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Do we really need another social network? Personally I think Facebook needs some competition. In some ways Facebook has gotten so large that various user experiences get compromised not to mention the privacy issues that were global news. Google Plus is Google's attempt to create a rival to Facebook and no wonder. Facebook's ad revenue alone in 2010 was 1.86 BILLION DOLLARS and is estimated to bring in 4 BILLION this year according to eMarketer. Facebook accounted for 5% of all online ad spending in 2010. This Facebook revenue doesn't include virtual currency or other forms of revenue. The site is called Google Plus because Google wants it to be an extension of Google itself. Indeed the long traditional Google navigation bar now includes a link to a user's Google Plus profile and information on a user's notifications. People using Google Plus seem to like it. Comments such as "a cleaner user environment", "good level of engagement", and a platform for more user control are just a few positive statements. Venture capitalists like the potential to integrate Google search into the social stream which could provide extremely powerful customized features for the user. Game developers are taking notice as the 5% fee Google Plus is charging is well below the Facebook fee of 30%. Circles allows sharing of information with small groups and is key to understanding the power of Google Plus. Users can assign contacts to various Circles intermixing friends or family with any other type of user defined group. Think of how much power you have over contacts compared to simply "friending" someone in Facebook. Not convinced? Here is an example of why this is a good thing. Maybe you have friends from church and your drinking buddies that are all friends on Facebook. You took a great picture of Jake being poured into a cab after one too many from a night out with the boys. You SO much want to put this on Facebook. But do you want the folks from church to see this too? Probably not. AND if you were a nice person you would just want to share it with those folks you partied with and not the rest of the Facebook community. You get the picture. Share specific content with the appropriate group. How cool is that? The Google Plus stream is similar to the Facebook newsfeed. When a friend comments on a post it is shoved back to the top of the list. Instead of clicking the "Like" button for a post a user clicks the "+1" button and/or you can share a post with your Circles. You can share videos, links, photos or just a status update with no media. Like Facebook, when you include a link Google Plus allows you to include a thumbnail image. You can filter your news stream using your Circles. So for example, if I just wanted to see news from fellow employees I could do that. Sparks takes advantage of Google's search power. Sparks serves up relevant content based on your settings and you can share the content with your Circles. You can see from these features that the possibilities are huge! The term "search" is going to take on a wide variety of meanings in the near future! Hangouts is the site's group video chat feature. With a click of a button you can start a chat, your Circles can see the chat and up to 10 people can join. This is why it's very interesting: you don't have to send an invitation to people to join the chat which senders and recipients can find intrusive. If your Circles see you in a chat they can join without an invite. It's certainly a clever way to promote video conversations! (Note you can filter who sees your chats. More on this later.) Video priority is given to the audio signal so when someone is talking their video is highlighted on the screen. THAT is just too cool! And you can jointly watch a YouTube video. When I learned about the video chat feature I thought of my parents who would love to video chat with us family members on the west coast. But Skype can be confusing to use. This feature should bring families closer together - at least in cyberspace. Google Plus comes with a photo album of course based on another Google-owned company: Picasa. Tagging is allowed as in Facebook. If you are tagged in a photo you can remove the tag. The drag and drop to the browser feature of photo loading is very slick. Photo albums can remain private until you share them. You can edit your photos right in the browser after the photos are uploaded. Possibly going after one of the biggest complaints users have with Facebook - Google Plus provides deep privacy settings. You can edit the privacy settings of each part of your profile. There is also a feature to let you view your profile as others would see it to insure you have dialed in your settings to your liking. The mobile apps for Apple and Android have a group texting feature called "Huddle". You can set up a collection of emails for this feature which can be used for anything from texting "whose hosting Monday Night Football" to "emergency conference call at 3:00pm." The Instant Upload feature allows you to upload pictures to your Google Plus account by syncing your phone to your computer. So you could snap away then plug in to your laptop and off your pictures go to your account stored in a private folder waiting for you to act on them. And of course you can post updates, comment and see what your Circles are posting all from your phone. So before you get too excited about using Google Plus for your business remember this: Google is only allowing personal accounts right now. They claim to be hard at work on the business platform and I am sure they are. What do you do to sign up? Since Google Plus is in "beta" (which really means they are using limited exposure to drive desire) you can go to the Google Plus page and leave your email address. You should get an email when Google Plus is available for everyone. Should you use Google Plus for business? Well since you can't right now I would definitely say that someone on your marketing team should set up an account and get used to it. If you had your social marketing hat on while reading this newsletter you may have noticed some of the features are perfect for marketers. Imagine segmenting your users into small groups for extremely focused filtering and messaging. How about experimenting with ads to your various demographics to see what works the best? In the same account you could set up a private circle for your resellers and share marketing materials and sales programs. What about that global video conferencing sales meeting you need to have with your 5 stakeholders? So jump in and start using Google Plus because it's not going to go away. The horsepower behind it is incredible and we have only touched upon the potential power this search engine monster can bring to the social environment. TrackbackTrackback URL for this blog entry
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