Google+: Just Facebook Friends Plus Benefits?
In the jungle for every lion there is a leopard competing for the meat, and so in the world of media and brands; for every McDonalds there must a Burger King to challenge.
Before Facebook there was Google, king of search engines, browsers, mail and beyond. They’d changed the way we communicated, mapped information, the world and cyberspace but they hadn’t thought of one key thing. College whiz kid Mark Zuckerberg struck on something that then challenged Google for the throne. He created an online networking phenomenon that focused not on fantasy or data but real people and their lives. It not only changed the way we use the internet, but merged with the social fabric of how we live our lives and conduct relationships, in the process creating a gigantic database on humanity more accurate and detailed than Google had ever dreamed possible. In seven small years Facebook had connected a twelfth of the planet in one single network.
Google quite rightly began to worry that what had seemingly begun as a friendly way to stay connected was snowballing into a new vision of the internet, commerce and data communication based around people and relationships. As Vic Gundotra, who leads Google’s social efforts, puts it: “the search company failed to do the most important search of all”.
As Lev Grossman states ‘A post-Google Web was unimaginable [previous to Facebook] but if there is one, this is what it will look like: a Web reorganized around people.’ Even as the most successful Internet business of all time, with 30 billion dollars in yearly revenue, Google is fatally serious that its move into Social is crucial. Having already undertaken projects into social networking that were doomed to failure (Orkut, Open Social, Wave and Buzz all sunk practically on their maiden voyages) Google+ is in many ways a boom or bust effort. This sentiment is reflected in the code name given to the project during development ‘Emerald Sea’ intentionally symbolic of the growing new wave of Social Internet, which threatens to engulf those that don’t jump on board. Google realized ‘either there was a great opportunity to sail to new horizons…or we were going to drown by this wave’-(Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice President of Social for Google).
Google decided to fight back with determination, brazenly challenging upstart Zuckerberg’s social networking platform and tipping the once harmonious relationship between the two companies into the territory of rivals. On release of Google+ the official Google blog announced provocatively that current social tools are ‘rigid’ and lack the ‘subtlety and substance of real-world interactions’, Facebook’s Shaun Ryan rebutted that Google had ‘emulated’ their structure and didn’t have ‘any users’ while admitting they will make a ‘viable competitor’. Google+ provide a more supple and precise style of networking? Could Google+ not only create competition for big-hitters Facebook and Twitter but also have a wider effect on the Internet as a whole?
But firstly what is Google+?
Google+ is Google’s answer to social networking, which is both a similar and progressive version of the familiar Facebook structure. The site is initially invitation-only and has a non-negotiable and controversial real name policy i.e. you cannot set up spoof accounts or pseudonyms. Its key features are Stream (like Twitter and Facebook’s newsfeeds) Circles (how you organize your friends and control sharing), Hangouts (a group chat facility) and Sparks (similar to a RSS feed but embedded into Google+ and presented more broadly).
Circles
If Facebook is one large blue circle where all relationships are broadly called friendships and everyone is either in or out how does Google+ look? Well they’ve taken the term friendship circle literally by creating a smart filtering and grouping system for everyone in your network. It allows you to create as many circles as you want, call them what you like and drop people into them, thus creating specific groups with which to share and interact with. Streams (news feeds) are linked to Circles thus notifications, photos and messaging go to specified groups rather than everyone (unless you want it to). People are not aware of what circle you put them in and can go in more than one group.
Facebook’s cuddly world of everyone as a ‘Friend’ is, depending on your opinion, either revolutionary in its inclusiveness or a rather crude depiction of social networking. Zuckerberg openly states that his mission statement with Facebook that openness is key, saying in his Person of The Year 2010 interview with TIME;
‘At its core, what we’re trying to do is map out all of those trust relationships, which you can call, colloquially, most of the time, friendships […] what I really care about is making the world more open and connected’
Lev Grossman accuses Facebook of being a ‘painfully blunt instrument for doing the delicate work of transmitting human relationships’ and indeed as we go through life with ever-expanding off and online social networks, will a simple and idealistic vision of interacting cut it? This could suggest the shape of things to come for the two companies: Facebook may continue to be the number one choice for younger, relatively socially minimal audiences that made its core user base initially whilst the older the audience gets the more they may require a more precise, professional way of interacting online where ‘over-sharing’ is avoided and boundaries are acknowledged.
A lot of this concept can be drawn to Google+’s acquisition of Frid.ge, a social network that was built around groups, privacy and controlled networking. Frid.ge’s slogan was ‘Free To Be Yourself’ which directly answered one major aspect of Facebook and Twitter that many feel uncomfortable with; no distinction between connections, privacy settings that are labyrinthine and a lack of control over your personal information. Facebook have since responded by upping their privacy control settings and making it easier to control sharing, however is it enough to implement these controls in hindsight?
