In light of Malcolm Gladwell’s recent comments on Steve Jobs (“this is a man who made a business out of being late”), Google are hoping their second arrival on the social networking scene may prove a smart move.

Malcolm Gladwell made the above comment during a panel discussion seminar at the Cannes Lions 58^th International Festival of Creativity. He is a journalist for the New Yorker, best-selling author and social commentator.

Meanwhile, Google has unveiled its new social networking service, Google+, in a bid to take on Facebook, which currently dominates the market with more than 500m worldwide users.

Google+ features

The company is hoping that four key features in Google+ will break Facebook’s stranglehold on the social networking scene:

• Circles – a functionality that allows individuals to place friends into groups, allowing users to share different forms of content with targeted clusters of friends
• Hangouts – live multi-user video conferencing that permits friends to drop in and out of live group conversations
• Huddle – group instant messaging
• Sparks – a feature that connects individuals on the network to others with common interests.

Google v Facebook in numbers:

Value:   Google is worth around $200bn. Facebook was valued by Goldman Sachs at $50bn.

Users:   Facebook has around 500m users. Google Search receives over 300m queries per day.