Thoughts on Google+

Posted: July 1st, 2011 | Author: marcato15 | Filed under: General, New Technology | No Comments »

For those that are not aware, Google has launched its own foray into the Social Media game (again), but this time has invested even more of its technological clout than any of their previous attempts. It is called, Google+.

The short and quick version is, Google created a Social Network based on Circles (ie Family, Friends, Work, etc) that you can place different people into. It has a home page that is very similar to Facebook News feed. The features Google will try to differentiate itself is the way it will tie into all its existing services (an easy share bar on all Google Pages, integration with Picasa Web Albums, a slick Group Video chat that works pretty smoothly , Youtube integration and more). Its just launched on Wednesday, so time will tell if it will succeed or just be another Google Social Media flop.

I will not give a detailed review about it, since you can find much better reviews already written. Instead, I figured I would just share a couple thoughts about what this means and could mean for Social Media.

1. Competition – Sure, there may have been other so-called Facebook competitors, but lets be realistic, this is the first actually decent sized competition to Facebook. Adding another player to the game will increase competition, and in the end I think that will be good for all. Facebook has a lot of weak points, but up until now, there was not a huge impetus to fix them , since they were the only real player in the game.

2. Fragmentation – I already check Facebook and Twitter to keep up on people I want to know about, I really do not want another place to have to look for updates, pictures and information about people, especially since there is such an established place currently. However, I’m sure people will soon be posting on Google+, and I can’t really expect to see that same information on their Facebook account.

3. Features – Facebook is a Social Media Company first, meaning they live and die by their product. For Google, this is just one of many of their products, so if it fails, big whoop for them, they just keep going. This is good and bad as Facebook will make sure it is a success, Google is given freedom to experiment and try different things, which we all know they will do. However, Google has often fallen prey to their brains, as they will sometimes implement features that are technologically amazing, but that most people just do not care about. Having the most techy site never means the best. Time will tell if Google can overcome this, like they have in other areas (Search, Gmail, Google Maps).

What about you? Whatcha think? Is Google+ a good thing or a bad thing for Social Media?