So we’ve been hearing about Google+ (Emerald Sea) for a while now and finally it’s here for private beta invite. Like rest of the blogging community I’m very excited, but at the same time I will be hard to convince after the countless previous failures from Google attempt to go social… Buzz, Wave and Orkut comes to mind.
The stakes are high this time as rumours say that 20% of all Google employee’s will be bonused on the success of Google+. They are playing catch-up with Facebook, a position they are not used to be in. They understand that Facebook is starting to become The Internet itself, something that would put Google out of business as people wouldn’t exposed for their Adword ads.
Facebook has both taken the Internet leaps forward, but at the same time backwards. It makes the world wide web obsolete by overtaking all content and activities, soon even eCommerce. It’s the web own app store. I don’t think that’s healthy for the Internet at all.
What is Google+?
I’ve been playing around with Google+ for a day now, it’s like an empty theme park. For obvious reasons. The first thing that happens when you get an invite to Google+ is that it links up with your existing Google Account, Google+ will be yet another section next to mail, web etc.
The core products of Google+ includes Circles, Hangouts, Sparks and Huddle. Circles is the core product, you create circles based on topics of your social network, you then have to add your contacts one by one to a desired circle. I can see this being a show stopper for some users. Each circle features a stream pretty much like the Facebook News Feed. Hangout is a pretty cool feature that opens up a live video chat with selected circles or contacts, it streams via your newsfeed so your other circles can request to join.
Google+ buttons have their own feed, you can see what your contacts has “plussed”. I’m sure Google will figure out a smart algorithm for incorporating all this in a master feed, just like Facebook have done. This leads us into speculating on the feature of SEO… or should we say NFO (Newsfeed Optimisation)?
The Google bar will now stick to the top of your browser window when you’re using Google’s products such as Docs, Maps etc. On the very right-hand side of that bar is a notification button, pretty much like on Facebook and Quora. Very useful!
Will it kill Facebook?
The major issue Google+ will face is user adoption. Facebook already is the social network for 750M people around the world. How Google is going to take a share of that is yet to see. There’s no question that it’s a good product and will for sure be improved during the beta period.
But if my friends are not using Google+ nor will I. I will not be active on two different networks unless they have a different nice. Compare LinkedIn and Facebook, I use them for different purposes. 750M people seems like a too large audience to lose, but both AOL and MySpace where pretty big back in the days as well. Are there really such thing as too big to fail? Is changing from Facebook to Google+ really such a big deal for the user? or are we talking about giving Facebook up, maybe they will complement each other?
Have you tried Google+ yet, how do you think the reception will be when it goes live?
Update: I talked to Cory Bennet from Customer Management IQ about Google+ and how it’s different to Facebook: http://www.customermanagementiq.com/strategy/podcasts/companies-should-avoid-investing-in-google-strateg/
