A senior Facebook executive has said that Google’s social networking platform Google+ lacks originality and has "emulated aspects" of Facebook’s system.

Facebook has witnessed phenomenal growth over the years as competitors MySpace and Google’s Orkut struggled to survive. Google+ is considered to the first potential rival of Facebook.

The search engine comapny launched Google+ in late June, a move considered as the comapny’s most ambitious one in social networking since co-founder Larry Page took over as chief executive in April.

The new patform, which claimed that it offered better privacy features to users, was well received after the launch.

The company had to bar users from registering to deal with what the company said was "insane" demand immediately after the launch. It is believed that Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg was one of the earliest users of the site.

Within two weeks of the launch, the site had over 10 million users according to Paul Allen, the founder of Ancestry.com. Google+ has over 25 million users now, compared with microblogging site Twitter’s over 300 million users, and chief rival Facebook’s over 750 million users.

However, according to The Telegraph, Facebook game partnerships director Sean Ryan has called Google+ a dud, saying that the social networking site failed on three counts: originality, number of users and appeal to software developers.

Ryan said that "Google has emulated aspects of our system, which is what they have the right to do. We just need to be better."

Refering to Google’s revenue sharing model with games developers, Ryan criticised Google, saying, "Google is at 5 per cent [compared to Facebook’s 30%] because they don’t have any users."

The Telegraph also reported that Ryan compared "Google’s tactics to McDonalds copying Starbuck by selling coffee."

Recently, research firm Gartner said that users were getting bored with their favourite social networks.

A new survey by Gartner has found that 24% of the respondents use their favorite social media site less than when they first signed up.