Mark Hurst wrote an excellent piece on Google+ that covers many of the reasons why Google+ will not succeed, but he and others have missed a few things which I will discuss. If interested here is a link to his blog post:
http://goodexperience.com/2011/07/why-google-will-succe.php
Mr. Hurst does feel Google+ will succeed at first, but that begs the question what is your definition of success? Clearly he means getting a lot of users and in real numbers, yes Google has done that, but for a company like Google, if it can't get 20M users for a huge product launch then it is not a product worth developing. That being said I would not call Google+'s launch a success, but rather the first step towards becoming an actual player in the social space. Welcome to the party. It only gets harder from here.
But by now it is becoming clearer that Google+ may not be the new darling that the media and tech world predicted two weeks ago. Hitwise reported that for the week ending July 23, Google+ had 1.79 million visits, down 3% from the week before. The report also noted that the average time on the site was down 10%, to 5 minutes and 15 seconds. Definitely not a good sign, but even Facebook had its ups and downs.
Still, most of us don't need in depth research reports to know how Google+ is really doing. How often this week did you check your Google+ versus Facebook? Or how about you go to your Google+ right now and scroll to the bottom of your "Stream" (News Feed). How old is your oldest post? Mine is nearly four weeks old (July 5th). What! And that is the true test. Some days it is hard for me to find something more than four hours old in my Facebook News Feed. My friends and contacts are constantly posting information, making Facebook a vibrant and live site, and a place where I and the majority of the other 750 million members regularly visit.
Social networks are not about being beautiful or having cool tech functionality, but they are all about a product that actually helps people and does so in a fun, social manner. Google+ is incredibly designed and has cool functionality like group chat, but honestly ask yourself, what percent of the 300M Americans really notice the difference in the design or uses the group video chat regularly. It is not like normal people are going to stop "hanging out" in person so they can "hangout" virtually online. Mark Zuckerberg has never claimed that Facebook would replace real-life social interaction, but conversely has explained it would help make the world more social, and Facebook has.
If Google is serious about getting into Social, they need to think about their strategy, again. They need to stop going at Facebook head on. Sure people have their issues with Facebook like every other major website, but for the most part people are generally happy with it. But that does not mean give up on social; it is a huge white space where various products can co-exist, while serving millions of people. Business and creating new products is not always about beating your competitor, but many times about figuring out how to grow the entire market. Google needs to figure out new ways to grow the pie for the social-media hungry audience, instead of trying to steal a large slice of what's already been served.
The biggest hurdle any social media product faces is with network affect - getting a lot people to use your product regularly and keeping it interactive. That is what Google+ is fumbling with now. Google has tens of billions of dollars in the piggy bank, it should be aggressively shelling out that cash and buying up existing social products and integrating them successfully into Google (yes, I am thinking about Dodgeball). Some companies that come to mind would be Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr, Spotify, Instagr.am, and GroupMe. Great products with regular users that frequently use their services; all the pieces a strong social application needs. And with Google's reach these products could become even more mainstream.
At the same time, they need to start looking at their products from a different perspective and start focusing more on their end users and less on what would be cool from a functionality point of view. They are a user interfacing company and they need to start running their company like such. Google, if you are not sure how to do that look at Apple. They do a pretty good job with this.
Please follow me follow me at @vivekmgeorge
http://goodexperience.com/2011/07/why-google-will-succe.php
Mr. Hurst does feel Google+ will succeed at first, but that begs the question what is your definition of success? Clearly he means getting a lot of users and in real numbers, yes Google has done that, but for a company like Google, if it can't get 20M users for a huge product launch then it is not a product worth developing. That being said I would not call Google+'s launch a success, but rather the first step towards becoming an actual player in the social space. Welcome to the party. It only gets harder from here.
But by now it is becoming clearer that Google+ may not be the new darling that the media and tech world predicted two weeks ago. Hitwise reported that for the week ending July 23, Google+ had 1.79 million visits, down 3% from the week before. The report also noted that the average time on the site was down 10%, to 5 minutes and 15 seconds. Definitely not a good sign, but even Facebook had its ups and downs.
Still, most of us don't need in depth research reports to know how Google+ is really doing. How often this week did you check your Google+ versus Facebook? Or how about you go to your Google+ right now and scroll to the bottom of your "Stream" (News Feed). How old is your oldest post? Mine is nearly four weeks old (July 5th). What! And that is the true test. Some days it is hard for me to find something more than four hours old in my Facebook News Feed. My friends and contacts are constantly posting information, making Facebook a vibrant and live site, and a place where I and the majority of the other 750 million members regularly visit.
Social networks are not about being beautiful or having cool tech functionality, but they are all about a product that actually helps people and does so in a fun, social manner. Google+ is incredibly designed and has cool functionality like group chat, but honestly ask yourself, what percent of the 300M Americans really notice the difference in the design or uses the group video chat regularly. It is not like normal people are going to stop "hanging out" in person so they can "hangout" virtually online. Mark Zuckerberg has never claimed that Facebook would replace real-life social interaction, but conversely has explained it would help make the world more social, and Facebook has.
If Google is serious about getting into Social, they need to think about their strategy, again. They need to stop going at Facebook head on. Sure people have their issues with Facebook like every other major website, but for the most part people are generally happy with it. But that does not mean give up on social; it is a huge white space where various products can co-exist, while serving millions of people. Business and creating new products is not always about beating your competitor, but many times about figuring out how to grow the entire market. Google needs to figure out new ways to grow the pie for the social-media hungry audience, instead of trying to steal a large slice of what's already been served. The biggest hurdle any social media product faces is with network affect - getting a lot people to use your product regularly and keeping it interactive. That is what Google+ is fumbling with now. Google has tens of billions of dollars in the piggy bank, it should be aggressively shelling out that cash and buying up existing social products and integrating them successfully into Google (yes, I am thinking about Dodgeball). Some companies that come to mind would be Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr, Spotify, Instagr.am, and GroupMe. Great products with regular users that frequently use their services; all the pieces a strong social application needs. And with Google's reach these products could become even more mainstream.
At the same time, they need to start looking at their products from a different perspective and start focusing more on their end users and less on what would be cool from a functionality point of view. They are a user interfacing company and they need to start running their company like such. Google, if you are not sure how to do that look at Apple. They do a pretty good job with this.
Please follow me follow me at @vivekmgeorge
well put!
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