Getting Off The Fence On The Subject Of Google +

Google July 19, 2011 17 Comments

So Google Plus has been out for a couple of weeks and although we have written plenty of factual stories about the site I didn’t want to write a straight up opinion piece on it too soon. It’s always best to let the dust settle on things like this and let the hype die down to some extent. People have been quick to write it off or say that Google + is going to conquer everything in front of it but I think the truth is a little more complicated than that. I’ve given it two weeks before writing this post but I think the real answer will only really be known after 2 months or even 2 years because this is only the start of the journey for Google +. There is certainly some early potential but the hype will die down and the real challenge is just how many people stick with this in the long term and how they choose to use the service.

More Of A Threat To Twitter Than Facebook

All the hype in this battle was about this being an effort by Google to take on Facebook but if you ask me this is a far bigger danger to Twitter. Some people are even going as far as saying that Twitter is boring and the hard core of early adopters that embraced have all pretty much jumped ship over to Google +. They are still posting to Twitter but their attention has been firmly captured by Google + and that has to be a worry for Twitter in the long run. Twitter still has the best news and content but that could change especially as the stream is far more “real time” and media rich on Google +. The big advantage that Google + has is the web presence because when you compare it to Twitter.com it is already streets ahead.

Ignore The Numbers For Now

I don’t care how many people Google say are using the service because even it were to get to 50 million people most of those users were people who wanted an invite, begged for one, had a quick look around and then left again after making one circle. I am sure there are similar graphs floating around for Quora from the start of this year and they didn’t back it up in the long run. There is a hard core of users on Google + who are mostly techies (as demonstrated by the high male bias on the site) but the mainstream users have just been curious so far rather than hanging around for any great periods of time. 10 Million users might seem like a lot but it’s still nowhere close to Facebook’s 750 million especially when you consider how many of the Google + accounts will just stay stagnant.

Of Course It Feels Clean

How would the design not be good? They started this from scratch with some of the most talented people in the world and there were no adverts or revenue generating features to take in to account when building this. There are also no brands in there yet pushing their products and crucially things like social gaming and other noisy elements of social media have yet to be incorporated in to Google +. Make no mistake though that ads will be everywhere when the time is right and that will change everything. If Google are smart they will do what Facebook did and wait as long as possible to bring ads in to the system. Everybody loved Facebook at the start for the pure social experience it offered but that has eroded over time as commercial reality has set in and the same will happen to Google + over time, don’t expect it to stay clean and beautiful forever.

Google + has won lots of praise for it's simple fast lightweight design

Google Is Winning The PR War

Up until a couple of months ago Facebook were miles out front in the PR war and could do little wrong as a brand. Google have managed to change that tide in the last month though as everybody from the tech press to ordinary punters in the street start giving out about Facebook. In some ways Google may not be winning the competition directly with Facebook in terms of winning users but they could be forcing Facebook to become far more open as a result of public demands and that could be just as valuable to Google as they seek to get their spiders on Facebook’s data. The PR battle can be as important as anything in social networking and Google are winning it hands down at the moment with little things like asking users for feedback and updating new features on the fly.

Normal People Still Don’t Want Circles

Circles are nice and they seemed like a great way of organizing your friends in to different groups. You know what though? Circles are also a pain in the ass. I used them for a day and then realized what I had about Facebook groups and Twitter lists…I really can’t be bothered organizing all my friends online. People or obsessed with the notion that your friends need organizing in your social networks but if Facebook, Twitter and now Google are struggling to do it then maybe it’s time to just forget about putting people in to groups online. People just don’t want to do it and although it’s not perfect the algorithmic version that Facebook has in the news feed is about as good as it gets for now.

Brands And Businesses Will Jump All Over This

The Hype is such at the moment that brands are jumping from platform to platform looking for the next hit of buzz from a new social platform. It happened with services like Foursquare and the appetite for the new business pages to launch is huge. You can just feel all the creative agencies and small businesses itching to be let at something new in terms of marketing. If the pages have integration with things like places, adwords, analytics and other Google products then the businesses pages could be the most compelling part of all this. What could be even more interesting is the pages that Google offers to publishers because if they can start to get content from publishers flowing through Google + then the ball game changes completely and Twitter comes under threat even more.

Lets Not Forget Google Are An Advertising Company

Reading some of the reviews about this you would think that Google had built this site for the good of mankind and to get rid of the horrible brand centric presence that is Facebook. Lets not forget in all of this that Google is the world’s biggest advertising company and they have built this platform for business reasons. There might not be any ads on the site yet but they will be coming and all that data and information that people are sharing on Google + will be delivered right in to the hands of the very same advertisers that love Facebook at the moment when the time is right.

How much integration will Google + have with advertising products?

Final Verdict

I am not going to be using it. I already have enough in my life and I don’t see the time or the desire to use Google +. As the brand and businesses pages start to open up I think there might be some potential to suggest it for clients. It remains to be seen if that is for one off marketing campaigns or deeply integrated in to everything they already do online in terms of the likes of Adwords and driving traffic to their websites. I’m not saying I won’t ever use it because things change but for now I’m happy to keep in touch with my friends and family on Facebook and get all my latest content from Twitter. Different people have different needs online though and for some Google + will be the best option. It’s not that I don’t like Google + but I already have 2 social networks in my life and don’t really have room for a third no matter how good it is. I’ll update this in a couple of months but for now Google + is not for me personally. What about you? Will you be using it?

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