“With 25 million users in a single month, [Google] Plus is an impressive social network from the get-go. Within a year, expect it to be more powerful than Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, and all your other non-Facebooks.” (Rob D Young, SEJ )
It’s all about circles….
In Facebook you generally share something with either (a) everyone you know or (b) just one person. In ‘Plus’ you share things with circles of people who share an interest or relationship. It’s quick and easy as well.
Andy Hertzfeld (legendary software artist at Apple) is somewhat responsible for the user interface on Plus, which is no doubt why it’s so beautifully easy to use – despite his modesty.
And because other people can share things with relevant circles too, Plus really cuts down on the noise we tend to get on other social networking sites about things we’re not really that interested in, letting us focus on what we do care about.
Already this is leading to users choosing to use Plus instead of Facebook in certain circumstances – using it in a much more focussed way than they would Facebook.
Free video conferencing and free text messages…
‘Hangouts’ is a free group video conferencing feature on Google+, and it could be a real competitor to Skype’s own (premium) group video feature. It doesn’t have screen sharing yet, so until it does users may still need other software to share their screen in a conference call – something the Keeble Smith team does a lot during project work.
‘Huddles’ are instant messaging in circles – using the Internet to send and receive messages in a similar way to text messages, but without any charges or quotas. Get Google+ on your smartphone to use this feature. It’s great for sharing messages with multiple people during a sporting event for example (just those people you know follow the same team or sport).
A Plus for your business…
Plus for businesses is on its way and if features like Circles work as well for businesses and organisations as they do for individuals, there are likely to be some very exciting new online marketing opportunities.
Will Plus replace Facebook? No, certainly not in the near future. But we’d be mad to ignore or dismiss it. It’s a new species taking the best bits of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, adding some Google magic to the mix and coming up with something really quite useful indeed.
Plus could well provide on-line marketers with much more accurate and more effective targeting than any of the other social networking sites can currently offer. Only time will tell whether it will or not but my first impression is very good and I’m watching with a keen interest how this will unfold.
Try Google+ for yourself at plus.google.com.
Keeble Smith provides a full range of on-line marketing and social networking services to our clients. Contact us below to find out more.
