The Media Forest 8 Blog

Does Google Plus Have Any Legs?

Posted on 06. Aug, 2011 by admin in Google Plus, Social Media

The online community is now well aware of Google’s entrance into the social media scene with Google Plus. It is obvious from first glance that they are attempting to compete directly with the Facebook/Microsoft giants.

Within the first month Google Plus swelled to over 20 million users. The success of this launch is mainly attributable to google leveraging it’s 200+ million users that use Google for email, analytics, advertising, document writing and much more.

We felt this was the perfect time to write a quick review of how Google is doing in the social media circle. Google has tried, unsuccessfully in the past, with launches such as Google Buzz and Google Wave. Both were moderately successful but it seems Google hasn’t found the right formula to make their entrance into the social scene a success…until now.

With a social network like Google Plus it is no shock that their user base swelled to such large numbers so quickly. People are interested, it’s free, and well curiosity kills the cat with these situations. They are now reaching a lull and it will be interesting to see how the users interact with the system and more importantly, are they willing to give up a portion of their loyalty from Facebook?

Below is a quick run through of the features included in Google Plus and why we feel they are a welcomed change or a diversion from what already works. Mainly we’ll be comparing these features to Facebook as the obvious control group.

Overall Design and Layout: They have stayed true to form on this with a minimalistic interface and highly logical placement of elements. There isn’t anything really overly impressive about the interface but that is what is most impressive to us. With Facebook, as the social network grew, so did the interface. It became increasingly difficult to navigate the interface. We found difficulty finding what we wanted but more importantly minimizing the clutter of all the options we didn’t want. Google Plus definitely has spent some time and research into making this not the case with their social network.

Usability: One of the best examples of usability we have seen in some time. Upon visiting for the first time we had a strong grasp of where everything was and how it worked. There wasn’t much learning at all that had to happen. On the flip side when first using Facebook for the first time it was not only overwhelming but a bit confusing as well. You really need to use the network a lot in order to learn all the in’s and out’s. Google Plus has clearly defined icons and lots of white space. The only negative is that you have less you can do with Google Plus but then again you have what you want and not anything you don’t!

Features:

Google Plus Stream: Not much new here. The stream looks a lot like Facebook however there has been one addition we really love, Priority Posting! No longer do you send a post to every friend’s visibility on your wall. Google Plus has made great use of “Circles” (Google’s version of groups). You can add users to groups and then post messages to these groups specifically really quickly and simply. Other than that we don’t have much more to say about the Google Plus stream.

Google Plus Circles: Like we mentioned above this is a way to create groups of friends and then post to those subsequent groups via your stream. This is a great feature and one of the most notable differences from Facebook and Google Plus. Groups have always been something of a mystery to most Facebook users. More so it has always been difficult to post status updates only to segmented groups of friends. With Google Plus they have made it drop dead simple and it is actually fun adding friends to your various groups.

Google Plus Profiles: Nothing extraordinary here. The best feature is that your profile is pulled from your existing Google Profile. We actually realized it was time for us to update our Google Profiles and we only noticed once the information was pulled into our Google Plus profile. It’s easy to add, edit and update your profile as well. Not much of a difference between this and Facebook in our opinion.

Google Plus Hangouts: Probably the most innovative and daring risk Google Plus has taken with it’s new social network. Hangouts allow you to create virtual meeting places where users can connect and interact with each other using a web cam. The hangouts are created by a user and then others can see it in their stream and connect or they can be invited. The only down side we see thus far (besides varying connection speeds and streaming video online) has been that the notifications for these hangouts aren’t the easiest to see. It has been difficult for us to actually facilitate a hangout however if we were to schedule one of these we could see this as a powerful potential business feature in the future.

Google Plus Sparks: Watch this feature grow into something that is much powerful than originally thought. This highly underrated feature is basically a recommendation engine. As people use Google Plus to share links and articles they like (much like the facebook like button) they are rating publishers up and down in the rankings. It will end up making those “Google Plus” icons actually go to work finally!

Google Plus Photos: This is very similar to Facebook photo up-loader but with an editor attached on to it. Very fast and easy to organize your photos. You can also import your albums from picasa. The editor is a bit primitive but with the online image editor technology on the rise we expect Google Plus to be adding these features in sooner than later!

Mobile: We have been using the Android version of the app and at first glance all we have to say is, “soooooo simple” in both positive and negative ways. Viewing all the different features of Google Plus (ie photos, profile, stream, friends, etc..) is easy however you can currently only take a couple of actions. You can post to your stream easily and they have come out with a new feature called, “Instant Upload”. This allows the user to take a picture and have it automatically upload to their page. The down side to this is that users will have to be weary of accidentally uploading all their phone pictures to the social network and learning an important security lesson right off the bat.

Google Plus Huddle: This group-texting feature is pretty cool and you can use it with different circles you create. It’s not that exciting but makes sense and we will have to wait and see if it catches on.

Conclusion:

So after a month of using the service we have determined that Google Plus definitely has legs and if we have learned anything from Google it has been that they have a healthy disregard for the impossible.

The best feature we believe that Google Plus offers is that you don’t have to be in the social network in order to interact with it. Whether your in Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, etc you will notice your navigation bar now will allow you to view notifications, post to your stream and interact with your network. The ease of use and integration into the existing Google platform is simply incredible and useful. It is the sole reason we believe they are going to be able to leverage their 200+ million users to at least try out the social network. The execution of the network will keep a good portion of that user base for the long haul. We would love to be using this network more and more so sign up today and let’s start a hangout!