Is google + dead?
In doing my SEO research I’ve come across a number of articles proclaiming that the search engine giant’s social media effort has failed, many pronouncing ‘Google+ is dead’. But is that actually the case?
When Google+ was launched it was dubbed the Facebook killer. The social network tool gained 10 million users within the first 16 days after its private launch, and 40 million within the first 100 days, making it the fastest-growing social network in the history of the web. In comparison, Facebook and Twitter both took more than two years to hit the 10 million user milestone.
Early reports wagered that the service would one day rival social network Facebook in popularity. But a mere four months later, grim headlines have begun popping up on the homepages of many online media outlets.
So after such a promising start, what is causing all these negative headlines?
Whilst Google+ is the web fastest growing social network, cracks are beginning to show – Google has not released figures on the number of users signing up since mid-October and web analytics firm Chitika reported in October that excitement appeared to have waned for Google+ one month after its public launch, with traffic down 60% after spiking to 1,200% of pre-launch levels. It seems that while Facebook which boasts over 750+ million ‘active’ users, Google+ has fallen short of being able to keep users hooked. It started off with ‘let’s see what Google+ is about’ and once the curiosity was over, a lot of people haven’t looked back at Google+.
I can echo this, I joined up to Google+ in August and I currently have 6 friends in my circles and I login about once a week if that. This doesn’t look like changing to be honest, I login daily to my Facebook page and have over 400 friends – I don’t need Google+ and I think a lot of people are thinking the same. People aren’t going to scrap Facebook and defect over to Google+ after they’ve spent years building and interacting on the social network to another network which essentially serves the same purpose.
But things aren’t necessarily all doom and gloom, this is Google we are talking about and if there is any company that can compete with Facebook it is Google.
Bradley Horowitz, vice-president of product at Google+, says the service aims to be more than simply a social networking website.
“Google+ is a foundational element for identity, relationship, interest across all we’re doing at Google,” Mr Horowitz tells BBC News, adding that the social networking function is just one of many social tools.
Mr Horowitz says Google is attempting to build a social layer across all its products – including Gmail, YouTube and Blogger – in an effort to help tie the services together.
For instance, Google+ users can recommend links, videos and other pieces of content to their friends by clicking “+1” on a small widget, Google’s version of the Facebook “Like” button.
This +1 is then used to help inform Google about how to list results from search criteria for each user.
“Everything we do is going to be informed by this sense of person and interest and relationship, so that all users’ data can be used in their interest at their discretion,” Mr Horowitz says.
“So the concept of Google+ dying, it’s a misunderstanding of what we’re doing,” he says. “We have not even begun, let alone these reports of premature demise.”
John Abell, New York Bureau chief of Wired.com, agrees with Mr Horowitz, but adds that Google+ could conceivably grow alongside Facebook, rather than in competition with Mark Zuckerberg’s empire.
Mr Abell told BBC News that online communities were maturing and had “entered an era where there will not be a single dominant social network that kills the previous one, which has been the history of social networks so far”.
Google has partly built its reputation on the breadth of its services, from email to photo sharing to music streaming. Users of these products total in the hundreds of millions, comparable figures to Facebook’s reach.
But Google’s bedrock still remains its search engine, which has been challenged by the increasing trend of online users finding content through their friends rather than through search.
Whether Google+ grows or not, the public should expect to see Google putting everything it has into the service’s promotion and development during the coming months.
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