FUTUREPROOF

My thoughts on Google+

Google+ is impressive.

It’s simple, intuitive, and fun to use. It’s always easy to spot a great product because people (read: normal, non-techy people) are talking about it and using it. I don’t think I have seen such a rapid adoption curve from all facets of my social graph before. 

For the past year or so, my primary social network by usage is Twitter. For me, it delivers the most valuable mix of information and social activity. If I have a few minutes, I always default to scrolling through Twitter first. If I were to roughly break it down, I would say my social time is spent in the following order*

1. Twitter
2. Facebook
3. Instagram
4. Tumblr

When I really zoom into that list however, a few interesting things emerge:

1. In reality, the true number one position on that list is actually texting, instant messaging and e-mail (hence why Facebook is hyperfocused on productizing IM and e-mail)
2. I use Twitter the most because it is the central hub of my social sharing. For example I share my photos via Instagram, music via HypeM, and location via Foursquare. All are separate services, but I use Twitter as a scaling mechanism, because they all tie into the platform. If it wasn’t for their integration with Twitter, I wouldn’t use them as much.
3. I would estimate that 80% of my time spent using these services is done via mobile (if not higher) 

So where does that leave Google+ ?

Until it it opens up it’s API, which it surely will* , I think it leaves it in a state of limbo.

The primary reason is that I don’t really find myself posting things on it, and I suspect I am not the only one. Why post things twice? Most of my social group is on Twitter and I don’t want to go through the extra work of replacing Twitter with Google+ as my central social hub. If I can’t automagically send the photo I just added to Instagram through to Google+, I probably never will. Once the API is opened up and I can post a single piece of content on multiple media, then it will become much more interesting.

As a marketer, I am also interested in how brands can leverage Google+ . They have already said it will be coming, so look for some interesting developments in the near future. Just look at what Michael Dell is exploring

Interesting times ahead for sure.

For those interested, my Google+ profile is here

Now if you will excuse me, I have to go share this post on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Buzz, Tumblr…

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*I could toss Foursquare and LinkedIn to that mix, but I would classify them more as tools then truly “social”

*Google being smart and letting users get used to posting to G+ first. No point in opening the floodgates yet. Its a business move.

*The other big challenge I see with all social services and one that Google+ addresses the best, is contact management. It’s just to difficult to manage and maintain Circles, even though Google made the process as simple as possible. I was going to write more on this, but this blog post outlines exactly what I think in a much more eloquent way http://bit.ly/niIjIc