Facebook vs Google Plus: Writing Off Google+ Could Be A Big Mistake

Many commentators have enjoyed describing the arrival of Google Plus as a Facebook vs Google Plus battle. Reports in recent weeks suggest that Google Plus numbers are stagnating and that users are now drifting back to Facebook. This has led some commentators to pronounce that Facebook has won the battle, but is this actually the case? An alternative view that’s starting to gain ground argues that writing off Google+ could be a big mistake and that Google’s strategy with Google Plus has been misread. Far from competing with Facebook over user numbers, Google may in fact be pursuing a completely different approach but one designed to ensure their ultimate hegemony. For Google numbers of users could be less important than attracting the lion’s share of online advertising and overall user activity, and that Google holds the aces needed to achieve this. One of the more informative posts taking this view was posted on VentureBeat.com by Jolie O’Dell.

Over the past couple of weeks, the Internet’s frothy enthusiasm over Google+ has dried into proclamations of its imminent death.

Social media experts and bloggers who were one month ago hailing the fledgling service as the second coming of Christ are now calling it a graveyard and a ghost town.

But from where Google executive Bradley Horowitz sits, in an office on the Google campus in Mountain View, the vista isn’t nearly so dire.

“I don’t blame the pundits,” he says, “they’re not privy to our long-term strategies.”

The comment may seem snide or passive-aggressive; it’s also true to some extent. To understand Google’s plans for Plus, Horowitz says, you need to listen less and watch more.

“Six months from now, it will become increasingly apparent what we’re doing with Google+,” he says with a measure of opacity. “It will be revealed less in what we say and more in the product launches we reveal week by week.”

Over the past couple of weeks, we have, in fact, been seeing Google+’s social features creep into other Google web products, including Reader and Blogger.

We were clued into the real scope of Google’s plans by Louis Gray, a relatively new employee of the company who is a product marketing manager for Google+. A few weeks ago, Gray gave us a glimpse at the long view: Plus isn’t a social network; it’s Google’s new way of getting you to use all its web products.

Now, Horowitz confirms that conception. As I explain to him the vision that Gray explained earlier to me, he says, “Directionally, the world you’re describing is the world we aspire to. And it will be much better than the current state for our users.”

What is Google+?
Too many pundits and tech bloggers have made the mistake of thinking of Google+ as a Facebook competitor, but it’s absolutely not — at least not as far as Google is concerned.

Of course, Google is still in the business of competing with Facebook for ad dollars. That boils down to compiling the best, most actionable data about consumers to sell to advertisers.

And if Plus catches on, Google stands a much better chance of accomplishing that goal, not by orchestrating a Great Migration of users from one social network to another, but by subtly linking all your Google-powered online activity and profiles so advertisers can see a more complete picture of you than Facebook could ever offer.

But that’s just the follow-the-money part of the story of how Google is banking on staying in the black. As far as what you, the average end user, are expected to do to use Google+, there’s a lot less effort involved than you might think.

After all, Google is a company renowned for the massive collective brainpower of its workforce, and no one in that workforce really expected a billion people, give or take, to switch their online lives and relationships to a new destination.

Rather, Google+ is simply a new way of accessing Google’s web search. And Gmail. And Google Maps.

In other words, Google+ is (or soon will be) part of all of those products, rather than a standalone social network of its own.

“We think of Google+ as a mode of usage of Google,” says Horowitz, “a way of lighting up your Google experience as opposed to a new product. It’s something that takes time to appreciate, even internally. It’s easy to think of Google+ as something other than just Google, and I think it’ll take more launches before the world catches up with this understanding.”

Until the world does catch up, however, Google has to find its own metrics for success. Users are complaining they don’t see enough activity in their circles, that too few people are coming to Plus to hang out and interact.

Then again, if you buy into the idea that Plus isn’t, pardon the pun, a hangout or destination per se, you can accept the idea that Google+ could still be a success without massive amounts of public sharing and user activity. Original article

Could it be then that whilst Facebook may have won a battle, Google Plus will go on to win the war? Whichever view you hold, the longer we as users have a choice the better that must be. Do let us have your point of view.

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Tagged with: Google • Google Plus • Google Plus vs Facebook • Writing Off Google+