Google+ and Facebook are perceived the same by users

How different is Google+ from Facebook? It turns out, they’re not that different.

A recent eye-tracking study has revealed that users of Facebook and Google+ look at their respective social networks in almost the exact same way. The study, conducted by EyeTrackShop, studied 54 people while they used Facebook and Google+. Users examined the content columns of both social networks’ homepages in the identical manner, and also spent the same amount of time reading each section.

The study found that 50 percent of participants fixated — for one second, at approximately five seconds into their session — on at least one of the ads shown on Facebook. When the same ads were overlaid on Google+, participants in the study responded in the same way.

The eye-tracking study reveals that Google’s new Google+ shares plenty in common with the world’s leading social network. Perhaps Google’s design strategy was based on an old proverb — “if you can’t beat them, join them.”