

Deep comparison Google+ vs Facebook - urlwolf
http://www.pcworld.com/article/234825/9_reasons_to_switch_from_facebook_to_google.html#tk.nl_dnx_h_crawl

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Shenglong
_Facebook, on the other hand, does not make an effort to warn people the
they’ve been tagged (possibly in an unflattering or compromising photo) and
give them an immediate chance to remove the tag._

What? It definitely does. I get an email every time someone adds a picture of
me. I also think a lot of us make an effort not to delete unflattering photos.
Not every picture posted is nice, but it adds new dimensions to your online
personality. If you don't like people adding your pictures, you can always
change your privacy settings.

Most of these reasons other than data liberation are very one-sided. Facial
recognition can be seen as a bad thing, but some would argue it's a nice
feature. Although, honestly, what information on my Facebook would I want to
liberate anyway? My years-old wall posts of "Omg I miss you" and "lol up!!!"
that I never even look at?

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thurn
I'll admit that I'm deeply biased by being a Facebook intern, but why is Data
Liberation better than the equivalent feature on Facebook?

~~~
Shenglong
Because we're actually aware of it. I've been using Facebook since 2006, and
I've never heard of such a feature on Facebook... and I know all about privacy
settings and other features. Does Facebook actually have an export feature?

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kmavm
Account settings -> Security -> 'Click here to download a copy of the data
you've put on Facebook.'

This downloads a .zip file with a static html human-browsable index of all
your photos, notes, posts, friends' names, etc.

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bad_user
Does it download your friends' public email addresses and phone numbers?

If no, why not?

~~~
rufibarbatus
No.

Facebook's explanation is that because they respect your privacy, they think
you should be able to withdraw access to contact information whenever you see
fit.

In order for that to work, it goes, your friends should only be able to access
contact information from within FB's walled garden, and never be able to
export it. (Also the reason contact scraping Apps are met with cease and
desist letters.)

BTW, you _can_ export your friends' birthdays from the events page. This data
is not included in the aforementioned bundle.

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teilo
This article would be more believable if they removed the word "deep" from the
title. A deep analysis would show that other than the Google platform
integration, these so-called differentiators fall apart.

Hangouts is unique -- for now. I'm pretty sure Facebook is already working on
something similar.

The only real differentiation I have seen is the UI. The Facebook UI is
getting very hairy. It is hard to find things. You shouldn't have to Google
(oh, the irony) to find out "how do I do X on Facebook?".

So Facebook's real vulnerability, as I see it, is platform creep. It's due for
a major re-write, but of course they then risk alienating their user base at
the worse possible time. Google's move is therefore quite strategic.

~~~
rryan
I've heard others describe the difference as a UI issue and I can't disagree
more. It takes an engineer to realize, but the dynamic real-time updating of
Google+ is /not/ a UI issue. You can't just sprinkle some front-end magic on a
system to make it work this way. It takes major backend work to allow that to
happen.

Minor point, but the photo quality of Picasa is truly making the experience
for me. Facebook's photos are low-quality and built to scale massively, while
Picasa has been built as a Flickr competitor. The quality difference and
design tradeoffs really show. I'm a photography nerd though, so maybe this
does not matter to others as much.

Also, as many have said I think the major hook for Google+ is that
notifications are integrated in every Google property.

~~~
waqf
For the benefit of those of us who aren't familiar with both platforms, can
you explain what "dynamic real-time updating" features Google+ has and what
Facebook does instead?

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rufibarbatus
s/deep/overtly biased/

I'm not really a big fan of Facebook; it's gotten to a point where I resent it
for how locked into it I am right now [1]. I'm very much rooting for someone
to come up with a product good enough to reduce the Facebook effect.

That said, this article is shallow, disputable and occasionally wrong. And it
reaks of link bait. If you haven't clicked the link yet, don't waste your
attention.

[1]: [http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201012/viral-
me-s...](http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201012/viral-me-silicon-
valley-social-networking-devin-friedman?printable=true) Ctrl+F friction

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seagaia
"For the most part, Google has lived up to its “Don’t Be Evil” slogan. Which
company would you rather have as the steward of your personally identifiable
information?"

Well, I'm not sure. I don't think either of them would do anything EVIL (sell
my personal information to some person to come threaten my family), but don't
both of them use all of our info to sell to advertising companies (which in a
way, is practical, and kind of evil?)

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reso
How is them targeting advertisements at you in any way evil? First of all, it
lets you use Facebook/Google+ FOR FREE. Secondly, well-targeted advertisements
are far-and-away better for both consumer and advertiser than blind
advertising. Several times on Facebook I've seen an ad that was so perfectly
targeted, it meant a new good experience for me, and a conversion for that
advertiser.

