Thoughts On Google+

Google has never been very good at social networks. Despite a few genuine attempts to become the world’s favourite social network, Google has, until now, never seen success.

First, there was Google Wave. I, among many others would name it one of the most pointless services in the history of social networks for one reason – it is neither innovative nor creative to reinvent something that already exists. Wave was no more than an instant messaging service and an email service combined and this sort of thing is hardly revolutionary. And as Google already had such services in full swing (Gmail, Google Talk), it wasn’t long before Google Wave faced closure.

Next up was Google Buzz, a service built straight into Gmail. Google Buzz offered a very basic social experience – status updates, likes, and comments. Buzz was almost immediately criticised for being too public, and was rejected for being incapable and too basic. So as Buzz continued to fail, it was becoming obvious that Google plainly weren’t managing to keep up in a world that had focused in on social media in recent years. And this was a massive disappointment after their giant success with Gmail.

Google were doing it wrong. They were building and running social networks the way they thought they should be. While to them, these social solutions seemed brilliant and even genius, the general public thought otherwise and these services therefore fell flat.

But Google weren’t finished, and were in the market for a third chance. They were prepared to give it another shot. That third try was called Google+

Cautiously referred to internally as a project, this was like nothing Google had ever done before. And thankfully, they hadn’t made the same mistake again. Instead of attempting to invent yet another way to socialise on the web, they instead copied the model of the world’s most popular and well-known social network, Facebook. I myself had first impressions like “I’ve seen this somewhere before” upon entering Google+ for the first time.

But, delve deeper and you’ll find that what they have done is actually so much more than just Facebook with a Google colour scheme

Circles, for instance, is a brilliant (though slightly unintuitive for the layman user) method of friend organisation.

Sparks is another nice feature (this one, however, is stolen from Twitter!) that lets you view topics that interest you.

Hangouts is a fancy name for video chat. Hangouts are ideal for group video chat, something that Facebook has not yet mastered, somehow - a severe disappointment for their "awesome" press conference.

Google+ really provides the best social experience ever. It sports a great user interface and integrates other Google services that many people constantly interact with, such as Gmail and Google Calendar. Also, Google has released a brilliant Android app, and iOS users can take advantage of the pretty usable web-app while they wait for the soon-to-be-released iOS app.

But what’s interesting, however, is that despite providing a great experience, Google+ doesn’t introduce any ground breaking concepts or features. Every feature that Google+ provides is an improved and renamed version of something that already exists in other social networks. So while Google+ is well designed, nicely integrated and a joy to use, it is nothing close to revolutionary.

And this fact makes me wonder – will people actually bother to use it? I’m not talking about tech enthusiasts like myself who are excited to use it just because it motivates us – I’m talking about simple users who want to interact with friends and family. Will such users go to all the trouble of migrating their social lives to Google+ when they are perfectly comfortable within the realms of Facebook, with their already built up networks of friends? Possibly not.

Just because Google+ has been given attention in the tech world during it’s pilot period, doesn’t mean it will be embraced by the outside world when it is officially released. And even with improved functionality such as Circles, it may fail to be recognised as the primary social network.

Sure, if Google+ had been there first, then it would be the most used social network today. But it wasn’t - it was instead made up of lessons that were learned from social networks that were there first.

Don’t get me wrong – Google+ is better than Facebook, but not enough to overtake it in terms of users. The reason is that Facebook has a massive user base. Maybe it’s not the best social network – but simple users don’t really care. They have their social lives set up on Facebook; they won’t bother to move away.

I won’t write Google+ off completely, because I still feel that it has potential to become incredibly successful. But whether or not it is a Facebook killer is another question. But whatever happens, I’m just happy Google finally cracked it - giving users what they want - greater control over our own data and how we share it.