Google+ and Facebook are both social networking sites. They are built for and around people and communication. They are similiar in so many ways, but they are also different in many ways. The other day I noticed a little example of how they are different in a pretty fundemental way.
For whatever reason, I decided to Google myself. On the first page I saw the results for both Google+ and Facebook. They looked like this:
Immediately I noticed how different the search results were and on some levels how they reflect the differences between the companies’ expertise and focus.
Both services are people oriented, so it seems logical to me that the way they speak to users is in a natural language. Why does the Google+ result use incomplete and unhelpful sentances? The text looks like it's been picked by a robot off the profile page. It doesn't tell me what Google+ is, which is a pretty glaring omission in a search result. It doesn't entice me to explore, infact it blatantly tells me that this user hasn't shared anything so why bother looking at it. And oddly enough it suggests something about adding people to circles, which seems a bit irrelevent at this point.
The Facebook result is better in pretty much every way. It tells me outright I should join Facebook. Why? So I can connect and share with not only this user but other people I may know. It explains exactly what Facebook is concisely and in words that people can actually understand. It's all about language and Facebook has taken the time to properly communicate with users. The Facebook URL also has the name of the user in it, instead of a long complicated number, making it much more readable and memorable for people.
The key difference I see in these search results is each company's understanding of people. How to speak to them, how to intrigue them, how to connect them. Google+ is just as good as Facebook technologically. But technology is nothing without an understanding of who is using your service, why they are using it, and how to communicate with them. I think Google+ has failed on most of these points. This search result shows that even Google doesn't know what Google+ is and how to describe it. Or maybe they just haven't gotten around to humanizing their search result. The latter, while a small detail in the big picture, is a critical oversight because (small as it may be) it plays a role in how users percieve the service.
In reality, details like these may or may not play a part in the reason why Google+ has yet to make any real impact on the social networking world, a world that Facebook controls and understands better than anyone. Nonetheless, paying attention to the nuances of language and being able to communicate naturally with the humans using your service is important.
I think language use is an important factor to consider and control. Wording is as influential and powerful as any other element of design.
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