As soon as someone in our class saw the word Google+ they immediately probably thought of that harsh prediction we heard in class. The prediction that I am referencing is Scott Galloway claiming, “Google+ is already dead”. Apparently contrary to his beliefs Google+ is still kicking. On Tuesday Google released its new and improved Google+ platform.
In order to find a way to bring their attempt at a social media website back from the grave they did exactly what any good business does. They went to their users and interviewed them even going through the effort of meeting some of them at their houses. What Google found was that people mostly used their feed system and photo sharing system. Their reinvented system is now competing with twitter on one front and called a “high end instagram” on the other.
Although Google successfully researched and reinvented their product I think it is time to shoot this project behind the barn. They already have so much success that they do not need to tap the social media market. Eventually Google may be able to trap some of the market but in total they will always be falling behind the other big companies in this field.
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Google-Tries-On-New-Social-Media-Identity-82768.html
I do not think google will be able to compete with the larger social media sites such as twitter, Facebook and Instagram. The issue they face is they do not bring anything new to social media. In your blog you stated they were trying to be like twitter and Instagram. The issue with that is people already use these social media sites and google isn’t adding anything to these sites to make people interested in switching. Another issue there aren’t enough users for google+ to be effective. Social media is not interesting or fun if now of your friends are on the site.
I think that the original idea behind Google+ was to integrate all of Google’s products (Drive, Photos, Gmail, etc.) under one account. You can see this when they originally released it and tried to tie everyone’s account to services like YouTube, even though no one wanted to use it. Google back-stepped on this after a while and no longer requires you to have a Google+ account to use YouTube or use your real name. As a social network, in my experience, it was very niche. It didn’t really have a dedicated user base like Facebook and seemed more focused on business usage than with friends and family. I thinks that this partial re-branding and major refocus on photos is an excellent decision and could possible turn Google+ into a new Instagram or photo-enthusiast site.
I agree with you 100%. Google has and never will be a site I look at as a social media website. Google is a great search engine and will always be looked at in that way, but social media has never been one of their strong suits. I remembered I tried Google+ when it first came along, and it seemed pretty dumb at the time. I was already on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, and it seemed like they tried to combine all three and failed miserably. I see what you mean when they are trying to change it to more of a high end Instagram with Twitter somewhat implied. It’s pretty hard to compete with these types of companies. Most people go on social media to see what their friends are doing, and its hard to find that out on a site no one uses frequently. Google has succeeded in being a good search engine, email service, and a site where you can write and share documents and other presentations. But social media will never be one as successful as they want it to be.
I personally never saw the attraction to Google+. In my eyes Google was the provider of my favorite internet browser and search engine, but not a social media platform. With Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram already out there dominating the social media scene, I did not see how Google+ was going to make its way into the mix. I was right, they were somewhat of a failure and had to do this reinvention of themselves. The interviews revealed that people wanted to post on a thread and share photos. These are things that are already the base of the successful social media platforms. Google+ is “reinventing the wheel,” trying to do everything the other platforms are already doing, but they are way too late in the game. Their old identity was not something people enjoyed and their new one seems to be a clone is some ways of the current popular platforms. I can not see people leaving the already established and popular platforms to switch to Google+. I agree, it is time for Google to give up on this one, they have a lot of other projects they could be putting their time into.
To be honest, I agree with you completely. I remember when Google first came out with their Google+ platform (2011) and everyone in my high school was talking about how it was going to be “the new Facebook”. Everyone immediately made the transition and made an account, but just as soon as it started, it seemed like it just didn’t have the qualities of Facebook and was just as quickly forgotten (or so I thought). I hadn’t even heard of Google+ being mentioned since tenth grade, until someone had brought it up in class, nor had I heard about this update. For me, I think the reason the platform has’t caught on is because it is nothing new. The site has been compared to all three major successful social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) and, in my opinion after checking out the site again for the first time in 5 years, has no reason to catch on. There is nothing unique about it, and it doesn’t bring anything new to the table of the social media world. Technology is ever changing and updating, and if social network is not making major innovative steps, it makes sense to me as to why it is not gaining more momentum.