What Does Facebook Need to Survive Google+ Threat?

Google+, Google's latest attempt at Social Networking, became an instant hit netting 10 million plus users in only two weeks since its launch on June 28.

Moreover, a service that is in a testing phase getting this much hype is not a point to be ignored. More than anybody else, the new service may become nightmare for Mark Zuckerberg as Google+ is touted to be a Facebook killer.

Google Social Networking offering Google Plus off to a very strong start - may leapfrog Facebook, Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry wrote in a note to clients.

Paul Allen, founder of Ancestry.com, said there are more than 4.5 million people using Google+, leading him to believe that this social site is Growing Like Crazy.

Google have been working on this project for years and the effort shows in terms of its design, layout and features.

Google has attacked the Social Networking space with significant key innovations, including Circles, Sparks and Hangouts.

These innovations significantly improve the usability, monetizability and user control in Google Plus, Chowdhry said.

The core of Google+ is a feature called 'Circles' which helps a member organize different kinds of friends at various levels and control the way process of sharing.

The 'Circles' concept presents a way to find friends and socialize with them in a more direct, real-life method. Google says the Google+ model is different from the Facebook model, which doesn't distinguish between family, close friends and acquaintance.

The search giant has exploited many weaknesses in the Facebook and made them into top features in Google+.

For instance, Facebook doesn't supported video chat, but Google grabbed it and put the feature in Google+ as Hangouts.

Immediately, Facebook has partnered with Skype and offered video chat in its pages. But, still it doesn't offer group video chat unlike Google+ that allows to you to do group chat with up to 10 people.

Apart from a very attractive and enticing user interface, Google has millions of users availing of its free services like email, Docs etc. besides enjoying a near monopoly in search business, which Facebook and Twitter don't have.

The biggest dazzle Google+ has is integration. Almost all the existing Google online services, from Search to Documents to Video, have combined together with Google+.

As Google+ offers to integrate its social line into the whole range of free Google service, why would millions of those people ever want to go to another website for purely social networking purpose?

For Facebook, Google+ is the single biggest competition they are facing in their 7 years of existence. However, Facebook, with 750 million users, has been known to be adaptive when faced with a considerable challenge.

Following are some of the key steps that may help Facebook to overcome the threat of Google+:

Create Circles in Facebook:

Facebook should fill the vaccum created by Google's Circles. Facebook have tried groups in the past but it didn't work well as expected.

Now, Facebook should plug in features in its pages where a user can share information only with its target audience like family, friends and acquaintances. It should also allow group people in a simple way.

Upgrade Mobile Experience

Much of Facebook's growth can be attributed to mobile devices. Facebook has to constantly upgrade its mobile experience, especially when Google+ app currently awaiting approval in the app store.

It needs to focus more on developing apps that allows user to share content with ease.

Also, it should release an official app for the iPad soon as smartphones and tablets seem to be the future.

Meanwhile, Facebook is working on Project Spartan, in which the social networking giant was looking to evade Apple's App Store with a HTML5 web app platform.

Apple Factor

Apple has built Twitter in to its iOS 5, allowing iPad, iPhone and iPod touch users to tweet from Google Maps, Safari, YouTube and other apps.

Probably, it is the best time for Facebook to partner up with Apple. It's mobile that is driving the huge amount of content sharing and Apple can offer access to 10s of millions of users.

Music Streaming

Latest media reports reveal that the social networking giant is getting ready to launch a music service by itself.

Tech blogger Jeff Rose claimed on his blog Life is a Graph, that he has uncovered a new Facebook service, possibly referred to internally as vibes and it could be related to the company's rumored music service.

The social networking site could improve upon this concept as music streaming is one of the hot areas.

Facebook recently partnered with Spotify to offer music streaming services.