Lary Page can be excited about the positive reception of the Google+ project and a record turnover for the second quarter of the year. Meanwhile, Facebook has received a poor grade in the subject of user satisfaction from a study.
The social media market is ready for a new player, according to the census administered by the 2011 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) E-Business Report, which was conducted with the market research institute ForeSee Results. The social network Facebook received the poorest grade of all the social networks that were analyzed in customer satisfaction. The winner in the category for social media was Wikipedia. But who could have been in first place in the portal and search engine sectors? That’s right: Google. Because the study was conducted last month, Google+ is not included in the study, as the project wasn’t launched until afterwards. But according to a press release by ForeSee, the low results that Facebook has received give Google+ a good start, that is, if the service can offer users something better.

This is apparently the case, seeing as how the internet giant has learned through the mistakes of others. The CEO and co-founder of Google, Lary Page, proudly announced that Google+ had obtained 10 million members just two weeks after its launch, despite the fact that the site is still in the test phase and that users can only register if they’ve been invited to do so. As if that weren’t enough: over a billion posts have been shared daily on the site, Page wrote about Google’s quarterly report. This can also bee seen: the second quarter displayed Google’s record turnover of nine billion dollars, with revenues of 2.51 billion dollars. “We had a great quarter–with revenue up by 32 per cent year on year,” according to Page.

The world has been speculating as to whether or not Google+ will be able to pose a threat to Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook. It certainly appears so. Sure, ten million users aren’t much compared to 750 million. But Google+ is only three weeks old and is still taking baby steps in its technology. As soon as the test phase is over, the project may be on the same level as Facebook. The Circles are most definitely Google’s greatest advantage, which allow users to organize their contacts into different circles of, say, friends, family, or colleagues. So users can define information that should only be shared with “friends”. And: private life can be kept away from professional life. Facebook also allows users to do this, but it takes a lot more effort. All users have to do on Google+ is sort new people into the different circles, and before making a post, users choose which Circles should receive it. In addition, users can hold a video conference with up to ten people at the same time: Facebook only allows this for two users.

The deck has been shuffled and everything is possible. But one this is for certain: Facebook won’t just sit and watch what’s happening. It will be interesting to see what sort of secret weapon the portal has waiting.