Google Plus Community VS Facebook Group VS LinkedIn Group
| Facebook groups | LinkedIn groups | Google Plus communities | ||
Structure |
Types | Open groups (Anyone can see content) | Open groups | Public: a) Public b) Moderator approval is required |
| Closed (Only members see the content) | Members-only groups (Members should be approved by the moderator; Discussions are hidden from search engines or non-members). | Private: a) Anyone can join but all should be approved by moderator (only members can see discussions) b) Hidden from search (works by invitation only) | ||
| Secret (Only members know it exists) | ||||
| Subgroups | No | Yes (can be members-only) | No | |
| Categories for discussions (make easier to follow what you specialize in) | No | Kind of (the built-in categories are: (general) discussions, jobs and promotions) | Yes | |
| "Follow" favorite / interesting discussions | Yes | Yes | No | |
Easiness of content discovery and interaction
|
Order of new threads by default | Unclear (Mix of date & popularity) | Most popular ("What's happening") | Latest |
| Emails sent when a new thread is added | Yes (Disabled by default but you can enable that) | Yes (Disabled by default but you can enable that) | Yes (Disabled by default but you can enable that) | |
| Seeing new threads in your stream / home page | Yes | No | Yes (Disabled by default but you can enable that) | |
| Hashtag support | Yes | No | Yes | |
How to discover and build new connections
|
The ability to see ALL members of the group / community | Yes | Yes (+ see how "far" they are from you, i.e. 1st/2nd, etc degree) | Yes (You can see if you are already connected on hover-over) |
| Highlighting influencers / active users within group / community (makes it easier to discover new connections) | No | Yes | No | |
| The ability to follow / add new contacts right from the member list | Yes | Yes | Yes (on hover-over) | |
| The ability to tag people in the update to drive them into the discussion | Yes | No | Yes | |
| How to share your own stories | The ability to self-promote (promote projects, press releases, etc) | No | Yes (via Promotions that can be enabled by group moderators) | No built-in / explicit feature for that (but mods can allow that by creating a separate category) |
| The ability to set-up a poll | Yes | Yes | No | |
| The ability to submit a new story from off-site buttons | No | Yes | Yes | |
| Events | Yes | No | Yes! Google Plus Hangouts! | |