Furthermore, from what my friends who use Facebook and Google+ tell me, the feature they use the most is the chat/instant messaging, not the rest of the "social

Furthermore, from what my friends who use Facebook and Google+ tell me, the feature they use the most is the chat/instant messaging, not the rest of the "social" stuff. So if you don't even have a messaging platform, it'll be even harder to compete with networks that have already been established and have significant adoption. Also, for what it's worth, I think that in order to really compete with the other networks, in addition to a messaging platform, you're also going to need mobile (iOS and Android) clients for your network so that users can engage while on the go. Edit: So you're going to need all of this to achieve basic feature parity with established networks, forgetting advanced features like Google Photos, and then you're going to reach the hardest part - convincing users to switch from the network that all their contacts are on to a brand new one.