, says email is 'too formal'

No surprise here, but Facebook just launched a "new messaging service" -- what Mark Zuckerberg called a "modern messaging system," not a new email system. Email's "too formal," according to Zuck, and the new system is designed to be seamless, simple, and short in comparison. "We think we should take features away from messaging -- it should be simple." All that said, it'll handle email and users can have 

facebook.com email addresses, but it also integrates SMS, IM, and Facebook messages -- Zuck doesn't think email will be the primary way people use the system, and your conversation history will integrate messages from across various services into threads. Facebook is also doing what it calls a "social inbox," which sounds like Gmail's priority inbox on steroids -- it uses your Facebook contacts list to automatically build whitelists for important messages. Unfortunately, there's no IMAP support at launch, so you won't be able to plug in your favorite mail client, but it's coming, says Facebook. The new messaging system should be rolling out slowly over the next few months -- hopefully Facebook will come out with a pithier name than "new messaging system" by the time everyone gets it.