Google+ added games, including the hugely popular Angry Birds, to the fast-growing social network vying with Facebook to be the hub for people’s online lives.<\/p>\n
“We want to make playing games online just as fun, and just as meaningful, as playing in real life,” Google senior vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra said in a blog post.<\/p>\n
“When you’re ready to play, the Games page is waiting.”<\/p>\n
Along with global game sensation Angry Birds, the initial array of offerings available at Google+ included Bejeweled Blitz, Zynga Poker, and Dragon Age Legends.<\/p>\n
A standalone version of Crime City lets Google+ members play as a ruthless crime boss.<\/p>\n
“We’re excited to partner with Google to bring Crime City to Google+ users,” said Ken Chiu, chief executive of Funzio. “We can’t wait to release more great games on Google+ in the future.”<\/p>\n
A Facebook version of Crime City leapt to popularity after being released in September of last year.<\/p>\n
Just hours after Google+ added games, Facebook touted a set of new features for playing online with friends.<\/p>\n
“When you’re playing games, you’ll now see a separate stream of your friends’ game activity, scores and achievements in a ticker,” Facebook’s Jared Morgenstern said in a post late Thursday at the social network’s blog.<\/p>\n
“The best way to find new games is through friends, and now you’ll have more opportunities to see what they’re playing,” he continued.<\/p>\n
Facebook increased the screen size of games, and made it easier to bookmark favorite titles or adjust settings regarding which friends can see what is being played, according to Morgenstern.<\/p>\n
Google is a latecomer to social networking but its new site, Google+, has grown rapidly to more than 10 million members since its launch on June 28.<\/p>\n
While Google+ may be the fastest-growing social network ever, it remains to be seen whether it can pose a serious threat to the social networking titan Facebook, which has more than 750 million members.<\/p>\n
Google has a billion users worldwide that could be drawn into the California-based Internet giant’s social network.<\/p>\n
Games are among the most popular activities at Facebook, where social game startup Zynga rose to stardom.<\/p>\n
Most Google+ users — 6.4 million — are in the United States, followed by India, with 3.6 million, Canada, with 1.1 million, Britain, with 1.1 million, and Germany with over 920,000, according to online tracker comScore.<\/p>\n
In unveiling Google+, Google stressed the ability it gives users to separate online friends and family into different “Circles,” or networks, and to share information only with members of a particular circle.<\/p>\n
One of the criticisms of Facebook is that updates are shared with all of one’s friends unless a user has gone through a relatively complicated process to create separate Facebook Groups.<\/p>\n
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