In the right hands, I think it is possible to create a Facebook killer. After all, Facebook more-or-less dislodged MySpace, which was the dominant social networking service only a few years ago.

I am reminded of the early days of the web Browser wars. Does anyone remember Mosaic? (It helps if you are old enough to remember the early 1990s) It was the first popular web browser. Then came Netscape and Navigator. Microsoft was a late comer to the game with Explorer. At that time Netscape totally dominated. Explorer was widely considered to be an inferior browser. But Microsoft managed to push it push it and push it (some would argue by illegal methods) until it became the dominant browser. Do you know anyone who uses Netscape anymore? No.

So yes, Facebook is pretty entrenched right now. And yes, Google + will have a difficult time making inroads. But there are definitely examples of superior software or superior marketing being able to force out a dominating application. And Google already has the experience of out-maneuvering Yahoo at their own game.

Honestly it should not matter what social network people are on anymore than what email provider they have. What we really need is not a whole different network but better ways to integrate the ones we already have. My phone for example puts what people post to various services(not all by a longshot yet) on one screen and I can post updates to multiple sites at the same time. There are other applications and programs that do that to, but none seem as fluid as they should be.

For what it's worth, Google had a great model for rolling out Gmail. Invite only, then you get a certain number of invites to friends. It became a valuable commodity, which is one reason why so many people ended up switching email providers (which is another technology with a high barrier to change - sending out e-mail address changes and the fear of losing contact with people. my dad still has is AOL email address). If it's much better than Facebook (which shouldn't be hard) and they roll it out carefull it just might work.

Oh, and this (make sure to mouse-over).

The affinity tracker is actually pretty useful and something people will be clamoring for before long.
Look at Gmail and the 'suggested people' under the To: bar. That thing is super useful, and I easily turn off the 'creepy big brother' part of my brain that knows Google is tracking me to use that feature.
I'm really looking forward to Google+ being in open Beta cause it feels like a service that my friends don't have to buy into in order for me to incorporate them into it.
I never really liked Facebook and joined solely because that's where I could see my friends pictures. Every year I go for weeks at time ignoring it because it's clunky and I didn't want to be a part of it in the first place.

Facebook is a shit sandwich for sure, but "we keep track of every time you e-mail someone" is EXACTLY what will keep me away from Google.

It's a very short amount of time before Facebook starts rolling out ads embedded in other webpages a la Google's AdSense. Once this happens, Facebook not only has all your demographic information you've provided them, they also have your social graph, and all the product pages you've liked; but they have all your browsing history as well.

How this big-brothering is less scary than Google's, I'm unsure.

The "circles" feature is something that already exists in Facebook, under the guise of "friend lists"... though granted it's pretty underutilized. I find it incredibly useful to separate family members, work friends, college friends, crazy conservative high school friends, etc. Once you've set up lists, you can customize permissions on photo albums, posts, etc. so that they're only visible to certain groups.

@7 - Yeah, but Facebook friend lists are underutilized by design. Facebook wants you to share everything with everybody, while Google is positioning their network as compartmentalized by default.

#5 I'll bet there was a point where you said you'd never sign up for Facebook either. Seriously, if everyone you knew switched over, would you still hold out? I bet not.

@9, that depends. And no, I never said that about Facebook, because I use my Facebook in very particular ways. For instance, everything on my Facebook account is completely wide open to the entire universe. Since there's no such thing as privacy, it's better to keep that in mind all the time. If I don't want to share it not only with my friends and my crazy relatives in Idaho and even crazier who-the-hell-are-yous from christ-knows-where, I DON'T POST IT THERE.

On the downside, from Facebook's perspective, is that the utility for the site is dwindling for me. I feel like it's a place I put stuff but never get anything back. 3/4 of my friends are hidden. Essentially, it's a place I can put a way to be contacted without getting spam (so far). I can, in fact, foresee a way in which social networking stops being interesting to people altogether -- and every time the ad network tightens around us, that feeling gets stronger. Ultimately, Facebook sees me as a way to apply free credibility to their ads, which isn't that interesting to me. So far my friends are -- just -- interesting enough to keep me there. Will they continue to be? What about when THEY are all just ad-rankers too?

I think the privacy concerns are valid, but ultimately not that relevant. At this point online privacy is a lot like your virginity: you're not going to preserve it forever, so the big question becomes "who do I trust it with?"

