What Google+ has taught me a few weeks in
I just read an article about a new Google laptop coming out. <YAWN>
I also saw that Google is rolling out a new photo sharing app called Photovine. No thanks.
I walked past a Petsmart recently and they had a ton of cute puppies out front. Cute. But I kept on walking.
Turns out, I love my Macbook Air and I already have a dozen photo sharing apps on my iPhone that I don’t use. And I dig my dogs.
So what happened when Google+ came out? EVERYONE jumped on it. We all dove in and started creating circles and hanging out. And I’ve been hanging out a lot on Google+ even though I technically could have done that via Skype and/or Facebook.
Hanging out on Google+
The question I ask is, why are we all jumping in head first, eager to see what Google+ is all about? Before + came out I wasn’t sitting around saying, “I really need another social network”. In fact if you had asked me, I probably would have vehemently said no way, the world doesn’t need yet another social network.
What this tells me is that there’s a chance we’re starting to see the crest of the Facebook wave of invincibility. I can pretty much guarantee that the 10 million people that are already using Google+ have used Facebook and Twitter a little less since joining +. I know I have.
I agree wholelheartedly Jeff. The world was ready for something new and Google+ filled the gap.
Competition is a wonderful thing. As much as I LOVE the hacker, “break something” mentality at Facebook, it does tend to show itself in poor decisions and implementation of half baked ideas, not to mention the occasional outages it causes. I think having G+ as a player will force some tighter reigns to be put in place. I also think it will continue to push the envelope from both camps as they try and outdo one another.
Jeff, I’ve been using it some and I think it’s got some neat features, but I don’t think it’s a serious threat to FB. I’ll just say network effect, network effect, network effect. If I want to share something and have more than 20 people see it, it goes on FB. Your average person who’s not an early adopter, is not going to see much value in Google+ because they’re not going to see all that much difference, so why take the time and effort to figure it out and build a redundant social network? The bleeding edge folk may feel differently, but that’s my 2 cents.
I tend to agree Lewis, Facebook is going to be hard to unseat. And I don’t think it will be something like Google+, it will probably be something that has a really rich, visual experience that Facebook doesn’t provide.
For me, I think the difference was the hype surrounding Google+. Every article I read was breathlessly extolling its values. I was so excited to join, and now that I have… eh. I like Twitter.