Google+ vs. Facebook

There's been an increasing number of articles from the digerati along the lines of will Google+ beat Facebook? At first sight this seems a ridiculous proposition; Facebook has 800 million and growing users compared to Google+'s 50 million and growing - no competition right. Well perhaps not. Google+'s great strength is that it is becoming integrated into everything you do on the web. For example if you use YouTube you'll have seen that it's interface has changed and now Google+ is tightly integrated into it. Picasa, Google's photo management service, will undergo a similar refit in a few weeks. The idea is that as you go about your digital life you'll never be more than a click away from Google+ and that it will constantly be recommending stuff to you.
    By comparison Facebook's weakness is that you have to be inside Facebook to get any interaction from you friends. Now clearly some people virtually live inside Facebook but most of us don't and therefore Google+ is a more natural model since it will basically follow us around the web. Moreover Google+'s "Circles," despite what Zuckerberg may say, is a more natural way to manage ones online relationships in comparison to Facebook's one size fits all approach. Facebook know's this which is why it rushed out its "Groups" feature.
    As Google continues to integrate Google+ into its services I'll be watching it and Facebook with interest.