Why Google+ is losing the fight in social
The way things are going, I don't expect G+ to make much inroad into Facebook territory. Here's why:
- Lack of engagement/distraction: I go to Facebook to get distracted. It's a quick escape from daily drudgery, boredom, tiredness and work fatigue. Spending 5 minutes looking at what others are thinking, saying, or doing is therapeutic. On G+, there isn't much to distract me.
- Poor design: Facebook has set a high bar here, with pleasant color and nice typography. When I log into G+, I see an ugly cousin of Facebook staring at me. Awkward design and choice of colors, sudden large font, and lack of obsessive attention to visual proportion and alignment. Was G+ perhaps designed by committee?
- No compelling reason to switch: What does G+ offer that I don't already have on Facebook? Between multiple Facebook visits for friends' updates, daily Twitter visits to discover great articles, and once-in-a-blue-moon visit to Foursquare or Yelp to check out good food/barista recommendations, I'm set.
- Poor/average iPhone app: I could do an entire post on this.
- Hangouts: I don't really care. And I'm guessing neither do most users. We don't have time to sit and video chat with a bunch of people. I'd rather SMS, or email, or FB wall msg, or reply-tweet. Asynchronous is the word. In any case, hangouts seems to be going in the footsteps of Justin.tv.
- Trumpeting privacy controls: Truth of life is, most users don't care about privacy, unless they feel that something scary is going to happen. And we've seen users' outrage everytime Facebook makes even visual changes - so I feel pretty safe. And while we are at it, I'm actually more worried about Google's intentions about my personal data, given the recent worrying outbursts from their chairman.
- Vanity metrics: When G+ came out, I was genuinely interested. Not because I hate Facebook, but because I wanted to check G+ out. You know what, I'm betting that most of the 25 million+ users you gathered in the initial weeks were like me - they came to check G+ out. And when they found nothing fun to do, they left you a 41% decline in user activity. So the growth number was more representative of user curiousity than real viral growth.
- When I google "Google +" I get nothing: A user who hears about Google + and googles for "Google +" (with a space in between), will not find any reference to it in Google search results and will give up.
- Circles: Why have such a prominent link to circles? Isn't it a friend-add feature? What usefulness does it provide to be given such prominence?
- Brain Drain: Since Larry tied everyone's bonus to "Social", he effectively sent a message that social is the next hot thing knowing fully well that Google had bungled up Orkut, Buzz and Wave. Guess what's the proven place to work if you want to work in Social? :)
- Bold iterations: Facebook has displayed an ability to boldly experiment with features, make mistakes resulting in massive user outrage, and quickly course correct based on the feedback and user behavior analytics, ending up with a much improved product.
- If it's good, copy well: Be it twitter, friendfeed, Foursquare, G+, or (very soon) Instagram, Facebook evaluates if recent innovations by "social" competitors are interesting, and rapidly "adopts" them into Facebook if they are, thereby reducing the differentiation advantage to the competitor.
- Strengths: Google is a technology-strength company, relying on UI simplicity and the power of technology to perform its search magic. Social networks are about emotions, relationships and leisurely playfulness. Who knows if it might be just hard for Google to build a social product given their way of thinking reinforced over the years.
Google, you have a hard fight ahead.
[Maybe pivot and become a social network for enterprises like Jive? Given Google apps and all, G+ should do well there. It looks like a large market opportunity, though definitely not Facebook-scale.]
