For over a year, a number of stories were either leaked out or speculated upon, about Google launching a social network. Invariably, the leaks were followed by denials about it. But now, things are out in the open.

Google has finally bitten the bait, and their new social network Google Plus (or Google+) has just been launched.

Google+

While there is bound to be excitement to find out what exactly Google Plus is all about, it seems to be a combination of features that are already offered by a number of other networks.

“Real-life sharing, rethought for the web” is the tagline for the new network. Users will be required to create a profile containing a name and a photograph. They will then find five basic features. These are:

• Circles
• Sparks
• Hangouts
• Instant Uploads
• Huddle

Circles allows a user to divide contacts into different groups such as family, friends and work. This will allow them to decide what information they wish to share with a particular group of contacts, instead of having to share all information with all contacts. A similar feature is already available on Facebook in the form of Friend Lists.

Sparks is similar to Google reader, which allows users to get updated news feeds by subscribing to sources of news and information. It facilitates the spread of viral content similar to how Twitter and the Facebook News Feed do.

Hangouts allows users to hold video conversations with various contacts at the same time. This feature is also available on Tinychat. The overall premise of the feature, though, seems to be inclined more towards mimicking functionality found on Foursquare.

As the name suggests, Instant Uploads will upload the photos taken on a mobile phone automatically. This is also possible through iCloud, Microsoft Kin and other platforms. This feature, though, competes directly with Facebook and Flickr for photo-sharing.

Huddle will enable the user to have a group chat. This is also possible through Beluga, which Facebook acquired recently and is very similar to Google Wave, which got discontinued at the end of last year.

Only time will tell how popular Google+ will become and whether or not it will provide any real competition to Facebook, which is already extremely popular and quite unlikely to feel any real threat in the near future. The odds are against Google once again, but they have very successfully beaten the odds in the past and just might do so again.

Top social networking sites in India – Jul 2010

According to comScore statistics, Facebook had 20.9 million unique users in India in July 2010, compared to 7.47 million in July 2009, while Orkut had 19.9 million users in July 2010 and 17.7 million users in July 2009. While both networks have shown growth in the last year, Facebook’s 179% growth far outstrips Orkut’s 16% growth rate.

No single factor is likely to be responsible for this change in the market preference. According to Asheesh Raina of Gartner, factors such as Facebook’s intuitive user interface and the availability of various games on Facebook could have effected the change. It is also possible that the international popularity of Facebook could have had a snowball effect. Raina also believes that Orkut will continue to remain popular among older users, while Facebook may be more popular with youngsters.

The data was collected from users who connect from their homes or offices, but not from cybercafés or mobile phones, as the use of mobile phones for social networking is still not very popular in India.

Orkut had to face some resistance in India, and was even taken to court a while ago due to content that was considered offensive to local politicians. Facebook also had to block some pages that the Indian government felt might be perceived as inappropriate by Muslims.

Google won’t be too happy with this news as it marks yet another failure to succeed in the social networking market.

Facebook, on the other hand, has opened an office in India, as the country now represent the 7th largest market in the world with regards to the use of the social networks and is also among the fastest growing markets.

Orkut which is owned by Google, is way behind Facebook as a social network on a worldwide scale. But in India and Brazil Orkut has so far been the dominant social network.

However, it now looks as if things are about to change in India.

Growth of Orkut v Facebook in India

According to comScore’s findings, in May 2010, Orkut had 19.7 million unique visitors while Facebook had 18 million unique visitors. But the rate at which Facebook has been growing in India is much faster than the rate at which Orkut is growing.

In the previous year, Facebook had only 6.5 million users in India, which means that they have grown by 177%, while Orkut has grown only by 35% in the same time period.

By that yardstick, it is possible that Facebook has already overtaken Orkut by now.

Facebook for their part are leaving no stone unturned to capture the Indian market. They have started operations in India since march this year and the office will be based in Hyderabad.

They are currently on a hiring spree and intend to hire around 500 professionals to work with them.

They have already appointed Kirthiga Reddy as Director of Online Operations and Manoj Varghese as Director of User Operations.

On 3^rd February, there were reports about the presence of thousands of sex offenders on the site. Most of these users had earlier been barred from using MySpace. John Cardillo, who runs Internet security firm Sentinel, says they found 8,487 registered sex offenders on Facebook, using only basic search operations, in just a few days.

Facebook has responded by claiming that the figures are grossly exaggerated, but they have disabled 4,679 accounts that correspond to user IDs flagged by Sentinel “as a precaution”.

The very next day, there was news of a sex ring of at least 31 high school students, using fake IDs to lure and blackmail young users into performing sexual acts.

