Recently, pundits have been taking swipes at Google+, dismissing it as another stumble into the social space, tugging back at the coattails of Facebook, the established juggernaut in the social space with over 165 million users. But as the new player in the social space, Google+ might have one up on the established Facebook juggernaut.
Exploding growth
Receiving my Google+ invite at the launch of Google’s new social endeavor was reminiscent of 2004 Facebook–new ideas fueling a radical departure from established tools. The “what do I do with this” questions people are asking about Google+ are the same questions people had for Facebook when it debuted. It took Facebook ten months to cross the 1 million user mark, a feat Google Plus destroyed when it crossed 20 million users just weeks after its invite-only debut. I’ll be the first to admit that a lot of this growth is thanks to networks like Facebook that have brought social channels into the mainstream.
The New Sharing Model
But critics who don’t feel Google+ is a valid destination for a number of people suffering from Facebook Fatigue, the frustration of spam, privacy issues, distant acquaintances and family all congregating on the same platform with a very flat interaction model. Wading through the myriad of privacy options, your online persona must mingle with with your great aunt, 8th grade crush and supervisor’s supervisor, but fundamentally Facebook was designed as a social platform for a group of college friends sharing experiences at a four year college.
This is where Google+ really shines. Instead of a static friend/no friend state, Google’s circles solution lets you choose exactly who you’re sharing each piece of content with. Other options relating to profile, location and photo privacy are clearly labeled, and I hope this leads to greater transparency- and Facebook has already responded with clearer sharing options, although the labyrinth of privacy settings still remain.
A New Start
But one of the things I like the most about Google+ is one of the biggest gripes of some users–starting with a clean slate. When I signed up for the service, Google recommended a few users to add but required me to manually create my circles of friends and coworkers. Since most of my friends already use Gmail and Gchat, migrating to a few social circles was simple. Transitioning from hundreds of Facebook friends to a few dozen Google+ contacts was refreshing for me. I’m now only sharing updates with people who mean the most to me.
Extending Influence
Whether or not you’ve joined Google+ in recent months, you may be indirectly benefitting from its presence. Recently, Facebook unveiled a slew of new privacy features aiming to make sharing more secure so you know exactly who sees which updates. This has been compared directly to the Google+ Circles functionality- organizing friends into clusters and determining which clusters to receive updates. You could argue that this is a blatant rip-off of Google’s new sharing framework but the result is everyone, whether on Facebook or Google+ receives a better experience. This is great example of competition always raising the quality bar.
Changing the Game
I don’t think Google+ is going to be a Facebook killer, nor does it have to be in order to succeed. Instead, I see Google+ appealing to the early-adapter crowd, providing some much-needed breathing room from the clutter of Facebook. Google+ stresses quality over quantity with the connections you make and is transparent with their privacy settings. And as Google begins to weave the social network through their products (Gmail, Google Photos, Google Documents, etc.) I think we’ll begin to see Google+ as the social glue that holds everything together.
For both networks, the stakes are high and will require ingenuity to stay at the top of the social media game. Undoubtedly, Facebook’s recent moves for more transparent privacy settings are only the first pieces for Facebook to stay competitive with Google.
