Google+ The New Facebook, Or Just a Ping in My Space

Google+ has taken centre stage in many headlines recently, due to their field test launch nearly 24 hours ago. There was such high demand that Google actually had to shutdown their invite feature. They released the following statement:

“We’ve shut down invite mechanism for the night. Insane demand. We need to do this carefully, and in a controlled way. Thank you all for your interest!

For any who wish to leave, please remember you can always exit and take your data with you by using Google Takeout.

It’s your data, your relationships, your identity.”

After inspecting all the features of Google+, it really gets me thinking. Is this the new Facebook, or just a Ping in the wind?

They have a lot of interesting features, but they are missing the addiction factor of flash based games. Games such as farmville to grab peoples attention for hours at a time and draw people back hour after hour. They put an age restriction of 18 into Google+ which is a good thing, but also its going to hurt them. A large portion of Facebookers are under the age of 18 which is going to lower the fan base of Google+, but on the flip side this will also lower the amount of childish behaviour such as stalking, harassment, cyber bullying.

Lots of Social Media Networks have come and gone. Apple’s Ping never really hit it big from the word go and Facebook killed Myspace. With Google+ in the works to handle all our media and social networking needs, is Google going to discontinue Picasa?

Have you used Google+ and if so, do you think it has a chance of taking Facebook on?

Do you think Google will come up with their own style of games for their social network?

Do you agree with the age restriction?

Let us know what you think.