About a month ago Vibin Reddy, wrote a showdown post between Google+ and Facebook.
Vibin found Google+ as an overall winner and hence I wondered how comparing Twitter against Google+ would pan out.
Honestly I expected Google+ to be a sure-shot winner compared to the threadbare nature of Twitter. But on thinking a little more about all aspects, I found Twitter has some nice advantages too.
The Concept
Google+ tries to be everything, from being a place to share photos, to having chat to playing games. But it seems Google+ does not exactly yet know where they are really useful.
Twitter on the other hand has a focus on real-time updates. It does not support chat or even updates longer than 140 characters. It has a specific reason for existence. For example if I needed to get updates on a current events I would look up Twitter.
Winner: Twitter
Design
Twitter has undergone some design changes to make it more interesting. It has introduced features like Lists and ReTweet options. If you use Twitter on your browser it does seems tobe a little disappointing. Someone new to Twitter is still confused on how he should go about using it.
Google+ is designed with a lot of care. It is visually rich, starting from the intuitive way of adding and removing contacts from Circles.
Winner: Google+
Privacy
Google+ has been built with privacy being the central theme. It allows sharing publicly but also allows people to share updates with private groups (read: Circles). This applies to pretty much anything you share including photos, videos, updates, links and more.
The big privacy feature Twitter has that Google+ does not have is that users do not need to sign-up with their real-names. Twitter does seem to care about your identity. Anonymity is the best privacy and hence Twitter is ahead of others here.
Winner: Twitter
Sharing
Google+ users can share photos, updates, links which show up with a snippet. They can play games and share videos. Basically sharing stuff online is very easy with Google+.
Twitter allows updating videos and images but overall a lot of it is restricted to the 140 characters. There is not option to play games and links are usually shortened hence difficult to know where exactly you visiting when you click on one.
Winner: Google+
Mobility
Google+ is meant to be used on smart-phones and has apps for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and other mobile platforms. Currently it has little to none 3rd party apps which help manage Google+ accounts.
Twitter has apps on every single platform which includes even desktops. It has several 3rd party apps which make it very easy to use Twitter. The best part about Twitter is users can even send tweets and get tweets via text message (SMS).
Winner: Twitter
At the moment when stacked up against each other it seems Twitter is a better deal than Google+. The reason is mainly Twitter has a very active user-base and it also has a specific niche which it fulfills. Currently these two things are lacking with Google+ but who knows what will happen a year down the line.
What are your views? Do drop in your comment.
Related: Flowchart to decide which social network to post on!