Google+ scares me
Source: Jon Friedman
I already spend way too much time on Facebook. I slavishly try to prop up my Klout score on Twitter, too. Now, there is a new sheriff in social media to obsess me and its name is Google+, courtesy of the company bearing its name.
Google+’s “circles” permit users to interact with groups of friends without forcing them to send updates to a large and unwieldy universe of people on the Web. Google designed it to be a somewhat more intimate version of Facebook. Already, that sounds good to me.
Facebook had better watch its back. Google+ has already signed up 20 million users in its first three weeks, as a recent Wall Street Journal headline blared.
And I am one of them.
Shrewdly, Google Inc. GOOG +0.57% has ordained that people can only join Google+ if a current member invites them. This makes Google+ seem much more exclusive than Facebook, whose ranks have swelled to 750 million users.
Larry Page, the chief executive of Google, is taking a page out of Apple Inc.’s AAPL +1.23% subliminal marketing handbook. Like Apple’s “i” wares, membership in Google+ confers a kind of snob appeal. It cons people into thinking they’re somehow hipper if they belong to Google+ instead of slovenly Facebook. It’s reminiscent of the way the iPhone pretends to promise a better life than that grubby BlackBerry RIMM +2.70% .
And it’s working. I knew that I wanted to join Google+, but I didn’t know exactly why. Lots of people have apparently had the same reaction, I suspect. I don’t regard myself as any sort of an elitist ― even though I root obsessively for the New York Yankees ― but I jumped at my friend’s invitation to join Google+.
Has it changed my life? Not quite yet. For now, I’m still a Facebook guy. Old habits are proving hard to break.
“I like Facebook for the depth, the interchange and the curation,” notes Lucy Marcus, chief executive of Marcus Venture Consulting. “I have found it easy to do what people say Google+ is good for, namely splice the various circles so I’m sharing what I want with people.”
Marcus added: “I really like Twitter and use it a lot ― the immediacy, the interaction, the broad spectrum of ideas and the brevity. I’ve not written G+ off but it is not my holy grail of social media and communication. The jury is still out for me.”
Me, too, Lucy. But it may only be a matter of time before I edge toward Google+, as more and more friends trumpet its virtues. I’m curious to see what it’s all about. When Google+ proves that it can fill a need in my social-media pursuits, I’m in.
And as Google+ catches on, Facebook has only itself to blame. For a lot of its critics, Facebook has become the service that they love to hate. Its frequent changes to the front page, for openers, infuriate plenty of Facebook devotees.
I asked some of my Facebook friends to let me know why they’re navigating to Google+.
“Hangout is the killer feature,” said Sharon Hyman, a filmmaker in Montreal. Hangout “allows you to have a conversation with up to 10 people at the same time. I am sure it will have many practical applications in the workplace and personal uses, like meetings of all kinds, and reunions with friends and family.” There is “nothing like Hangout on Facebook.”
Another Facebook convert noted that there is less clutter on Google+, a cleaner layout, no Farmville (a farming social-media game), no annoying ads in the corner or people “poking” you. Compared with Facebook, this user said, Google+ “feels like college instead of junior high.”
Google+ may yet also encroach on Twitter’s base, too. “People who are feeling restricted by the 140-character limit of Twitter are going to Google+,” noted Jonathan Taplin, director of the USC Innovation Lab.
For now, the social-media establishment can feel proud of its accomplishments. Facebook has 750 million users and Twitter boasts 200 million registered accounts. But they’d better not rest on their laurels.
Silicon Valley and Wall Street are littered with the debris of innovative tech companies that grew complacent and got steam-rolled.
Google+ is here to stay.
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