Can Facebook and Google+ Coexist?
Like oil and water or like peanut butter and jelly? Google+, the search giant’s new social network, has everyone in the tech industry speculating about whether it’s "the Facebook Killer."The death of MySpace seems to prove that people have room in their lives for only one social network, one profile page. After all, how many different places do you need to announce your favorite TV shows? How many different places do you need to share your witty thoughts?On the other hand, Twitter proved that "social" can come in different forms--and 140 characters is more appropriate for some witty thoughts than for others. Twitter also allows users to link certain posts to their Facebook page if they wish, meaning that if the social networks could restrain themselves from treating social networking as a zero-sum game, everyone might win.Of course, Google and Facebook haven't played nice lately, and they probably won't now. Google has tried to index public Facebook pages for its searches, inciting the ire of Facebook, which earlier this year hired a PR company to pitch Google-negative stories to the press. And Facebook's recent partnering with Skype to compete with Google+’s Hangouts suggests that each Internet giant has the other in its crosshairs.she says. “If you marry the strength of the search that Google has with behavioral base of social media that Facebook has, that's a one-two punch. But our privacy becomes the collateral damage.” Eventually we might get smart enough to seek alternatives that let us share information with friends and family, and yet avoid sharing it with companies that have an abiding interest in monetizing our data.
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