If you’re on both Google Plus and Facebook, I bet if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll agree that post for post, there’s just much better different content on Google Plus than there is on Facebook. Of course, that statement assumes a lot. However, if you’re using social networking sites to actually consume, curate, network, and interact with new people, then Google Plus beats Facebook, hands down. At least with regard to the people I am friends with on Facebook and the people I have circled on Google Plus.
And this is not intended to be a knock against my Facebook friends. There’s plenty of stuff shared on Facebook that I find amusing, entertaining, and from time to time, informational. However, the overwhelming majority of “stuff” on Facebook is pretty much mindless.
People sharing what they’re having for breakfast. People sharing that their on a train. Pictures of puppies, kittens, and babies. From time to time, someone shares something they’ve read that might be interesting. Chances are that I’ve already seen it on Twitter or Google Plus.
But again, I don’t think it’s about the people. It’s about the intent of the Facebook platform. It’s about how and why people originally signed-up for Facebook, versus, Twitter, versus Google Plus. It’s about the community that develops based on the users and the share-intent of the users on the platform.
This really isn’t anything new. We’ve seen the same thing happen for topical blogs. You don’t follow a blog on football and comment and share about how much your dog prefers dry food. It just doesn’t fit into the community.
While social platforms are much broader in terms of the types of information shared, there is still and underlying sense of community standards. I.e. what you share, how you share it, who you share it with. And, in my humble opinion, it is these community standards that sets the framework for what and how stuff will be shared. And frankly, and I recognize that this may just be may druthers, the Google Plus community is a lot “better” at sharing (or shares in a way that I prefer) than the Facebook community.