Facebook’s response to this story seems especially disturbing. They claim that less than 1% of their users are affected by impersonation schemes. With a user base of 150 million it could mean that almost 1.5 million could potentially be affected!

Facebook has tried to mend some fences, by making some changes to the rules and regulations to be followed by users, which could prevent the creation of fake accounts and provision of false information on user profiles. One change specifically states, “If you are required to register as a sex offender in any jurisdiction, you may not use the Facebook service“. It looks as though Facebook is doing what they can to protect their users and their own reputation.

A couple of days later, CNN reported that phishing attacks are thriving on Facebook. Unscrupulous users are gaining access to accounts of other users and then impersonating them to ask their contacts for money.

As a result of these scandals, both Facebook and MySpace, which has faced similar problems, have been reportedly banned from the General Assembly of Computers of Maryland. And this could be just the start of their problems. In the past, Google’s social network, Orkut, almost got banned by the government of Brazil until Google was forced to cooperate and reveal user information to help stop the propogation of child pornography.

The perception that Facebook is a safe social network, due to their strict policies, has started crumbling due to the rapidity of its own growth.

In order to keep pace with their growth, Facebook will have to invest heavily in manpower and technology to keep out undesirable elements of society and safeguard their reputation. However, even with the best of efforts it may never be possible to be 100% secure again.

According to sources, 89% of complaints about web-based child pornography in the country were related to Orkut. Needless to say, this is a very serious offence. The Brazillian government had initially approached Orkut to cooperate with them on this issue but were turned down because the personal details of the perpetrators was supposedly held by Google Inc. in the U.S.A.

A feature introduced on Orkut that allowed the creation of private albums, only accessible to a user’s contacts, has been abused to spread child pornography. According to a federal prosecutor from Sao Paulo, Sergio Suiama, “the dissemination of Orkut in Brazil has turned the country into a distributor of child pornography, and Google doesn’t seem to be worried by that.” He further added that about one-third of Internet users in Brazil are between 10-15 years of age, and hence it is urgent to put an end to this problem.

Google has agreed to develop image filters on Orkut that will detect and prevent the uploading of child pornography. They have also decided to keep records of any data that looks suspicious for a period of 6 months instead of the usual 1 month.

Considering the seriousness of the issue at hand, Google defended their earlier refusal to hand over personal data of the paedophiles using Orkut by saying that handing over the required information was not an issue, but they had not received any official communication in this regard so far.

Brazilian police will be given access to 3,261 private photo albums on Orkut that may contain child pornography. So far, user IPs and navigation logs of over 1,000 cases have been handed over by Google to the Brazilian authorities.

For now, the Brazilian government seems to be satisfied by Google’s efforts to curb the problem, and is willing to see if these measures will suffice. Some prosecutors have threatened civil and criminal suits against Google, though, if details are not revealed soon.

OpenSocial will be accessible at the URL: http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial, which will go live on Thursday.

When launched, OpenSocial will consist of three common APIs, defined by Google with input from partners, which allow developers to access core functions and information on social networks:

• Profile Information (user data)
• Friends Information (social graph)
• Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)

Unlike the most popular social networks, OpenSocial will allow developers to code using ordinary JavaScript and HTML. This will help it gain tremendous popularity as it precludes the need for application developers to learn and code in various proprietary languages created by the numerous social networks.

Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle are the platforms that have already agreed to partner with Google on OpenSocial. Application developers Flixster, iLike, RockYou and Slide are also on board. Interestingly, all these application developers have seen great success on Facebook.

Hints that Google might plan to expand further into the social networking arena surfaced last month when a leaked video showed Google employees discussed the company’s plans to introduce more social features into Google Reader.

Advertising on Social Networks

Google has not mentioned any specifics at present about whether or not advertising will be accepted, but it is obvious that this will be their way to gain access to most of the popular social networks without needing to buy them outright!

Once a number of developers build popular apps that get included by scores of users on their profiles, Google will be able to easily set up revenue-share schemes, similar to AdSense for regular content publishers, which will allow developers to include ads in their apps and make money for themselves and Google with minimum effort. The image below shows what this might look like conceptually:

Rather than using brute force to gain access to a number of users, Google has used a cunning method to reach the same attractive user base without spending too much money. They were probably not too bothered when Microsoft bought a stake in Facebook either.

The success of such an ad placement strategy depends on two factors: (1) whether the host social networks will allow applications to carry ads that don’t earn them any money, and (2) whether Google will provide enough incentives for the developers to include ads alongside their applications. For now, one can only wait and watch how Google will monetise this new channel.