Is the Rise in Popularity of Google+ making Facebook Nervous?

Since its inception, Facebook has been leader of the pack in terms of the social media world, with Twitter in hot pursuit, but now, the two-week-old Google+ is giving cause for apprehension with its waves of curiosity and excitement.

Google+ is getting a lot of attention, particularly in techie circles, Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group told Computerworld. Since these are the circles that Facebook and Twitter employees circulate in, all this attention must be causing them at least a little bit of anxiety.

And while Olds said the other networks have no need to panic, they should be watching closely as Google+ seems to be gaining momentum.

We're not talking 'waking up in the middle of the night screaming anxiety,' Olds said. It's more of the 'tossing and turning before falling asleep' variety at this point.

Google's idea with the attempt at creating a social network is to topple Facebook from its high horse by making every existing Google product socially compatible. Each profile centers around a stream - i.e. Facebook's news feed - which houses all of your info and updates, etc. The Stream is accompanied by four cores: Circles, Hangouts, Huddle and Sparks.

In addition, it features video chat, potentially allowing the sharing of more types of content (documents, calendar, etc.) and will potentially be better integrated with mobile phones.

Google+ is presently restricting user signups, offering them on an invite-basis.