Remember that smart kid who sat in the front of the class, but was ignored by the cool kids? That’s a good metaphor for what Google+ is going through.
I’ve heard from corporate social strategists I should be cautious about how much time and how frequently I discuss this nascent social newtork, and I spoke to media from a Tier 1 this week who said “does anyone even go there anymore? It seems like a wasteland”. Furthermore take this damning image which has been viewed 11k times suggests Google+ is filled with Google employees and that’s about it. In fact, in our data on Super bowl ads, not a single ad by the world’s largest brand even mentioned Google+, an indicator of what the rest of the ads could look like for 2012 in this Facebook centric market.
Why Google+ suffers from a perception issue:
- Facebook IPO buzz leaves little room for Google. As analysts, we feel this quite heavily, in fact, we’ve been interviewed by many media about the Facebook IPO. in the last 30 days, I can recount on one hand a conversation with press and media about Google+
- Google+ doesn’t have the full backing of brands. Google+ Brand pages are substandard, forcing brands to double down on Facebook: The brand pages lack a platform (although their recent partnerships indicate feature rich apps are coming) and their gaming network is limited. Brands also are skittish to open yet another conversation area to manage and engage in, when resources are low.
- Strong growth numbers still dwarfed by Facebook, 16 to 1. Even with 60m members and growing, that’s less than 7% of Facebook’s 845m, despite making these big gains since Oct, this social network is still dwarfed by Facebook’s international spread.
To win, Google needs to focus on public perception beyond just building a platform. Google+ continues to integrate the social features with the newly updated homepage on Google.com and we should continue to see it span across their set of products now that they’ve consolidated their profiles which has caused privacy woes. Google knows they must make their social platform work, to meet the needs of the modern web, as advertising dollars shift to other social networks. They must not only double down on building a successful platform for users, brands and their business model, but must also do proactive media, press and influencer outreach.
Related: Although Jesse Stay agrees (he runs social at a global org and wrote a book on Google+) John respectfully suggests my perspective isn’t reality.
From the beginning you are always dead set against Google+. What’s your real agenda, Jeremiah? By the way, Google+ now appears to have 100 milion plus users now.
From the beginning you are always dead set against Google+. What’s your real agenda, Jeremiah? By the way, Google+ now appears to have 100 milion plus users now.
Though I was part of the first rush, I wasn’t a G+ fan to begin with because, despite its millions of users, there aren’t a lot of active users (last I checked Google cited 90m facebook users in its annual report but totally muddled how many were active – citing, instead, how many G+ users were active with Google services overall). But I remember a lot of conversations back in the day were about MySpace v Facebook, which doesn’t even SEEM like a competition nowadays but was a very real debate amongst my friends. A lot of people moved to facebook because it was cleaner and was seen as less noisy. In teaching a Social Media course at my local college, I sort of came to that G+ offers this now. Facebook has become so action oriented but G+ offers me the chance to see what my peers are thinking about. I’m already seeing a migration path that parallels the move of my friends from MySpace to Facebook, but I’m still waiting to see what happens next. Good blog, Jeremiah!
Though I was part of the first rush, I wasn’t a G+ fan to begin with because, despite its millions of users, there aren’t a lot of active users (last I checked Google cited 90m facebook users in its annual report but totally muddled how many were active – citing, instead, how many G+ users were active with Google services overall). But I remember a lot of conversations back in the day were about MySpace v Facebook, which doesn’t even SEEM like a competition nowadays but was a very real debate amongst my friends. A lot of people moved to facebook because it was cleaner and was seen as less noisy. In teaching a Social Media course at my local college, I sort of came to that G+ offers this now. Facebook has become so action oriented but G+ offers me the chance to see what my peers are thinking about. I’m already seeing a migration path that parallels the move of my friends from MySpace to Facebook, but I’m still waiting to see what happens next. Good blog, Jeremiah!
Though I was part of the first rush, I wasn’t a G+ fan to begin with because, despite its millions of users, there aren’t a lot of active users (last I checked Google cited 90m facebook users in its annual report but totally muddled how many were active – citing, instead, how many G+ users were active with Google services overall). But I remember a lot of conversations back in the day were about MySpace v Facebook, which doesn’t even SEEM like a competition nowadays but was a very real debate amongst my friends. A lot of people moved to facebook because it was cleaner and was seen as less noisy. In teaching a Social Media course at my local college, I sort of came to that G+ offers this now. Facebook has become so action oriented but G+ offers me the chance to see what my peers are thinking about. I’m already seeing a migration path that parallels the move of my friends from MySpace to Facebook, but I’m still waiting to see what happens next. Good blog, Jeremiah!
