Google Plus has everyone talking. People asking for invites suggesting how it can beat Facebook, while others wonder if it ever could. As TechCrunch says, the war is on between Google Plus and Facebook. But is it really the beginning of the end for social networks?
Social networks are all about the newsfeed
Essentially the social network has become the newsfeed. Social networks provide the captive audience – your friends. You post because these people care and are more likely to respond with a comment. Prior to social networks blogs were all the rage and if you ever started one you probably know how lonely it could be. It’s like talking to an empty room, a dark empty room. And that was after you figured out what to write about in the first place. Social networks changed all that. You have a captive audience and you know exactly what to write about – yourself.
Which newsfeed, where do I post?
For most people today there are only two newsfeeds – Twitter and Facebook. LinkedIn is also making a good showing. Though essentially they have carved out their own niche. And now there is Google Plus. Where does it fit in? No need to answer, the fact that you have to ask is already changing the landscape. The next question is where do I post? Well when in doubt why not all of them? Posting to them all isn’t that difficult actually, many already support automatically posting from other feeds. You can post on Tumblr and have that automatically feed into Facebook. And now the social networks are getting more aggressive with transitioning your social graph. With Google Plus it certainly is a different landscape, almost as if the social networks are being marginalized.
Reminds me of instant messenger and its “end”
I use to work on Yahoo! Messenger and remember well the instant messenger wars. In Silicon Valley that war is ancient history. It started with ICQ, then came AOL Messenger. Friends would fight over which one to join. Then came Yahoo! Messenger and soon people would just join all of them. Then the natural thing was to start demanding interoperability.
Then came MSN Messenger and new clients that logged you into all of them – Meebo, Trillian, etc. The talk of interoperability died down and actually so did much of the hype around the whole instant messenger space. By the time GTalk entered the market much of the commotion had all but died down.
Instant messenger went from being all the rage to being something I got when I checked my email whether I needed it or not. The excitement I use to feel working on the Yahoo! Messenger team dissipated. I moved on, everyone moved on and that’s what I mean by “end”. I mean “end” in the way we say tech companies are dead. Granted there is still a lot of excitement in social networks – Facebook will set records with its IPO as Google Plus will likely set records for user growth. But I think we’ll look back to the Google Plus launch as the beginning of the end.
End of the Social Networks? Heeeeecks no. Don’t be ridiculous. At the very least, I see Social Networks revolutionizing the Internet via login consolidation. “Sign in with Facebook” is turning up everywhere lately, like the last few months especially. There are only a couple of other companies that have that user database, Google is one of them. I think Google+ is more than a social network, it’s pulling users in to their consistent interface no matter what they’re doing. Surfing, socializing, shopping. Can Facebook say that, no! Close, but also very far. If Google+ would have launched a year ago we wouldn’t even be having this conversation, we would all talk about the days we remembered being on Facebook. Now they’re at least a formidable threat!
I’ll admit there is a lot of excitement around social networks these days but there was also a lot around instant messenger. The excitement died down and instant messenger certainly didn’t go away, just evolved into something that seems to be everywhere. The excitement moved onto something new, perhaps the same will happen with social networks.