14 DAY TRIAL // Google+ is only a few days old, but it's gotten quite a lot of interest, mostly warranted only because it looks like it's the first Google social product that works. Perhaps it shouldn't be too surprising then that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself joined the new social network.
There were several accounts attributed to Mark Zuckerberg at first, but one has been pretty much confirmed to be real. In fact, Zuckerberg himself is reportedly surprised that people doubted that he would join Google+.
But Zuckerberg is not the only social networking star to get on board, MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson also joined and he even had some words to share on his thought about where Google+ fits as well as about Facebook and MySpace.
Several reports indicated that Zuckerberg had set up a Google+ account. However, there were doubts about its authenticity. Blogger Robert Scoble asked Zuckerberg himself about it and got a reply.
"Why are people so surprised that I'd have a Google account?" Zuckerberg asked. He is referring, of course, to a Google+ account.
His profile is not very complete, the only listed information is a short 'introduction' which reads "I make things."
MySpace's Tom Anderson, who co-founded the company and was the default friend of anyone that joined MySpace for a long time, was more outspoken about Google+, to be expected since he doesn't have a stake in the social networking wars anymore.
"Google+ seems like a 'reaction' to Twitter/Facebook. But are you starting to see the ways that Google+ just makes Google a better, more integrated set of services?," Anderson wrote on his Google+ profile.
"My original vision for MS was that everything got better when it was social--so I tried to build all the super popular things used on the web (blogs, music, classifieds, events, photos) on top of MySpace's social layer," he explained.
This is why, he says, it wasn't until Facebook came along, which had social built in, that there was a real competitor to MySpace. He argues that just bolting-on social features on existing products is very hard to get right.
"But Google+ really seems to be primed to make good on that original premise--that everything gets better when its social," he argues.
"I think what we are getting is a much better Google. Does that kill FB/Twitter? Who cares? I'd use all 3, but more importantly, I'll be using Google products I never used, or use them in new, better ways I never used them before," he explained.