Google+, the search engine giant’s latest attempt at competing with services like Facebook and Twitter, has seen 25 million people joining the service in the month since its launch at the end of June.
Such a stellar growth rate – it took three years for Facebook to reach the same number of users – means it could be one of the most popular social media services ever. What does this new platform mean to business owners and start ups and how does it affect other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Yammer and LinkedIn?
Google+ differs from most social networks – particularly Facebook – in that you can divide your online connections into different groups called circles and restrict shared information to those segments.
This addresses the biggest problem with social media; that what we share with our friends is not necessarily what we want our family or work colleagues to see, an issue identified last year by then Google designer Paul Adams, who has not co-incidentally since moved onto Facebook.
Along with Circles, Google+ has a few other unique features such as Hangouts which allow impromptu video conferences and Sparks which are random popups of things you might be interested based upon your search history and posts.
The collaboration aspect as the ability to create Circles and Hangouts for specific projects is one of Google+’s great strengths – and probably to be expected from an Engineering organisation like Google – which may make it an alternative to corporate social media services such as Yammer and possibly even LinkedIn groups.
At the core of Google+ is the Google Profile which is shared with most Google services such as Gmail and Blogger which gives rise to quite a few privacy concerns as those you share with can get access to this information, although this is the same with most other social media services.
Marketing is one area where businesses have focused on in the social media world and the lack of broader take up is one of Google+’s drawbacks as Facebook has a much bigger diverse spread of users and so marketing reach.
At present the discussion of Google+ for marketing is moot as businesses aren’t allowed to create Google profiles which is another powerful advantage for Facebook.
The question remains on how Google is going to integrate their other services, the obvious one is to incorporate Places in a similar way to Facebook so that businesses can create profiles that can then plug into local search.
Coupling social media with local search along with Google’s Android mobile phone service pretty well touches all the bases of the SoLoMo revolution which is redefining the consumer world and is almost certainly part of the bigger game plan.
Adwords will prove to be the greatest challenge, although we’re already seeing concerns being expressed about the potential for Google to misuse their databases and profiles of users and as social media tool plugged into profiles and personal search may be a bridge too far form some.
Indeed there’s a question of how Google+ will affect other social media tools like LinkedIn and Twitter. Right now it’s difficult to see either being affected by the new service however we shouldn’t underestimate the size of Google’s war chest or how compelling a service that integrates email, search, local search and applications like documents will be.
Another big advantage of Google+ is the lack of clutter as the game invites and people sending pictures of fluffy cats or their big night out aren‘t around – though this may change as the service moves from being used primarily by business geeks to the general public.
Whether Google+ supplants Facebook or any of the other social media services remains to be seen as we’re only a few years into the decade where personalised services are changing how we use the web, it would be dangerous to make any bets on who will succeed.
The stakes are quite high for Google with this product as the overwhelming amount of data at every Internet user’s fingertips is seeing people seeking out sources they trust for answers, recommendations and advice. The social aspect of the online world is going to define the web in this decade just as search did in the previous decade.
For businesses, or anybody interested in social media who wants to experiment with the new service, it’s worthwhile having a play with the program to see if it works for you but abandoning Facebook, Twitter or even your own website for Google’s service is probably making too early a call at this stage.
Anyway, the beauty of social media services are that you aren’t forced to use all or any and you may well find that other channels work better for your business regardless of Google’s success.