I know a lot of people are going “another social media site? Really? …no REALLY?” But hey I’m not complaining about this new slick, simple but powerful social site. In fact, I haven’t been on Facebook in a couple weeks and only tweet from my phone now.

My sister recently tweeted the question “Should Twitter be more freaked out over Google+ than Facebook?” I would say Twitter, Facebook AND Tumblr (maybe even Flickr) should be scared of Google+.

Myspace, Facebook, etc. were social sites that just got too bloated (especially with spammers). What I mean by this, is that there is just too much crammed into one area, it started becoming messy and annoying. Maybe it’s just mine being a neat freak, but I can’t stand the ads on the side of the page, the random “is it working this time or not” chat, and all the endless, useless apps.

Twitter has recently become overrun with noise and spam. Too many people post too many things too many people just don’t care about. That’s why services such as Shuu.sh have started. Google+ solves this problem with Circles. Circles is simple, but is simply brilliant. Why nobody over at Facebook never thought of this is beyond me (I guess Zack didn’t stick around long enough to steal that idea too). With Circles, I can cut right through that noise and look straight at what my friends, family, and colleagues have to say. And I mean my REAL friends, not the hundreds of unknown faces on my friends list in Facebook or Myspace.

Tumblr should be scared because Blogger can now be easily integrated into a social networking site. Not only that but even Google+ posts like this one could easily duplicate what Tumblr already does.

The layout of Google+ is… I don’t know any other word to use other than lovely. It’s clean, organized, and slick. I especially love the layout of photo albums. It displays the photos lined up but in different sizes. Here’s a sample:

Flickr should be scared. Yes Picasa (or Google Photos as it will soon be known) doesn’t have nearly the user base Flickr has. And yes Flickr has a huge market share. But given time, Google’s ability to innovate on a fairly regular basis and with all the money Google has, I cannot see why Google Photos couldn’t be as good if not better than Flickr.

With Google+, I have actual control over what people see of my identity online and that’s something I NEVER had with Facebook. It’s actually fun to put people into Circles. Hangouts with friends and maybe even co-workers eventually while editing documents together provides great possibilities. And Stream isn’t overwhelming since I can narrow down what I want to view with one click of a button.

The most important question this all raises is simply this: If Google does continue to innovate at the rate it is, is Google actually getting close to monopolizing the internet? They already have the #1 (Google), #3 (YouTube) and #8 (Blogger) most visited websites on the planet and I can almost guarantee Google+ will be among the top 10 most visited websites on the planet (unless Google just becomes Google+). Isn’t that a bad thing? Shoot me a comment with your thoughts if you feel so inclined. After-all, I’m sure Google will be a benevolent dictator…