By now you've all heard of Google+, Google's latest, and in my opinion, best attempt at building a social network that people would adopt and find to be part of their daily lives. Indeed, it's growth has been astounding, gaining 10 million numbers in around two weeks. I actually happen to really see real potential in Google+ and have been an active participant in the early stages of the product's growth (psst: Circle me here) and think the first product launch has been an amazing success in terms of answering questions about whether Google as a company can build something visually attractive and usable (yes), of whether Facebook and Twitter ever face a real threat in terms of the social networking sphere (yes), but above all, whether a deficit in product feature set based on real-world usage built up over 7 years of Facebook, 5 years of Twitter, and even it's own largely failed attempts in Google Buzz and Google Wave (features of both of which have made prominent appearances in Google+) can be made up in short order.
I think the answer for this question is also yes, in fact, I think they've already innovated in a few key ways:
This is not to say there aren't problems and issues with Google+ as well, but in my mind, these fall into the "this is a version 1″ kind of bucket, and are to be expected of a product still in early beta. I think the biggest single question that needs to be answered is far more philosophical.
Back in 2007, when I was working for JetBlue, and this new shiny toy called Twitter came along, we realized that this was somewhere we'd need to be -- even though we didn't exactly realize quite how or why yet. We saw the buzz growing out of our early adopter friends and realized that they were on to something here -- it wasn't just a service, it was a real-time communication platform akin to a telegraph, more real-time than a website, and more accessible than a telephone in certain situations (i.e. stuck on an airplane with just your cellphone to communicate). So, I took the step of signing up for username "@jetblue" with my JetBlue corporate email address, totally expecting some sort of privacy / trademark control to kick in. And, nothing happened. We had the username, and the bigger issue was that we didn't know quite what to do next. We didn't even tell our Marketing / Corporate Communications leadership that we had it for some time, because we didn't even know how to describe what we were trying to accomplish. We were one of the first, if not the first, brands on Twitter. I sent an email to Biz Stone, and asked if there was anyway to snag a spot on their featured users list, and to sort of "out" ourselves as authentic representatives of the brand (this was long before Twitter even thought about the need to verify people), and after about three months on the list, we'd grown to a few thousand followers in a time when Twitter had less than half a million total users.
Being first definitely helped, but over time, we needed to provide value to our users. We started with a few Sales and Marketing messages (the first tweet is currently credited as "Woo-hoo! I am the official airline of Springfield! Aye carumba!", which was a reference to a sponsorship with 20th Century Fox helping to promote The Simpsons Movie, one of the most fun campaigns a Simpsons geek could work on), but, it became obvious that the users wanted something different. It was from there that Morgan Johnston (G+, Twitter), still at JetBlue, and Corporate Communications team, adopted Twitter as important and took the initiative to build it into the real time support and information system that it Twitter is for them today (and yes, the Marketing messages did end up finding a home through @JetBlueCheeps, something I entertain myself in thinking is the legitimate stepchild of my original marketing version for the JetBlue Twitter -- except it too is much better). We sort of pushed our way in and expanded the intended use cases to include "non-human" entities, to Twitter's credit, they were always supportive of.
Google now faces a similar crossroads. With dozens of brands clearly wanting to establish their beachheads early on in the lifecycle of Google+, and dozens of brands and already having done so, Ford, and news organizations most prominently among them, and Google's stated intentions as to not allow existing "non-human" entities, save for a pilot program, has left many brands with the decision of waiting for Google to open up their pilot for feedback vs going ahead and creating profiles on the existing personal profiles platform with the risk of losing out on the early-adopter graph.
Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic echoed the confusion perfectly in this post. Morgan, ironically enough, is waiting for JetBlue, while others like Dan Lewis at Sesame Workshop are pushing ahead. Dan Patterson at ABC News Radio initially decided to shut down and delete their profile, but then brought it back when he realized the needs of his community, and with the reality that many other brands have taken the same course. I've claimed a profile for AOL and a few of our other brands, but I've also added our names to be included in the trial.
Make no doubt about it, brands represent an important part of the growth and longevity of Google+, especially for "regular people" who are trying to find the use case for why they should care about any other social network besides Facebook. Initial interactivity on Google+ is so high because most of the content is starting to help define the initial interest graph of its users. At the point, the key decision determining if people stick around is finding enough people creating content interesting to them. That's ok while most people inhale great "how does this work" content from people like Ben Parr, Craig Kanalley and Robert Scoble. But the reality is the first wave of users have moved on to "what's next." And Google needs to answer the brand question quickly to build another layer of trusted sources here. Save "hyperinfluencers" who have carried their Twitter audiences here, the best content sources will come from brands they trust. This will help to make Google+ a "can't live without" service for people who create and consumer content for business and pleasure.
It seems that the ball is now in Google's court to decide what identity is, and how to support it with previous precedents set on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Foursquare, Quora and countless other platforms. This is certainly the first product battle of Google+ young life and can only be answered through swift, decisive, and possibly unpopular action.
This post first appeared on tagsmith.org.
Follow Matthew Knell on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MatthewKnell
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I am looking the most forward to when search and business features get built out the most.
There it is... that's what were talking bout.
I hear that the French have banned News programs from mentioning Google, Twitter, etcetera. Ostensibly because it constitutes free advertising. Although the suggestion is that, were they French in origin such criterion would not apply. This is now proving problematical in respect to news and opinion gathering, by the media themselves. So, why couldn’t they advise their viewer to visit the station’s own website? Then redirect them to Google and Twitter from there.
plustopix.com - google+ community for invites and more...
I will send out the invite as soon as I receive the request.
Chris
Maybe a few hyper-local pages I allow, but I actually know the owners of such businesses. They are real friends I also hang out with. I certainly wouldn't be using FB or G+ so I have get one more way to be advertised to! I am signed up with G+ btw. If they actually want to last I think they need to have a way of feeding in FB friends and posts, which is pretty much what Windows Live does already.
Privacy regardless of social and/or information is not as protected as most people think on social networking sites such as Google+ & Facebook. If you have an email address or real name, there are companies today who are able to track this information. Most search engines that crawl these sites are able to atleast get Jane Doe's User Name.
Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin have excellent privacy settings, and different ways to protect it's users privacy, but both fail to address the real issues at hand.
The real issues most people have today about privacy is the amount of information these sites are collecting about its users, the way this information is being collected, and how this information is being used.
One thing that social networking sites today don't want to tell you, is that any site can be hacked! The only way for sites to combat this problem is to not ask it’s users to provide their real names, and email addresses.
As to the sharing of Ad Revenue, there is only one site today that allows it’s users to place their own Ads on both personal & business profiles.
ONLYMEWORLD does it all.