Speculation often causes people to talk out of both sides of their mouth when passing judgment or expressing an opinion. This is not one of those times. While expressed as opinions, everything I’m about to post is true about the Google+ Project. The only speculation is in how Google will proceed and if Facebook can make the moves to fight them off.
In reality, much of it is out of Facebook’s control. Their success or failure is, for the first time, almost completely out of their hands.
Modern Interface
Despite the way people would answer the question if polled, years of experience have taught me that most people do not like change. They might want to be adventurous and cutting-edge but in reality most prefer the familiar. They might want situations to change, but changes in the tools that help us manage our lives are normally greeted with skepticism. We don’t want to have to learn new ways to do the things that we’ve been doing all along.
One of Facebook’s biggest challenges has been making changes at a platform level. Even minor interface changes are often met with hate. There are 1.5 million members of the Facebook groupWe Hate The New Facebook, so STOP CHANGING IT!!! Keep in mind, the group was started based upon changes made nearly 3 years ago. It’s so old that it’s scheduled to be archived.
Three years ago, Facebook was the modern interface fighting against another huge social network of the day: MySpace. Facebook offered things that MySpace could not. It represented a way to simply connect with friends and family while MySpace was more about accumulation and bling. MySpace failed. Facebook took over. Could we be seeing the same thing happening again?
Google’s interface, what little we’ve seen of it, is extraordinarily superior to Facebook. Most of the things that annoy people about the Facebook interface have been addressed and corrected with Google+. Circles, for example, is something that technically can be done on Facebook, just not nearly as easily. A group of Facebook engineers have already hacked up an app that mimics it.
Google+ solves challenges that Facebook has never addressed. Huddle, for example, allows for quick group chats across all devices that consolidates texting and chat into something easier.
Each individual element of Google+ is more integrated with “real life” than the Facebook counterpart (or lack thereof). To one blogger I discussed it with, Google+ “opened my eyes to what I was missing with Facebook.” Needless to say, she can’t wait.Mobile Focus
The iPad is over a year old. The iPad 2 is 3 months old. As of today, there is still no Facebook iPad App, though they say it’s coming shortly. This is the kind of slow development that is normally associated with, well, Google. The iPhone App works fine for most circumstances but there is certain to be better functionality in the new one (which CEO Mark Zuckerberg is rumored to be helping with himself.
Google has done very well integrating with mobile, and we’re not talking about Android. That’s a separate item altogether and the fact that they have a mobile OS with half a million new activations a day has little bearing on Google+. The mobile integration we’re talking about is specifically with life-tools. They could do more, but the ways that Google has integrated voice, search, and localization have been strong – I’d rate them a B+.
Google+ has the potential to bring everything in our personal (and potentially business) lives full circle to be managed and monitored from smartphones, tablets, netbooks, and laptops – basically anything that can be put in a pocket or a bag and toted around while we live.
Simply stated, the Instant Upload feature is beautiful. Images and videos taken on mobile devices are pushed to a private album on Google+. This is done in the background. When ready, users can go through their album and decide which items to post, how to post them, and who to post them for.
Huddle, mentioned above, has the ability to consolidate mobile communication in a way that Facebook hasn’t. Sure, Facebook Message has the same basic ability, but it lacks elegance and has yet to be the game-changer it was billed as. Just another chat area. While I don’t have the stats on how many users have integrated their Facebook email address into it, I would guess that adoption has been minimal.
People are using Facebook on mobile devices like crazy, but that’s not necessarily because Facebook has done a good job on mobile. Places was a strong play. Tagging was excellent. Checking in is fun for many but it’s such a small part of the location-based pie that it can be easily eclipsed. Google may not do any better, but the tools are coming and they look strong. We may see a Google+ iPad app before we see a Facebook one. It’s unlikely, but until I see it in the App Store I’m taking nothing for granted.
Local Integration
People often confuse “local” and “mobile”. They’re so closely tied together that some often don’t realize that there’s a distinct difference between having apps and interfaces that work on mobile devices and having software that is GPS-driven with databases of information about every square mile of most major cities in the country and across the world.
Google has local integration heading in the right direction. Facebook has Places and checkins. The difference is gigantic. Currently, Facebook’s strength is that it makes it easy to see what friends and random people are saying about various locations. Tagging allows people to socialize online while in the same venue. Pictures, videos, and status updates makes Facebooking while at a restaurant with friends fun.
