Facebook and Google should compare schedules

Last week the whole realm of social media resonated with not one, but two, big announcements on the same day.

Google+ went invitation-free and Facebook overhauled their entire system. Guess who was louder?

The Google+ announcement was much louder than the Facebook announcement so when my Facebook newsfeed changed with seemingly no notice at all, I was shocked and a little dismayed. I was having a rough day and running on little sleep when I discovered the change and panicked that I’d have to learn a bunch of stuff really fast in order to take care of my client’s pages for  the day (much to my relief pages really weren’t impacted).

Of course as with every change, Facebook and Twitter erupted with angry updates about how Facebook is always changing to be more like other social networks and that they should just stay the same. The chatter about Facebook’s changes started to roar. But the difference this time was the overwhelming number of my friends who said on Facebook that they were switching to Google+and to please add them to your circles. This came only days after Google+ was pronounced a failure.

Suddenly my Facebook friends started popping up on Google+ like it is the next big thing all over again, inviting people to join them.

I’m surprised at the timing and it really seemed to me that Facebook decided to drive people to Google+ and all Google had to do was open the doors.

Do you think the Facebook changes help boost Google+ growth? Would Google+ fade into the shadows like Google Buzz did if it weren’t for Facebook?

For some other fun reading check out AdAge’s article about tech companies forgetting about their customers.