Google+ is big enough and still growing and has enough functionality to make it worthwhile to keep a presence there. Facebook is getting more complex to use with too many changes too often that don’t make sense for their users. They might make sense to FB and maybe to brands but, FB seems to be forgetting who is actually using their platform and what the experience is for them.Â
I will be wherever I need to be on social and I think brands will do the same. For any innovation, people will adopt–and use–what makes sense to them in the context of their lives. Right now Facebook is the center of the social media galaxy. A few stumbles  or a major outage or some other reason could change this very quickly. It is very hard to re-build your network over and over again on social sites. So, it is wise to have backup locations for all the social you want or need to do. Google+ is certainly a worthy option for those who believe that any popular site can have its day and fade away.
Additionally, for those people whose job is social or has a large component of social, experience on each of these platforms provides insights that cannot be obtained any other way.
The biggest problem with Google+ is any virality is very forced.
You go to my profile on Google+ and you see none of the conversations I am having with people. I can’t even find my own comments on Google+
I haven’t worked out the rules for what makes an item appear back on my stream, but it certainly seems like even Robert Scoble’s content has a very short half life in my update notifications – even the email updates seem a lot less sporadic, so even using a label in gmail to filter isn’t as effective as it was on Buzz.
Hard to understate the degree to which Google just does not get it in social to summarize  what Steve Jobs thought about them. I got on Buzz a couple weeks after they opened it up participated, shared links with friends etc. Total people I knew in reality on Buzz after it closed 0. Now on G+, total people I know in any kind of reality, 1 and that is because he has to be there from business.  Facebook?  So many that I don’t want to add them because it will bring back too many old issues.  Facebook gets that part of social and in a big way. This is not about superior integration of web apps, optimal search, superior content, brilliant conceptual network paradigms of circles for message tracking and connection modelling, etc. Â
 The way I see the structure of G+ is very well clarified in the context of this statement:Â
“When I started using Google+ last July, I felt I had finally found an online community that would make me much smarter without being a time sink. Part of the reason that I found it so engaging was that Google employees are among the smartest people on the planet, they were mostly all here….”Â
If you look at who G+ really connects it is Google employees. G+ reflects their self absorbed images of social interaction. Since we are the smartest people on the internet the way we optimally connect to each other with our most interesting content and superior applications is best. Eventually smart people will use G+ and bring their influential smart contacts with them to be hip, smart and connected just like us. Look at FB in dramatic contrast. They definitely get that it is not all about them. Look how much more user centric FB is on making personal connects and getting them right. I’m not going to repeat again what I think of the circles model. Apollonian gasket is more like it. Â
The other gigantic issue of course is how badly Google messed up with China.Â
Doesn’t make much sense to me. There is no way possible Google+ is going to open and have any where near the number of users Facebook has built over years in a matter of 6 months. However the growth rate of Google+ seems to be stomping any growth rate Facebook has had since its beginnings. That’s the metric that should be watched.
I am simply baffled by your analysis. Â I keep a Facebook account for immediate friends and family and spend 10 hours a day on Google plus. Â the Google Plus experience is much cleaner, more intuitive, puts me in contact with people from around the globe, and lets me control the volume through circle management. Â I now have over 17,000 followers, and engage with top people in the photo industry on a routine basis. Â I probably will not dump Facebook, but this has eclipsed that experience in every way.
I think people just don’t get Google+. How many people do I know in my friends list on FB. All of them. How many of them post content that I actually find interesting? Hardly any of them. Why? Because the list is built almost solely on physical contact from some point and time in life. None of it is based on interest in the content that they are posting or that I am posting. My stream is therefore a bunch of random noise about peoples lives.
Now contrast that to Google+. How many people do I know in reality on G+? Very few. How many of them post content that I actually find interesting? Almost all of them. This is because I have added people and have had people add me based on what I have to share rather than knowing me personally. I find chains of like minded and interesting people, NEW people, through conversations in comments. I add them and they add me without feeling awkward because there is no imposing idea of “friends” or any other association outside of shear interest in content. Even if someone says something interesting in a comment on FB the tendency is not or people with mutual friends to add each other if they don’t know each other personally because of what it tends to imply and the information that is shared by default. With G+ Circles there is no fear of adding someone and being added. Therefore my Google+ feed is filled with content that interests me from people I’m meeting and networking with over my interests.
