Everyone is writing about Google+ and its obviously really cool to do that, so what new does actually Google+ bring to the table?
Everyone is writing about Google+ and its obviously really cool to do that, but we took a few weeks before we actually decided to write about Google+ and really make a good assessment, and we have some facts and opinions we would like to share:
1) Facebook does have a competitor, even though it might be a full blown copy
We can argue all we want Google+ is a copy, it is a good copy with some good features, but its a well executed copy, with some innovations. Here we can argue that the most basic “average Joe users” (still a lot of the internet users) will not care about circles, and will not care about privacy settings, and will not care about sharing with this or that group, so this might be a complication for them.
My opinion here is, that people will not switch because of features, and it will be really hard to get the majority of people to flip the switch and go to Google+, but it is clear that Google+ will be a network to watch, and if I would forecast, I think they will get to 100 million monthly active users in the next 12 months (not total, they might have more total users by registering people “automatically”).
2) Google+ growing, but Facebook still the clear leader
Facebook is still leading the pack with 700+ million users compared with Google+’s 10 million users (although in a couple weeks). Facebook grew over 20 million users just this month based on our Socialbakers statistics from 700 to 720 million active users.
3) Google has a lot to learn
Launching a product without APIs means is not a good idea, especially because you have an army of companies that really needs to support the ecosystem, and naturally if you don’t support something, you are against it. At Socialbakers, we are not against Google+, we welcome it, but we would REALLY want Google+ to open up their API’s, as preaching about openness and privacy models is cool, but you know whats cooler? An actual API… Please, bring it over.
4) Google’s secret weapons
Google has a couple secret weapons in this fight:
5) Facebook’s secret weapons
Facebook has a couple secret weapons in this fight:
6) Retention
I am looking forward to see how people will respond to 2 networks (even the techy audience), and who will really stay using Google+, and who will go off Facebook. Retention will be the key, and monitor your own activity – are you really going to run 2 networks, are you really posting on G+? Are your friends really active there?
To sum up, I believe for this year, Google plus does not change anything, so lets all get back to our social media marketing, and let us be monitoring Google+, its growth, and its ramp. For next year, depends on how many secret weapons they use and how fast, this might be a question if users will suddenly switch, or they will find a platform solution that will publish to all networks and manage all networks at the same time.
What do you think?
Jan Rezab
P.S. Add me to Google+ :-) https://plus.google.com/…70513294386/
Socialbakers is the trusted social media management partner to thousands of enterprise brands and SMBs. Leveraging the largest social media data-set in the industry, Socialbakers’ AI-powered social media marketing suite helps brands large and small ensure their investment in social media is delivering measurable business outcomes.