+Tom Anderson, the founder of MySpace (remember Tom? We were all friends with Tom once),reckons the big difference is going to be in how much control Google lets people keep.Although Facebook offers a system of “lists” to allow people to sort out who they share information with, it hasn’t really taken off. By default, most Facebook users see a select subset of information in their friend-stream selected by a Facebook algorithm, called “EdgeRank”. By contrast, Google have made “Circles” the centrepiece of Plus, making it far easier to selectively share information with friends and view data from larger numbers of people. Tom reckons that if Google leave this control in the hands of users, they will prevail.
CNN reckoned features aside, we’d all switch to Google+ as a way to “reboot” our social networksand ditch some of the losers we’d accidentally befriended over the years. Like moving from high school to college, it’s a chance to reinvent yourself and grow a whole new ego.
For those looking for fame, +Robert Scoble, a dude at server farm Rackspace, thinks Plus has already killed Twitter because it’s copied the “follower” thing whilst throwing in prettier pictures. Twitter is stuck in a world where updates are 140 characters long and anything you broadcast must be sent to every one of your followers. Google+ allows a stranger to “follow” anyone else without sending friend requests, which makes the system similar to Twitter’s default setting already. But using Google+, authors’ posts can include text, video, images and anything else. And more like a blog, posts can attract comments – meaning authors can get straight feedback on what’s working and what’s not. End result – Twitter needs to become a lot more like Google+ or it’s game over.
Much less commented on is the impact that Google+ is likely to have on the other big social network, LinkedIn. Sharon Machlis points out things have gotten out of hand on LinkedIn. Once upon a time, people would only connect with people they really knew and respected, making introductions via friends a valuable commodity. Now people act in a Twitter-like way amassing connections like a status symbol, and the value of introductions is all but gone. So TheNextWebmight be on to something when they say “Google+ … may actually lend itself better to the professional social world than to the consumer one”. Although LinkedIn has 100m users, it hasn’t done anything new since 2003. And with Google+ profiles publicly visible on Google and pretty much containing a complete education and work biography, the advantage of LinkedIn looks less and less obvious.
Most of this commentary is pretty positive for Google+. So why have Google apparently got things right this time, when they didn’t in the past? +Gina Trapani, co-founder of Life Hacker, argues that Google learnt a few lessons from their failures with Google Wave and Google Buzz, the supposed replacements for email and Twitter that Google released over the past couple of years. They’ve integrated the whole thing with email notifications, invested in serious field testing in advance, and they’ve focused on building a product that human beings can use rather than something that developers find exciting.
Personally, whilst all of these points of view are really interesting, I’m still struggling to understand what role Google+ plays in my life. Should this mini-article post go straight into Plus, or on to a blog, for instance? And who should I legitimately share it with on Plus? How do I know what other people want me to share with them? This is kind of like the digital equivalent of not knowing what clothes to wear to a party. Do you turn up in a dinner jacket and black tie just to find everyone in jeans and T-Shirt? Looking at how people I know are using Google+ at the moment, people are going for “middle of road” communications that are not very personal and too business-like – the equivalent of rocking up the party in a jeans-and-suit-jacket combo? Acceptable in most circumstances, but somehow unsatisfying.
Matt Hunter
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