As many of you know Google has officially launched it’s answer to Facebook with it’s own Google+ network. Initially that would sound like awesome news for small business and networkers. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. My personal experience with it left me not wanting to use it, and so I didn’t.
What’s the problem with Google+, you ask? Primarily it was that they didn’t allow
businesses to create “fan pages” or even use clever screen names. Can you imagine? In fact, that was my only purpose for wanting to use it in the first place. Ultimately, it was relegated to our social media guru to muddle her way through it. I had insisted for weeks she should give it a shot, but something in her gut kept causing her to resist. Apparently, she already knew more about it than I did, even before she looked at it. Kudos, Theresa.
To be fair, Google has addressed the situation, but probably a little too late. As a competitor to Facebook, it’s probably lost it’s chance. To be sure, I’m a quasi fan of Google, but many of their projects/products are just not fully developed and succeed only because they have certain elements of appeal which actually cause people to learn to live with their limitations. As more people use them their end user support forums grow, and more tools can be added to whatever application is popular. Gmail is a great example. I use it. It’s not as feature rich as some others and can be cumbersome to navigate, but it has plenty of great qualities that causes me to muddle through it and make it do what I want.
The same is not true of Social Media, and I’m afraid Google is just out of their league. Simply offering an “alternative” to Facebook, is not a compelling enough reason to force extreme users of Facebook to abandon all their albums, friends, groups, etc..
As well, excluding businesses in the initial run ran off many would be users, probably by the millions. That’s just not smart. Ultimately, I think will continue to be a major influence in the search industry. But, I don’t really see them transforming that success into a Social Media behemoth any time in the near or far future.
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