Hangouts
Another direct descendant from the Frid.ge acquisition is an excellent group chat facility called ‘Hangouts’. These can be between up to ten people via video and mobile versions available through the Google+ app as ‘Huddles’. Facebook is lagging behind, having only just teamed up with Skype on one to one video chat and plans for group chat not yet forthcoming. Google hangouts caught people’s imaginations rapidly with social media marketers, artists and political groups intrigued at its potential and two weeks after going live a Google+ hangout was used for the first ever global online video press conference for The Tibet Action Institute.
Sparks
‘Sparks’ is an area for personal interests where you can search for broad or specific subjects (via Google, naturally) and like RSS feeds or Google Alerts topic of interest are saved into your account. Sparks is simple at the moment but could develop into a sophisticated news aggregator and marketing tool, it utilises Google’s search capability nicely while integrating news and specific interests from the wider web into social media.
Better Photo Sharing Quality
Facebook’s photo sharing is infamously basic; its winning factor is it is social, people want to organize their photos around who’s in them. Google+ has the social element whilst boasting a better quality, higher resolution photo-sharing capacity but will it be able to beat a network that defines itself with ‘tagging’, even getting its name from creating an album of people? To many people in the internet world Facebook is where they store most of their photo albums already and it will be a difficult task to persuade them to start uploading pictures elsewhere not least because its time consuming. Google is linked with Picasa and will display pictures from Google+ accounts, but that may not be enough. However Google+ has one over Facebook there, allowing people to ‘reshare’ people’s photos and see photos of ‘circles’.
Sharing
Similarities are being drawn between Google+ and Twitter, and visual artists have been quick to adopt the site to share images in the way that Twitter shares 140 characters of words. For writer’s wanting to direct traffic to their blogs or pieces Google+ displays a paragraph of the piece with a ‘read more’ section rather than just a link or title, which could prove more effective at enticing click.
Social: Brave New World Wide Web?
Zuckerberg believes the Internet needed social-netork-izing, that instead of wandering around the online world anonymous and alone Facebook would bring our identity and friends along with us too. To give the world-wide web a ‘social context’. In the last few years Facebook began to embed itself ever deeper into the internet ecosystem, becoming the login key to many websites, enabling ‘Like’s, comments and sharing on more and more content, allowing us to see our Facebook ‘friends’ response and moving into commerce and influencer-led marketing strategies.
Unlike other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter whose platforms began as stand-alones and then evolved to seed icons all over the web, Google+ is innately integrated into a system already under the all-powerful Google umbrella. Google is familiar already to a vast majority of the online world. People’s browsers call it ‘home’ and its search and maps are already the window with which many already view the world wide web. Thus Google+ is by nature outrageously accessible when logged into your Google account (in fact to erase your Pus account will also take your mail with it) and Google’s colourful ‘+1’ icons allow easy bookmarking and sharing. Akin to Facebook’s ‘Like’ buttons these icons are now popping up all over the Internet landscape like pollinating flowers. However will Google’s dominance in web search give them the upper hand?
Your Virtual ID Card
Google’s decision to get sociable could seriously dampen Zuckerberg’s vision of an Internet where if Google was the landscape Facebook was all the people in it and their passports. However if social networks are looking to be our online ID then perhaps Google+ accounts (viewable to people even if they don’t have an account) may become a like a professional online ‘calling card’, a potential bridge between those friendly holiday snaps on Facebook and a Linkedin account. Google+ could move into territory where Facebook once dominated, the way to ‘research’ someone via the Internet.
Their decision to insist on real-names caused huge controversy with user’s accounts suspended if caught using aliases. Many have spoken out against it as a lack of respect for privacy, freedom and creative expression and groups such as stalking victims believe it leaves no room for them to exist online safely. However Google and Facebook realize that real names means real data, it’s a step closer to the internet evolving away from escapist anarchy that defined its early years and more into a second world where real life order and rules apply. In a socialized Internet commerce, commodities, social connections and information must all take an oath of virtual truth.
Minority Report
Google+ recognizes that for networking to grow up it needs to be centered around being audience-appropriate (it is, after all, obvious that one won’t interact in the same way with one’s boss as ones close friend) and hints at Google+’s potential for targeted marketing. Clearly it is Google’s intention (all going to plan with user base numbers) to team Google+ personal data with their personalized ads in the wider web. Google have until now only been able to make an educated guess on whom you are from search data or keywords in emails whilst Facebook’s database grew exponentially and with a higher quality of content. Google+ wants to be like Facebook, in the sense that they don’t have to guess who you are and what you’re interested in, because you’ve them already in great detail.
Google+ may now hold the new title of fastest growing social network of all time but with many registered ‘users’ not using very much at all they need to convert cold numbers into people actually using the site, loyalty and the easy integration into everyday life that Facebook achieved. This, no doubt, will take time but it seems they may have a shot of at least offering a brand new alternative to the omnipresent Facebook. What’s clear is that Google has finally realized what Zuckerberg knew all along; that people are the most important thing to people and we are most interested in defining, even branding, others and ourselves. Or put simply, the world wide web is friendlier with a face on it.
By Elle Holgate