Google+ will be able to the same and more.
Many businesses are on Facebook. Most venues have their own page. The amount of data about these local venues is amazing, but it’s not in the same galaxy as Google. EVERY business, organization, and venue is on Google, and the data about each is staggering. For every tip or comment about a venue on Facebook, there are 20 reviews of the same place on Google. Adding Google+ to the mix brings the localization of social networking full circle.
Google+ Hangout
Had you asked me 3 months ago who would buy Skype, I would have said, “probably Google, maybe Microsoft, with an outside chance of Facebook or Apple grabbing it.” Invoking the “big 4″ in any question that starts with “Who will buy….” is not a spark of genius. It’s low-hanging fruit to pick the four big movers and shakers in the tech world as likely buyers when talking about billions of dollars.
The announcement that Microsoft bought Skype was a mild surprise, but now it makes sense. Google didn’t need the technology. They could have used the people (who couldn’t in Silicon Valley?) but it wasn’t worth the billions to them that it’s worth to Microsoft.
The Google+ Hangout feature is being billed as a way for friends to get together quickly and easily without prompting. A friendly flash-mob online, so to speak. The business applications are clear, but there’s a reason why it’s not being discussed, nor will it be discussed by Google for a long time (we’ll get to that later).
For now, we’ll simply note that it’s a feature that in itself has the opportunity to prompt users to get more of their friends and family going on Google+. Many will say, “but I can post pictures and videos on Facebook” when their friends and family tell them to join Google+. Hangout is something that Facebook simply doesn’t offer (yet).
Sparks=Revenue
Make no mistake. Google knows how to make money. They may have only been truly successful at making money through Adwords, but they’ve made over $100 billion dollars off the ad platform over the years. Unfortunately, its days are numbered (in its current form) and Google knows it.
Sparks is secretly part of the solution. There is no indication and (oddly) very little speculation that the interest-delivery-engine that Google has integrated into Google+ will be a revenue source in the long run, but it will. Once the mass-adoption has occurred and people are lured into using this aspect of the service, ads will be sold on it. Quite frankly, it’s too wonderful of a concept to not monetize.
Now that you understand the concept, your first question is, “Why would I use something like that? Why wouldn’t I just search for things that interest me when I’m ready to find them?”
Those who use StumbleUpon already know the answer to that. Eventually, millions of others will understand as well. The mass of understanding of what’s happening on the internet that Google possesses allows Sparks the ability to be a truly useful diversion on demand whenever and wherever we go there. It helps to eliminate the dying RSS feed, helps to expand on the news-aspect that Twitter has pushed along, and brings discovery to the forefront.
Most importantly, it’s active and allows us to be passive. It is working all the time and will help those who master it (just as StumbleUpon masters have learned) to receive new resources, explore our current interests, and expand or contract our scope to whatever degree we want. The world is moving way too fast to rely on active exploration. Having Spark makes exploration of the world around us faster, easier, and much more efficient.
It represents the easiest way for Google to truly create a stream of revenue that they’ve yet to find in social media. From an advertiser’s perspective, it’s beautiful. Imagine being able to target specific interests that go beyond active searching. Expose your brand, products, and services to people who are looking for what you have but don’t necessarily know they’re looking for it.
From a consumer’s perspective, it can be equally amazing. One thing about sites like Groupon and LivingSocial is that the daily deals are often driven more by a small sampling of advertisers rather than through our own interests. Google was interested in Groupon and there are reasons for that. Sparks is one of them.
Focus and Failure
The past failures of Google’s attempts at social media have been well chronicled. Google Wave (pictured above) was a convoluted mess with limited uses and even less understanding of what we want in a social tool.
Perhaps more importantly, this isn’t a toe-dipping exercise the way every other Google social attempt has been. CEO Larry Page has clearly stated that their focus is 100% on social media. They have failed miserably too many times to count and it’s not going to happen again, not on his watch.The buzz and hype surrounding Google+ may not be earth-shaking yet, but it’s moving in a positive direction. We get it. As XKCD puts it, it’s not Facebook, but it’s like Facebook. As bad as that sounds on the surface, in reality it’s exactly what we’ve wanted from them.
Failure does that to companies. In hopes of not drawing too much criticism for making the connection, Apple was a failing company that brought back an old leader with a new direction that was greeted with skepticism in a way that most in the 90s thought the company would surely fall apart. That hasn’t happened.
