Google, as we once knew it, is over. The Google+ project is just about 1 month old, and at an estimated 20 million users already, it could be here to stay. To me, at a high-level, Google+ indicates a potentially massive tectonic shift in Google’s overall strategy that will directly affect pretty much all facets of the company. Google’s search technology has always (loosely) been about an algorithm interpreting your search and spitting back the results it thinks are most relevant to you. This old search and find process was only the beginning of search technology, and Google is making a bold bet that the real future of this technology looks a whole lot more social than this.
Google has long acknowledged the need to evolve into the social networking space, but has been 0/2 on attempts thus far with both its Google Buzz and Google Wave products. But as great companies and people often do, Google is learning from its mistakes, and is storming back into the social media arena with a vengeance. And this time, they ain’t fuckin’ around.
Google+ is pretty nifty
With an estimated 20 million users just weeks after a private beta launch, Google+ is almost certainly the fastest social network of all time to reach this figure. Right now, Google+ just early-adopters (read: tech geeks), but I think it’ll be a household name before long. If you’ve used Google+ already, then you know it’s pretty slick–so slick, in fact, that it really almost looks like an Apple product. And if you haven’t used Google+ yet, then trust me–it’s pretty slick. But the purpose of this blog post is not to run over the tech specs of Google+–you can familiarize yourself here if need be. Rather, these are just some ramblings on some things I find noteworthy about Google+ and some thoughts about the future.
The ‘folding in’ of Google’s software products
A major piece of this whole Google+ frenzy is the fact that Google is going to fold all of its current software products under the same Google+ roof. That is, services like Blogger, Google News, Adwords, Analytics, Picasa, Youtube, and Google Docs, etc. are all going to be accessed from within Google+, as opposed to existing as standalone products. By bringing all of it’s services under one roof, Google is making the following statement: “The web is too spread out. It’s time to consolidate and simplify everything.” I have to say I agree with this. Hopefully the days of having contacts, web apps, and news sources spread out across a million different places will soon be behind us. The “next era” of consumer web is all about consolidation. The ways I receive and share information on the Internet will all be wrapped together under fewer and fewer roofs.
The sharing strategy behind Google+
The million dollar question these days seems to be: is there room for Google+ in the already crowded social media space? That is, with the likes of Facbeook, Twitter, and Email so heavily ingrained into our daily routines, is there even room for Google+ as yet another content sharing and discovery source in our daily lives? I recently read this brilliant article by Jonathan Allan of SearchEngineWatch.com which goes into great detail on this subject from a network theorist perspective.
One particularly interesting conclusion from the article was that Google+ very well could exploit a currently gaping hole in online communication: the one-to-few level of communication. The article goes on to explain how email has essentially mastered the art of 1-to-1 communication, Facebook & Twitter have mastered the art of one-to-many communication (aka broadcasting or ‘over-sharing’), but nobody has mastered the art of one-to-few communication. Facebook hasn’t been able to succeed at this mainly because of its confusing sharing and privacy settings. (Does anyone actually use Facebook lists anyway?). But Google+ is all about this idea of leading the user to make a conscious decision about who particular information is shared with instead of just making it as easy as possible to broadcast to as many people as possible.
The profile psychology behind Google+
Christian Oestlien is Google’s product manager behind this whole Google+ shindig, so I was excited to find and follow him on Google+. I was reading his wall one day and stumbled upon a very interesting quote. See below.
Facebook is about who you are, and Google+ is about who you want to be.
I have no idea who ‘OH’ is in this post, but I do know that Christian makes a bold and curious statement here, and I’m a bit surprised that it wasn’t picked up and written about because it’s such a bold distinction he makes here and it really sheds some light on the long-term vision behind Google+. It also makes a bold statement about the whole psychological approach Google is taking when it comes to its users’ Google+ profiles. To me, this is Google saying they want to be the “most authentic” version of you on the web that exists. They want to put your creativity and personality on exposé as well as your professional status and whereabouts. (And they’ll achieve this by bundling all of the Google software products under the Google+ roof so your profile can boast more robust versions of your photos, writings, music, links, etc. than Facebook can).
Finals thoughts
There’s no doubt that Google+ has passed the initial ‘cool test.’ Twenty million users in like a month is absolutely nucking futs, even if they are geeky early adopters, is enough to classify this as a smashingly successful product launch. Google+ already officially occupies a permanent tab on my browser. And considering that until now, I only granted “permanent tab status” to email and calendar, this is an impressive feat in the world of Jesse Davis.
The big question is obviously whether or not they’ll continue to penetrate quickly into the next round of users–the casual user. I dunno, I don’t really see this happening in the traditional way. That is, I don’t think Google+ will just grow via the network effect like Facebook did. Instead, I predict Google+ will grow via the backdoor route–by forcing current Google product users to join Google+ if they wanna keep using the products. Case in point: my dad uses Facebook, Gmail, and Picasa. He has no intentions of signing up Google+ because from his perspective there’s no need–one social network is enough. He would, however, join Google+ if all of a sudden Google said “you are gonna have to create a Google+ account in order to keep using Picasa and Gmail.”
Last thought: Google is going to know everything about me. And ya know what? I’m fine with that. I’ve got nothing really to hide and to me, the value of their services outweighs the potential loss of personal identity. But what do you think?
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