Facebook has so far been pretty blatantly anti-privacy. They don't mistakenly reveal your data, they purposely do so, and then make you dig through their settings to try to cover it up again. In contrast, Google has made one very high-profile mistake with private data, but has been pretty consistent about making the privacy settings obvious and easy to manipulate.

Will both Facebook and Google sell that usage data to advertisers? Absolutely. But based on past actions, I have slightly more faith in Google than I do in Facebook to sell it in a way that doesn't completely sell me down the river. That's why I hope Google+ succeeds.

I think the fact that so many of us are "friends" with our moms, bosses, former co-workers, and people from high school we don't even remember is a good enough reason to use something else entirely for our ACTUAL social network. Maybe I'll keep Facebook just to have a profile, and Google+ for the interactions I give a shit about. Just a thought.

@12, this might be a good option.

My husband and I were both contemplating creating an additional FB profile (but that creates many other issues). Even if I filter my posts to leave out, say the family and the boss, I have no control over what my friends comment.

An example: I posted the other day that I was having a bad day. Thank god I thought to put it under a close friends filter, but I wouldn't necessarily think to do that for that kind of post. Lucky for me I did because one friend replied, "BOOBIES!" As in if we lived closer she would offer up her boobies to cheer me up. That is something I really don't need my republican sister, christian in-laws or my boss seeing.

@12, I like it. As if my kook relatives could ever figure out how to do anything Google anyways (we're talking people who go to the main Google search page by typing "google" into the MSN.com search window EVERY SINGLE TIME).

Fnarf - Facebook has, and very likely uses, the same logs containing every time you email or chat someone too. That's keeping you away from Google, but not Facebook?

In the end, I'd trust Page and Brin a whole hell of a lot more than i do Zuckerberg and his little walled garden he's been building.

@1: "Do you know anyone who uses Netscape anymore? No."

Yes. Anyone who uses FireFox, which was the free software spin off from Netscape when that company tried to turn a web browser into a money maker. The Netscape side died out, but its lineage lives on in FireFox.

@16, how is Facebook logging my email?

@6 What exactly is so scary about that? So Facebook knows I like the Sounders and was at the match last night. Why is this something that I should care about in the slightest.

@19, oh, come on. Have a little imagination.

What if, for example, Facebook knows I like Hooters, rather than the Sounders, and knows I was in the bar last night, rather than a Sounders game. Say I'm a teacher, and don't want all of my student's parents freaking out about it, despite it being perfectly legal. What if I take a day of sick leave and go skiing, and I don't want Facebook revealing that to my boss (but I want my friends to see my fun pictures).

There are any number of perfectly legitimate reasons people might not want everyone in the universe to know about every private activity they are involved in. Duh.

@20 Well then how about not sharing those things with the internet? Facebook is not the problem idiots who seem to think that posting shit they don't want people to know are. It's not really any different than talking loudly about your affair at the local bar.

@18 Sorry, I meant Facebook is logging every mail/messages/chats/anything-you-do-on-it internally, just as Google does. I only meant to point out that anything you sign up for, they are pretty much logging it all for current or future marketing use. Maybe you were talking about the separation of the two identities being key.

#7 - Facebook friends lists might be underutilized, but I don't think it is any conspiracy on Facebook's part. It was simply an after-the-fact feature for Facebook, not the centerpiece of the site like Google+. However, it works perfectly well on Facebook and I would think Facebook could simply publicize it better in light of Google+.

@22, don't use Facebook for email. Problem solved.

@21

Exactly. Pretty funny when the attention whores start complaining about privacy, isn't it?

@21, 25 - I think this idea that "if you're worried about privacy, don't post it" is an over-simplification. The internet doesn't have to be all public, and there's nothing wrong with expecting some areas to be private. Facebook has eroded its privacy over time, which naturally upsets people. It would be like if the phone company gradually started letting random people listen to your phone calls. The solution wouldn't be, "well, don't use the phone then." People who use Facebook to talk to their friends and family aren't necessarily attention whores, and while they may be expecting too much privacy from Facebook specifically, we can't reasonably just declare that the entire internet is a public zone, can we?

@26 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_line_…)

My main hope is that, in the event that Google+ fails to take off, Facebook outright steals some of these ideas. A lot of them seem like things they should already be fucking well doing.