The hype rocket has blasted it into the clouds, the early adopters are scrambling to grok it and master it, the critics are picking it apart, and most of the world is too busy on Facebook to pay it any attention. Can Google+ make it to a sustainable orbit? Will the early adopters’ attention span move on before enough mainstream folks have a chance to even try it?
It’s way too soon to predict, but it feels like G+ has a fighting chance. Clearly Google has learned some hard lessons from Buzz and Wave, and done things differently with G+. It’s not thrust on us like Buzz, nor hiding in GeekTopia like Wave. There are clear hooks for an ordinary (social) consumer, but also many tricks for the power user. They’ve thrown a lot of functions into it – a Facebook-like ‘stream’, a group video chat (like skype but much less clunky), group text messaging, location check-ins, photo sharing… They’ve tried hard to make all that simple and intuitive to use (with mixed success). It’s got a ton of potential users all lined up (cough*gmail*cough).
It also has some significant obstacles to surmount. Facebook has already won the day for social. They may lose ground in the future, but today, they’re It. Twitter is more vulnerable, but with significant investment in it, G+ will have to push uphill to gain any ground from their users. Finally, I think there’s a lot of hate for Google succeeding in social. They’ve flailed around, and consistently under-supported their past attempts, that anything big emerging from Mountain View these days incurs a healthy dose of skepticism and fear. (“Hurt me twice, shame on me”) It’s so easy to insert high school analogies – Apple is the cool kid with great clothes and a flashy car. A little mean, but it’s hard not to forgive those dazzling eyes. Google is the nerd; the one you turn to when you have a math or science question, but not who you expect to be in the Prom Court. ”Are you kidding?” asks society, “there’s no way we’d trust our social lives to a bunch of nerds!”
We’ll see. They’ve factored in every algorithm and pinned everything on the outcome like it’s the Science Fair Nationals, so maybe geek movie plots can happen in real life. On many levels, I hope so.
Here’s what I think they’ve done really well with G+:
- Built a Facebook Stream without the advertising agenda. They’re not trying to force us to make everything public. Choosing who you share with is easy, quick and almost fun.
- It’s like a mashup of Facebook, Twitter and Tumbler – you can broadcast to the public (Twitter), or share things with your friends (FB), and the format can be micro, mini, or long (Tumbler). All moods, one tool.
- It’s the comments, stupid. All Hail the triumphant return of FriendFeed. Twitter is now just frustrating to me – where are the conversations? Someone makes a good point, and it dies there; no comments or threaded conversations. Solo broadcasting is fine for the narcissists and marketers, but for most people the dialog is important.
- Made video chat with your friends easy and natural. Skype is clunky. Facetime is only Apple, and only one-to-one. Want to hang out for a bit with far-away friends? There’s a Circle for that…
- Great mobile integration. Well, for Android.
Speaking of which (iOS Apps), this decision has got to be messing with Apple. Keep G+ app off iPhones? (Screw the main competitor Google) Or let it through? (Screw the new competitor Facebook) Google…Facebook. Google…Facebook… Argghh!!
There are certainly flaws (it’s an early beta), and things they didn’t quite hit. To really succeed, they’ll need to have some way to push posts to Twitter and Facebook (and I’m holding my breath until they grant access for that…). So far it’s a limited trial of like-minded people, so it feels friendly. No spam yet.
[Update: just saw this great post on Tips for Using G+]
But I have to say, my fingers are crossed on this one. I really hope it succeeds, if only to give the Social Monopolies some competition.
from xkcd
that picture is great. i also prefer google+ than facebook.