I would argue that the biggest advantage that Google+ has over it’s competition is hindsight. At this point, Facebook would find it pretty difficult to change around their entire “friend” structure and Twitter would, likewise, find it very difficult to begin threading conversations.

Google+ has taken the two and merged them into, what many people consider, the best combination for the ultimate solution.

But what exactly is it about the combination that makes it so perfect?

Influence

Most people have known for quite some time that the number of friends or followers you have truly means very little in the grand scheme of things, it’s the amount of influence you have over those people that truly matters.

Whether you are a marketer or just making a game out of it, you want to get the most shares, likes, retweets and mentions. Those are the numbers that truly matter.

Klout is certainly not the first person to point it out but they are the first to put it all into a formula that spits out a respectable # rank that accurately judges you based on that influence. That is to say, they ignore the number of friends/followers you have and judges you based on the responses you get to the content you provide.

What are the differences?

Google+ takes the best of both worlds by allowing you to include links, pictures, videos and more into a single post… not only that, it has no character limits (420 for Facebook, 140 for Twitter) and best of all, it allows anyone in the world to comment.

That’s influence.

With Facebook, you share a tidbit of info with a finite number of people… your friends.

With Twitter, you share with the world but you’re only sharing 140 characters of text. Maybe with a link squeezed in.

With Facebook, friends will see comments that other friends make… but that’s it.

With Twitter, you don’t see any comments at all! Unless the originator retweets or copies and pastes it.

With Google+, the world can follow you, the world can share your content with the rest of the world that is following them and all of those people in the world can comment.

Let’s take it one step further

Without the character limit, Google+ could quite literally begin to compete with WordPress… in fact, I am almost counting on it once they integrate Blogger (remember, that’s a Google product!)

Think about it… as it stands right now, bloggers write their content and then “share” a link to it on their social media profiles. Maybe a small description, maybe a thumbnail.

But with Google+… your social profile can be your blog!! You can write entire blog posts as status updates.

What’s the advantage in that? Well, many people would argue that having to get the person to click loses you a big % of readers right off the bat.

Not only that, but it also leaves a person wondering how to respond. Do they reply on your blog? Do they reply in your social media profile? Do they just click the Like button?

With Google+, they can read and reply in one place, no clicking involved.

And THAT… will drive up your Klout score in a huge way!! Well, once Klout starts tracking Google+ accounts anyway.

You’re about to be far more influential

Google+ is all about influence…. from the most popular people to every day hobbyists, people are getting more feedback on Google+ than they ever did on any other social network.

That’s huge. That’s what builds staying power.

Interaction is key to networking, interaction is key to communicating and interaction is key to influence.

Google+ has it in spades.