So here we are about one month into Google Plus and the ranks have swelled to over 20 million participants with an expectation of more growth when its opened to the general public (rumored to be soon) and still more when the business community is invited to participate.
Polls abound declaring fifty percent defection rates from Facebook (click here) and the demise of other inferior social networks. Google Plus threads and other sources are full of prognosticators convinced Google Plus will take over the world. According to one story today, Google Plus is even going to be your bank (click here).
Of course, other statistics clearly indicate Twitter has more star power (click here) and Facebook is now bigger than ever (click here) while Google Plus alienated people by shutting them down, requiring use of true identities. Google forced some news services and on-line publications to contribute under an individual name. Surely these acts will cause a backlash and slow or stop its growth. Right?
Wrong.
I predict Google Plus will continue to grow and evolve into the kind of social network that will appeal to a more professional community, while Facebook will continue to be the social network of choice for younger people, and people looking for entertainment, fun and games.
Google Plus will eventually be woven into the whole family of Google applications. The integration has already begun. Like one popular video illustrates, Google is where many people search, e-mail, write, store documents and photos and perform many other tasks. Once integrated, Google Plus will appeal to this segment of the population.
Facebook offers a different experience. It is not about the service, it is the social connections, the electronic relationships that you establish and maintain with your friends and acquaintances. It has clearly reached sufficient mass to continue to attract young social network newbies. It will appeal to high school and college students (its origin) because their friends will probably be on it already.
Similarly, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networks will continue to appeal to certain segments. Twitter works well for publishers and news services, while LinkedIn has become the service of choice for human resource professionals.
I see the social network landscape unfolding much like cable television. There are a few dominant cable channels like HBO, Showtime and Cinemax. Then there are dozens of others such as the Food network, Bravo and Comedy Central that sustain their business on a smaller community of interested viewers. Yelp, Groupon, FourSquare, Tripit and many others (some not yet invented) will continue to provide a vast array of networks meeting our special needs and providing enough value to survive. There are 18 social networks devoted to new startup companies (click here) !!!
By the way, last week I predicted that tools would emerge to allow Google Plus participants to post to Twitter and Facebook. Since many, like myself, will likely have a presence in several of these networks for the foreseeable future, I expect over time to see a high level of integration. Extensions for the Chrome browser (click here) began to appear last week. Today I learned about Start Google Plus, a tool designed to more fully integrate content from these other networks.
In a couple of months, I would like to examine the demographics of Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus participants. I suspect over time these statistics will bear me out. What do you think?
Captain Joe
Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC
Facebook is in a more tenuous position than most people would think a market leader could be.
ReplyDeleteThink about the relationship with its users - people are always complaining about it, whether its the layout changes or the privacy issues.
And what does Facebook provide anyway? The "content" is all user generated, FB is just a "vessel". A wine glass is also a vessel, it's the wine I'm more interested in, not the glass.
The mob is fickle, they'll switch teams in a heartbeat, if they can get the same content.
I am still open to all. Not sure Google Plus will overtake FB. It might, and then again, something else might happen..... an improvement of FB, or MS seeing the light, or whatever.
ReplyDeleteFor now I personally like these social networks, but find them also annoying in their diversity and adding to my procrastinating - a new word for on-line marketing.
Great article. It's a little scary to think how close Google is to a virtual internet monopoly. People will just log on to google for their mail, their business services, social networking, banking, and everything else. They already provide the best global and local seo services and they seem to do everything the best. Although I'm in love with most of Google's products and services, a monopoly in anything is never good.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Roger. I wrote more on the Google v Facebook topic. See There Is More To Life.. and Facebook Is Circling The Wagons.
ReplyDeleteHow did you run across this three months after publication?