Reno Web Design Blog

Google + a Facebook Killer?

• 27/07/11
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I thought for this month's Digital Delirium newsletter I would discuss the new Google online application Google +.

Over the past couple of years, Google has unsuccessfully produced a few social media applications, Buzz and Wave come to mind. Remember these? They were hyped as the next big thing yet both fell flat with users.

Google may disagree with my statement. They would say that both products have or had a strong but small online following and were never really supposed to be Facebook alternatives. I don't personally believe this for one minute.

Basically, Google makes its billions of dollars by being the place that everybody goes to, either for searching for individual websites, general web based information, using Google Gmail and a host of other Google online services.

If Facebook and other social media websites are taking users away from Google’s online properties, Google will make less money. This is the basic business logic behind the reason Google can't leave the social media market place alone and allow its growing online competitors like Facebook and Twitter to dominate social media.

Now we have Google's newest online social media services Google +. Will this service do any better than Google’s previous attempts in the social media market sector? This is really the billion dollar question.

Google + seems to be a mixture of two of the leading social media competitors, Facebook and Twitter, with video chat thrown in. Google also seems to have taken the security of information for users very seriously. It does this by using a circle interface to allow users to place different friends or business contacts into different Google + user circles groups. This means that you no longer have to share information with everyone who is following you. Your boss will not be able to see those embarrassing weekend photos of you and your friends.

Facebook has also tried to offer control to it users in this area by offering an internal group feature. However, it has, never to my mind, been that satisfactory and has never really worked that well. The Google + system seems to be a much better thought out system and much easier to use.

However, I never really saw this as a real problem anyway, because I never personally believed that the two things, privacy and sharing are really that compatible. The idea that you could have real well defined secure group information levels working with a general social media network is at best, misleading nonsense, or at worse, a basic fundamental lie at the core of Facebook and other social media applications.

To me this is the big difference between Facebook and Twitter. Facebook has tried to give credence to this basic lie where as Twitter makes it completely clear that what you Twitter it viewable to anybody in the Twitter social network.

I have a personal guide to all my social media posts; if I wouldn't be happy to have my dear old departed mum reading it I don't generally post it.

I have used this guide over the past three years with my media usage. By doing this I don't have to worry about all these complicated social media security levels and the possibility of the wrong groups being able to read my posts. It basically means I don't wake up at night with the cold sweats worrying about my latest posts!

However, Google Plus has a number of additional functionality that makes it an interesting mixture of the other social media networks.

I'm not going to list all of them here. There are loads of other online articles that can give you a detailed outline.  

No my interest is in the bigger question. Can Google be successful with its new social media service?

I think Google can, as it seems to have learned a lot from it recent online social media mistakes. I also personally feel that there are some real problems with the core attitudes of the leadership of Facebook that has always exposed it to possible attack by an effective competitor.

So far the talk about Google + is positive. Users are saying they prefer it over Facebook, though right now 87% of users are male. In order to be a success Google will have to appeal to both men and women. Right now Google + is in beta testing, which means it is not open to everyone. They did the same with Google Wave, and by the time they opened it up to everyone the newness had worn off and many of the beta users dropped it. Will this happen with Google +? Only time will tell. 

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