So basically if you want a place to share and view content with a network of rather intimate friends who you already know then FB is for you. If you’re looking for a place to find people that share your interests whether you know them or not then G+ is for you. Personally I believe its FB that has a problem. They do alot of talking about “social search” and turning to friends for information. But honestly outside of your closest circle of friends the “friends” that people have may not have all that much in common outside of having associated with each other in reality for reasons beyond their control. The “friends” on G+ are being hand picked  out of an interest in content and because of that may provide far more relevant information.
If you look back at all the social media in existence, even back to the old BBS days. One thing has been the same for every social network to date, it has come and gone to be replaced by something else. From BBS style forums thru Usenet, Irc, web forums, icq, MSN,email, 3d-chat, video-chat, Lunarstorm, Myspace, Friendster etc, they all had the same cycle. Facebook is no exception and with luck people will have the time to cash out some money before it goes away just as the rest. Social media lacks one important piece that people tend to forget, monopoly benefits. Piss off your users and they flee as fast as they can type in another URL.
It does appear to me that the less intelligent are on Facebook or should I say the more intelligent are on Google+. I find more interesting information more informative views etc on Google+ However if the folks at G+ want to attract more people to them then make it pretty and friendly to the bubbleheads that use FB the most, I find that FB is just like High School just a few years removed…
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Since google is now forcing all new accounts to be Google+ accounts whether or not the person actually uses it, any measurement of G+ users is a farce going forward.
Since google is now forcing all new accounts to be Google+ accounts whether or not the person actually uses it, any measurement of G+ users is a farce going forward.
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 No, you misunderstood the figures Larry Page gave in his Q4 presentation. Not surprising, because they were subtly done. He said G+ has 90m registered users – correct. Then he said that “Google+users are very engaged with our products ” over 60% of them engage daily, and over 80% weekly.”
Note that: our PRODUCTS. That’s Google search, docs, all that stuff. Not necessarily G+. If you think about it, it would be a bit surprising if a G+ user didn’t use Google search.
So we have no idea how much G+ users actually use G+. (Also: it would be *fewer* users. Same as you don’t say “fewer coffee”. If you can count them individually, it’s “fewer”. If they’re indivisible, it’s “less”.)
I don’t think Google needs to compete with Facebook. I know they’re looking for ways to add compliments to their offerings to dominate how we use the internet. But I’d rather interact with Google’s productivity-oriented products (search engine, gmail, calendar, gchat, Hangout) than use it as my social network.
Google+ is the smart kid who sat in the front of the class, and, accordingly, is used by the smart users.
I’ve found Google+ it’s like facebook but everything +1 better. Decluttered, easy to mantain and manage, and best of all, full of really pro people who expand their twitter accounts, but not falling into the farmville invitations spam frenzy.
 That 57% for Facebook’s daily active usage (from its S-1, where untruths can be prosecuted). I hope that Patrick Healy is suitably impressed. Meanwhile, G+? No figures – just that if they’re registered, they might do a Google search in 60% of cases. That strikes me as *low*. I’d expect 100% of G+ users to use Google once a day.
Until youth adopt Google+, it is going nowhere. As much as I like the “adult oriented” aspects of Google+, it’s dead in the water until either young people come over to it from Facebook/Tumblr/Twitter (yes, Twitter is far cooler with young people). I personally believe it is never going to succeed as anything more than a place for unhappy former Flickr users (there’s quite the community of bitter Flickr power users over at Google+ who no longer get the attention they feel their photos deserve on the long in the tooth photo sharing site) and “tech people” (yes, you are detecting derision).
Well then we both have only cyber contacts on G+ and all real contacts on FB. I find my real contacts have interesting things to post and do not regularly respond to me with hostility, ignorance, boorishness, and worse. Buzz was a good example of an anti-social network which was interesting to discover how many truly stupid people found you stupid. That was an Eric Schmidt observation too so I am not alone in that view.  Getting interesting content from all kinds of strange persons and places is not the  issue in social nets. I don’t need a social net to help me with that. If that is the case then your social  model is based on the insane logic of Blanche DuBois, always relying on the interests of strangers. Â
As someone studying Social Media Theory & Practice in #NewhouseSM4 with @dr4ward at @NewhouseSU, I completely agree with this post and the idea the that Google+ seems like a “wasteland”. My classmates and I have shared many discussions about how Google+ is almost like the forgotten social network, a place very few choose to use for their social media needs. However, I think this problem can be fixed, and I agree that Google+ needs to focus on public perception first and foremost and then success will follow.
You are absolutely correct, and I liked your post… Then Why is it that I would still like to root for the, “800 pound” gorilla, and +1this?
You are absolutely correct, and I liked your post… Then Why is it that I would still like to root for the, “800 pound” gorilla, and +1this?