Google+ is most definitely getting a few people excited at the moment, and so it should. When one monster, free tool of the internet (Google) moves into the realm of another (Facebook) in an attempt to steal its social media crown you know it’s going to get interesting. It’s potentially the digital Haye vs. Klitschko, except both parties are true heavyweights.
The biggest challenge to any new social network is, of course, the sheer size of Facebook’s user base. A mind blowing 1 in 13 people on earth are now on Facebook. Over half of the UK population has a user profile, and 50% of these are Liking or LOLing every day.
Despite the recent reports of decreasing users, the scale of Facebook’s reach gives it an enormous advantage over its competition. The site is fast becoming the only tool consumers need online, and the only tool advertisers need to engage with their audience. Effectively owning the communication channel between brand and consumer has placed Facebook in a very dominant position.
Of course, Google knows this all too well, as it managed to achieve exactly the same position in the search battle, much to the detriment of Yahoo and Microsoft. Google’s pockets (and to a point, their patience) are deeper than just about any other party, particularly given the potential rewards of advertising dominance.
Based on the first few days we’ve had to play with it, Google have built some lovely features into their platform. The ‘Circles’ feature is a particularly nice way of filtering who out of your network sees what – making a refreshing change to Facebook’s more broadcast approach. ‘Sparks’, which allows you to access a range of information on a topic of interest from people who you are outside of your network, is also a quite cute. You can imagine there will be a dating offering based on this functionality fairly shortly. However, whilst there are some nice touches, in essence Google+ isn’t all that different from Facebook. It feels more like an attempt to build on all the best bits from Facebook, rather than an effort to reinvent the wheel. This does mean Google isn’t asking much of consumer to try the platform, but to me, it also means that those extra elements are going to have to be hugely compelling to cause enough people to jump ship (from what to many people will seem a very similar platform) to reach ‘critical mass’ and become the de facto social network.
Crucially though, the everyday punter is ultimately really only interested in being where their friends are. And at the moment the only friends of mine on Google+ are fellow industry geeks which defeats the object somewhat. However, the uptake has been pretty impressive, with 10million users signed up in the first two weeks. If that momentum continues there’s a chance it’ll bridge the early adopter gap and head into the mainstream, something that Goggle’s ill fated Wave project never got close to achieving.
So can Google do it? Could they steam in and create a real step change in the way we all communicate? At this stage it’s very hard to tell, but it’s fair to say that there’s never been a threat like this to Facebook and I’m sure it’s got the attention of Mark Zuckerberg et al. Given the degree of monopoly Facebook has had until now, an injection of real competition should mean better usability for the consumer, improved developer tools and cheaper rates for the advertiser. We’ve already seen Facebook link up with Skype to offer video chat and you can bet your Farmville credits that they’re working on a ‘Circle’ type set of filters. So even if Google don’t ultimately succeed in their goal, to me, there’s no reason not to give their efforts a big ‘+1′.
