By Delaney Stryczek, Editor

Junior Ann Marie Giese isn’t a fan of Google’s new social networking site, Google+.

“It’s a replica of Facebook; it’s a wannabe Facebook,” Giese said.

It’s a sentiment to many users who wonder why they’d switch over to a new network when they’re perfectly happy with the old one.

Google+ is the latest in a series of social networking sites that seeks to dethrone Facebook’s dominance. Other attempts from MySpace to Twitter have been unsuccessful.

Part of the challenge? Facebook already has 750 million users—many of whom are as devoted as sophomore Madeleine King and Giese, who spend four to five hours a day online—and people gravitate toward it because everyone they know is already on it.

“Facebook has so many users,” Giese said, “Google+ probably won’t be able to live up to its expectations.”

Facebook has undergone dramatic changes to its home page, friends lists and profile over the past two months, and some believe it’s to keep up with Google+.

When Google+ introduced its “circles” feature, which allows users to categorize people as friends, family or acquaintances, Facebook quickly came out with new friends lists that began automatically categorizing friends. The new profile, called a time line, is also seen by many as an attempt to offer more features than Google+.

Yet the continual changes have frustrated many users.

“I like Google+ better [than Facebook] because they don’t change as much as Facebook,” sophomore Kaylee Shoaff said. “I didn’t like the Facebook change. It really bugged me,” Shoaff said.

Twenty percent of Kaneland students said that they preferred Google+ to Facebook, and another 23 percent said they thought it would catch on, according to a poll of 266 randomly-selected students performed on Sept. 21.