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So there’s a new social network in town, Google+. It’s new enough to devote a column to it as a topic without seeming hopelessly behind the times, but also new enough that anything I write may well have changed by the time you read it. I’m not sure what to think of Google+ yet, to be honest. I’m not involved in the field test, and what I’ve read so far doesn’t move me one way or another. When I first heard about G+ (the abbreviation I’ll use), my reaction was a combination of despair and disinterest. “It’s too late for a heavy-hitter like Google to try to introduce its own general-purpose social network to steal Facebook’s thunder,” I thought. For the motivation behind G+, I figured Larry Page and Sergey Brin were jealous that Mark Zuckerberg had gotten his own movie. I might have been wrong about that. The New York Times reported that G+ reached 20 million users in mid-July. The user base grew by 350 percent in six days. Large percentile growth is easier when you start from a smaller base—I can multiply the occupancy of my office by 500 percent if I add my cats, two flies, and a cockroach. Still, G+ has generated interest, and I’m not surprised, despite my own non-reaction.
One of the best descriptions I’ve seen of G+ comes from the Web comic xkcd, which all tech-savvy snarkmeisters should read. The strip (http://xkcd.com/918) lays out the basics well: Advantages: It’s not Facebook; your parents will never switch to it. Disadvantages: It’s not Facebook; your parents will never switch to it. On the bright side, G+ gives social networking skeptics another chance to start over. More than a few people have complained about the clutter of a well-used Facebook account, stressing the need to prune apps and pseudofriends to manage it. The G+ interface is also less text-dense and more interactive, with drag-and-drop largely replacing checkboxes. Interactive drag-and-drop interfaces haven’t been news since Mac OS was the new kid in town, but everything evolves at its own pace. One major negative of G+ is its newness. Growth aside, few people are using it now, and not much content is available. (Yes, I know those also can be advantages.) But, as Ken Hess wrote for ZDNet (http://goo.gl/7M9jg), G+ doesn’t touch the broader world of social computing. Specifically, it’s not hooked up to Klout, the service that measures online influence. Without things like Klout, there’s less reason for influencers like me, or businesses like yours, to get involved. While G+ does all the basic functions differently, it doesn’t seem to do anything actually different. Video and picture sharing appears easier, but it was never difficult with Facebook. Creating friend subgroups may be easier as well, but the bar is set low already—and there may be limitations that aren’t present in Facebook. While G+ doesn’t require two-way friend permission (you can add somebody to your circle at will) and lets you customize exactly who will receive which updates, it seems to put a lot of bookkeeping onus on the user. Security is supposed to be better with G+ than with Facebook. It wouldn’t take much to improve either company’s track record on security. For a while, it seemed Google and Facebook were competing for Fail of the Week with poor security and/or trampling of users’ rights. Google Buzz is the walking dead of social networking; Facebook Beacon was a fiasco. Both companies have shown they can do it wrong. We can each think whatever we like about Google+ and it won’t matter. It’s another social venue where consumers will behave like consumers. It’s not about the specific network—any app that ties into Facebook, Twitter, or any of the others can be made to work with Google+ by developers or modders. It’s about the possibility of networking. Google has something that social media monitoring vendors have to add to their suites. New networks will always come to replace or simply coexist with the old. To those who ask if Google+ will turn Facebook into the next MySpace, I answer: “Each is relevant to a different group.” All Facebook has to do is avoid becoming the next Friendster, and it’ll be fine.
Marshall Lager is the managing principal of social CRM consultancy Third Idea Consulting. Contact him at marshall@3rd-idea.com or www.twitter.com/Lager. He will not Like your page or comment on your drunken party pictures, nor is he available to chat. Probably.
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