Android users will likely drive the growth of Google+

With 700 million users, many would argue that Facebook has already won the battle to become the world’s most significant social network. This doesn’t, however, mean Google, the search giant, doesn’t want to continue the fight.
Google+ is its latest attempt at re-imagining the social networking space, in a bid to compete with Facebook.
First impressions are good. Google+ is very loud in its intention to make online sharing “more like real life”. This intention manifests itself in the form of ‘Circles’. These circles are essentially like Facebook ‘Groups’ and allow users to share information (and hide information) as they see fit. A user’s professional ‘circle’, for example, won’t hear about the Electric Picnic in the same way their friends’ circle will.

The ‘Sparks’ feature aims to make it easy to find content a user cares about. It’s essentially a type of tumblr.
Hangouts is a feature that lets you tell your mates when you’ll be free for a video hangout: to video chat.
Unlike Facebook’s deal with Skype, Google+ will let users video chat with several friends simultaneously.

The mobile+ planet
Google+ is still in ‘field testing’ stage and only available to a limited number of invitees. Android phone users, however, can download the Google+ app from the Market and it is smart phone users who may be the ones to change Google+ from a baby to a giant.
Google+ looks good on a smart phone and its rich sharing options are suited to mobile networking, sharing, commentary and information seeking. Someone has already built a Chrome extension that lets Google+ users push posts to Facebook and Twitter. Many more extensions will follow. Google+ was built with foresight. There’s only one way the communications and networking sectors are going and that’s towards real time, mobile, sharing and location-based services. It is smart phone users, particularly the hundreds of millions of Android owners, who will make or break Google+.