Google has failed in the past, but they are finally focused. That alone should be enough to make Google+ successful, but the most important reason they will succeed and the only reason why they may fail still need to be discussed.
Walled-Garden vs Open Range
The mentality at Facebook has been very clear for years. They want to turn Facebook into the only place you need to go. They want businesses to create pages and apps that will allow people to handle all of their transactions and maintenance items on the platform. They want users to be able to explore, share, and integrate their daily lives into Facebook. They want to make sure that you have no reason to leave the site.
Google+ is taking the exact opposite approach. They are taking their vast wealth of data and understanding surrounding the billions of web pages out there and use presenting it in ways that they’ve never done before. They want people to leave the platform to find what they need, then have an easy way to come right back.
On the surface, this seems an awful lot like Facebook Connect. In reality, the two services will share basic functionality but the intentions will be completely different. Facebook wants to pull you in. They are a gravitational force that wants to be everywhere and offer everything to everyone. They’ve done a tremendous job so far, but they have a flaw in that there is rarely a reason for people to go to Facebook for reasons other than friends and family.
Businesses, organizations, and publications are able to “pull” a tremendous amount of likes and interest through Facebook, but that interest dies very quickly. People may like a page, but if they don’t interact with that page, chances are slim that they will ever get to actually see anything happening there or on their feed. We almost never go back to a Facebook page once we’ve liked it and we stop seeing it in our feed once we go a period of time without liking or commenting on their posts.
Google+ doesn’t want to pull anyone into a walled-garden the way Facebook wants. Instead, they want to go with us wherever we go. It’s subtle, but it’s clear. Facebook is saying, “come do what you need to do here,” while Google+ is saying, ‘take us with you and let us help you with what you need to do wherever you need to do it.”
An entire post can be written on this aspect and I know I’m not doing it justice. I’ll answer questions about this aspect in comments.
The Road To Failure
If you want to break down why Google has failed at so many ventures, particularly in social, it comes down to one statement.
“You can’t do so much and tell so few.”
Wave may have been a debacle, but it didn’t have to be. The lack of communication and marketing surrounding it was abysmal. Anyone who tried it likely had a hard time understanding what it could do, what it was for, and why they needed it. When they tried to learn more, they were often pushed to blogs and non-Google properties where the writers were often just as confused as the rest of us.
The original Nexus phone suffered the same fate. Google thought, “If we build it, they will come.” They didn’t. It never got more than initial buzz and faded into obscurity quickly.
If Google does not take a page from the Apple marketing machine and blast Google+ out there with the same conviction and clever promotion that Apple does with most of their launches, the “Facebook Killer” of 2011 will die a quick death. It’s their last shot. If Google cannot make this work, they are done with social media for the foreseeable future.
I’m a skeptic when it comes to Google. I do not believe that they know how to be aggressive when it comes to marketing. I do not believe they are willing to wield the tremendous weapons they’ve had at their disposal for years because they have failed to do so. Now is not the time to be humble. Now is not the time to be fair. They have the ability through search and YouTube to take control of social media, but even that wouldn’t be aggressive enough.
They will have to spend money. Lots of it.
- Hit television in ways that would make Microsoft cringe
- Use email with the mastery that Apple has done over the years
- Promote through the user base with valid reasons for them to get their friends and family engaged
- Attack Facebook. Yes, attack Facebook. Because Facebook will definitely be attacking them
- Leverage relationships with corporations, governments, and media outlets to integrate Google+ into their affairs
- Generate more positive buzz on blogs and websites of all sizes than they’ve ever (never, actually) done before
This is it. All hands on deck. They need to get the people to join and use at a rate never seen before. Why? Because they’re so far behind. We, the people, are already using Facebook. We will follow the crowd if the crowd shifts to Google+, but the crowd has to be massive. If not, it will simply be another Google failure.
They’re heading in the right direction. Earlier, we noted that they aren’t talking about business applications of their Google+ services. They have plans, but right now all of the practical business uses for the service are worthless without hundreds of millions of users. It’s that simple, and that’s why we haven’t heard anything about (and won’t for a while).
There are many reasons while Google+ will succeed, but this one reason for failure is a big one. They have not demonstrated over the years the willingness to roll up their sleeves, take their gloves off, and fight like there’s no tomorrow. Until they do so, I’ll remain a (hopeful) skeptic.
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