An interesting take. I think these all sound good except the third, "Get rid of apps." Apps is really the current Facebook innovation, and clearly the direction Facebook is going. It is too early to declare defeat and reverse course, just because G+ is out.
Interesting that "Do better on privacy" didn't make the list...
Five ways Facebook can fight back against Google+
At the resulting press conference on July 6, Zuckerberg protested (perhaps a little too much) that Facebook wasn’t worried about the amazing success of Google’s social network. The features he announced that day, including group and video chat, seem clearly aimed at Google+, but appear not to have set the world on fire. What can Facebook do to win back the crowd?
Here are five things we think Facebook could do to cope with the power and possibilities of Google+.
Make new friends
As long as the two companies insulate themselves from each other, users frustrated with having to repeat themselves and upload photos multiple times will end up choosing the sleeker social network over the older, tired one. I refer you to the Facebook and MySpace struggle of 2004-2010—except this time Facebook risks repeating MySpace’s mistakes.
Instead, Facebook should put differences aside and allow Google+ users to import their friends from Facebook to Google+. Facebook should deal with Google+ the same way it dealt with Twitter: Permit Google+ users to link their updates to Facebook and, in exchange, Facebook opens up its content to Google+.
Build an ecosystem
Although Facebook is a terrific platform for many things, it isn’t the one-stop shop for Web services that Google is fast becoming. Remember that Facebook and Google are competing to be “always-on” Web destinations. The problem with Facebook’s modular approach is that it gives me too many reasons to step away. I often find myself surfing away from Facebook for some vital service it doesn’t provide, or closing out the window when I’m “done” with the site.
But I’d also like to have more sharing across the Facebook site itself. Facebook needs to think of its services not as individual, modular apps but as linked services, the same way Google does. Groups, chat, and events are starting to see some integration, but the social networking giant still has a long way to go before I can, for instance, organize, create, and share an event just on Facebook.—David Daw
Get rid of apps
But the annoyances outweigh the benefits of the Facebook platform as it currently stands (and as services like Flickr and Twitter show, you don’t need something as large as Facebook Apps to make integration with other apps and websites possible). My Facebook feed is littered with messages from friends’ FarmVille sessions. At any given time, I have a number of app requests and invitations waiting for me.
Most of all, Apps took away some of what made Facebook an attractive alternative to MySpace in the first place. In the early years, Facebook was a clean, well-designed website that made it easy to connect with the people you know. The arrival of Facebook Apps was a pretty significant blow. And while Google+ has some quirks that need to be worked out, it already does a good job of accomplishing what Facebook used to be known for.—Nick Mediati
Compete with Circles
Really, all Facebook needs to do is make the Lists feature more prominent and ubiquitous. If Facebook were to allow wall posts, photo/video sharing, event invitations, and all other instances of social sharing to be sent to specific lists, the company would essentially duplicate the functionality of Circles. Obviously, Facebook would want to prompt users to put their friends in a list each time they add a friend, and the entire Lists interface needs work, but those are problems that Facebook could solve in the short term. The underlying technology—the hard part—is already part of the platform.
Trim down notifications
I really don’t want to know each and every time one of my friends becomes friends with someone I don’t know. Although we can hide certain friends and apps to clean up the clutter, the options to do so on Facebook are limited. Either I can hide a single post, or completely mute an individual so that he or she never appears in my news feed again. Why not just give the option to hide notifications when someone changes their profile picture, or when they enter a relationship?
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