Google+ is competing with LinkedIn and Microsoft, not Facebook

No way. If they weren't competing with Facebook, they wouldn't have photo gallery functionality, Hangout, or the upcoming Games functionality. They're going straight for Facebook's throat, but they're doing it in a way that bridges the flaws in Facebook that have made room for products like LinkedIn.<p>I have Circles set up for groups of work colleagues, professional contacts, family, and friends who I like to share fart jokes with. In each case, I can interact with those people in a manner appropriate to the nature of my relationship with them. That solves the Facebook problem for me (I didn't use it because I nearly never had anything I wanted to share with everyone I knew in the world), and also creates an environment where I can have fun with my friends and be professional with my colleagues without compromising either group.<p>I <i>really</i> like it.

The point is not that Google+ <i>is</i> going after the LinkedIn type of market instead of Facebook; it's that it <i>can</i>.<p>Nobody wants to mix business, family, and friends on Facebook because whether or not it's technically possible to segment your interactions there (and yes, I get that apparently if you dig three levels deep through just the right submenus you can figure out how to do it), it's not very intuitive, and the many default visibility changes that have happened on Facebook make any mechanism for segmentation feel very brittle. It's always been clear that Facebook wasn't interested in promoting that kind of interaction, that you should unfriend people if you didn't want them to hear what you had to say (or see what you've been up to on the weekends!).<p>With Google+, information control one is of the most hyped core features of the service, and that's much more reassuring, it tells me that they're going to take it seriously in a way that Facebook never has.

Reads like someone desperately needed some non-obvious angle to take on this story to drive readership.

I think this may be partly true, I mean see Google+ as being way more professional than Facebook.<p>If Facebook is the party of Saturday night with lots of cursing and drunk people, Google+ feels more like the Sunday golf session with friends or colleagues.<p>Just my 2 cents.

Clearly the author has not used Google+. The service has photos, group video chat where you can watch YouTube with other friends, and status sharing, among other things. It is not a professional network or productivity tool.<p>Although Google would probably lose if they directly competed with Facebook rather than making their own unique service, it is certainly much closer to Facebook than LinkedIn.

I think Google+ can potentially compete with all of the current social networks. You just need a good way to segregate the streams which I think Google has managed to do.

LinkedIn's value is not in any way corporate groups. It's a glorified directory of CVs with walls. Google is not building that or competing with that.

I don't agree with it. Just by looking at their features and marketing videos/photos, at this time it is aimed towards friends and families than your co-workers or helping you find your next job.<p>In future they may help you find a job or help you get connected with a senior exec at RIM, but not at this time.

As if. Google+ is competing with Facebook first, and whomever else they squish second.

OP's title doesn't accurately reflect original author's title/content. Article simply says there are other non-obvious targets/purposes to Google+ besides Facebook. Facebook isn't ruled out, it would be silly to claim so.

If it had been at all intended for business use it would work with Google Apps accounts from launch - it doesn't.

Not quite sure how he managed to link Google+ and Office365? They're completely unrelated surely?