When Google+ came out, I was very skeptical. After the debacle that was Google Buzz, I was pretty sure any product that Google put out in the social space was just doomed to failure. Google gets search and they get advertising but social is something that can’t easily be described by an algorithm. But being the tech nerd that I am, I signed up for it as soon as I was able to get an invite so I could evaluate it myself.
So what does Google know about social? It seems they know quite a bit! One of the things I can really appreciate is someone learning from their mistake. It’s rare in life when you get something right the first time. Is Google+ perfect? No way. But it combines certain features and improves on others to make a pretty decent offering. Should Twitter and Facebook be running scared? Twitter maybe. Facebook, probably not right now. One thing is for certain; competition is good for consumers. Up until now, there was not any competition for the two social Juggernauts. Google+ changes that and I think that can only be good for innovation in this space. So what do I like about Google+?
Best of Twitter and Facebook - I really like that I can follow other people. If it weren’t for this feature, Google+ would be a ghost town since most of my friends aren’t on it. Outside of the people I know, there are actually a lot of people who contribute interesting content. My favorites are probably +Trey Ratcliff and +Kevin Rose. I like that I can follow them like I would on Twitter but comment and message each of the post like Facebook.
Circles are a first class citizen – I don’t want to share everything with everyone. Circles represent real life. I have a “friends” circle and a “work” circle. They usually don’t mix. The ironic thing? Having the ability to segment my users this way makes me more likely to share even if I don’t use it. Most of the posts I make now are public. But I post a lot more on Google+ now than I did on Facebook. Because I know I have the safety of segmenting my posts, it means I don’t usually think twice about what I might or might not put on Google+. I can’t say the same thing about Facebook.
Now I know what many of you will say. You can accomplish the same functionality on Facebook using Groups. But the problem is that this is an “add on” to Facebook. It was not the paradigm from the very beginning and therefore it seems bolted on. Like I said in my last post, easy is not an add on. Facebook Groups is not intuitive to use and because it was bolted on later, it seems too complicated to use now. That isn’t to say that Circles was easy at first, but now that the model is established, I think people will find it much better going forward.
Post can be public - While I really like the concept of circles, I like it even more that my posts can be public. It should in theory allow people to reach a bigger and wider audience and that is valuable. I love sharing my knowledge and experience. It is the main reason I started and contribute to this blog. The ability of me to have fine control over what is very limited sharing to very broad sharing is VERY attractive to me and I’m sure to others with public profiles.
Limits suck – If I want to write an essay, I should be allowed to. Twitter has a needless limit of 140 characters. I get why this made it unique at the beginning. I even think terseness is valuable. But Twitter never really worked for me because it ended up just being links to other content. Facebook has a limit to their posts length, and you actually hit it pretty easily if you are as verbose as I am. If the average user can hit your limit, then you probably need to rethink your limit.
Photos sharing is superior to most everything else out there – Facebook became a giant because it allowed people to do something they really wanted to do, share photos easily with their friends. Google+ took this concept and then put it on steroids. Twitter didn’t even really have photos till recently and the photosharing capabilities of Google are just better than Facebook. Let me list all the ways this is true.
- Big beautiful pictures in the stream. Pictures are not supplemental to the post. They dominate the post and that is good. When I stroll through my stream, I notice the pictures.
- Photo Galleries in Google+ are gorgeous. Just check out another one of my favorites, Thomas Hawk’s Gallery and you will know what I’m talking about. Love the infinite scroll.
- You can edit the photos after you upload them. Google+ allows you to color correct or add filters to the photos after you have uploaded it. This is actually a pretty awesome feature, and I can see it being a big differentiator for Google as more and more people discover it.
- The Google+ lightbox where they place the photos is just better. The comments make more sense to be on the side and having the slider on the bottom makes scrolling much much easier.
You can edit posts after the fact – Seriously. Who the heck gets everything right the first time (see above comment)? I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve screwed something up only to want to fix it and be unable to. That’s just dumb. The only way to clarify something on Facebook is to update it through comments and that is just lame. If I wrote it, let me fix it.
You know Google will integrate Google+ into its search results – In fact, they already have. I can guarantee you, now that Google has a reasonable foothold in the social space, they aren’t going to let go of it very easily. That means, if you care about SEO, you better figure out what this means to you.
Now, am I really that bullish on Google+ replacing Facebook? No, not really. Facebook has a huge advantage of numbers. Everybody you know is on Facebook. Even the people you may know on Google+ are probably not all that active. Like I said earlier, Google+ is kind of a ghost town except for some of the more prolific posters. I have a number of friends who have signed up for Google+ but most are not using it. I’m actually pretty sure I’m dominating most of their streams. The network effect is working very strongly in Facebook’s favor. But keep one thing in mind. At one point, MySpace had the same edge on Facebook. At one point Microsoft had an insurmountable lead on Apple. However, if you put a better product in front of people, over time, you can erode any sort of network effect. If Google+ can reach critical mass, they have a chance. And that will be good for everybody whether they are on Facebook or they are on Google+.
By the way, if you want to follow me on Google+ you can. +Terrence Lui.
Update: One other thing I wanted to add that seems very promising is the unusual level of engagement that Google+ seems to be generating. I posted two identical updates to my streams on Facebook and Google+. Despite knowing many more people on Facebook’s platform, I got over 5x the number of comments on Google+. Other users of Google+ have noted the same thing. I don’t know what is behind this phenomenon but this behavior could prove to be a gold mine for marketers.
This just shows how un-intuitive Facebook’s “group permissions” features are, but I think it’s easy to confuse their “Lists” with “Groups.” Lists are hard to use to limit Wall post visibility, and Group posts may actually be default-public if you’re not careful about how each Group is managed (and who manages it).
Google screwed up in the early days of Buzz, but at least they apologized, rather than blaming people for clinging to some false hope of maintaining privacy as a cultural norm. Facebook in general is just hostile to privacy — even worse than Twitter (at least Twitter *admits* everything is public from the start, without changing things underneath you).
I am not a facebook lover but I think google+ is similar to facebook in many aspects ( status updates, liking comments, profile similarities, the way in which posts get displayed, notifications,chat etc.. which really define Facebook ) There are some movies which are very good sequels but still gross less revenue than the original. Most of the times its because they were not the original. I consider google+ as that very good sequel.
Really great article! I re-posted/linked it here – http://plusforgoogle.com/2011/08/17/what-the-hell-does-google-know-about-social/
Google has improved after its Buzz and other social debacles, and G+ is actually a fine effort, but I doubt its enough to achieve the sort of mass market success that Facebook has achieved. Normal people, not just nerds, already have all of their photos on Facebook. Businesses are promoting their Facebook URLs on their magazine and television ads and an emerging ecosystem of Facebook advertising companies listed at BuyFacebookFansReviews has really jumpstarted and changed the market for where brands start to attack social advertising problems. I don’t see Google being able to fight this momentum anytime soon. However, the good news for Google is that it doesn’t have to be as successful as Facebook as there is room in the market for multiple products that cover multiple niches. Google’s focus can easily be on wealthy, technically knowledgable people and this is a valuable market for Google to focus on. Google’s focus should be on getting entrenched and making sure that they get this base of users, not going after the fantasy of taking down Facebook among a mass audience right off of the bat.
Terrance, Great stuff. I’m definitely gonna start using Google + more now. You didn’t seen to talk about the amazing video interaction of Google plus and the fact that you can have huddles. Have you used them? I also find it amazing that your getting so much more engagement on Google + then Facebook.