As we round the corner in our discussion of social media, we have to acknowledge the elephant in the room. Google+ stands idly by while Facebook takes all of the social media glory, but will it dethrone the aging giant? Or will it fizzle out and be buried next to Myspace in the social media graveyard? Google+ offers a lot of unique functions and features that would be very enticing for new users. It offers a much more intimate and tailored experience than what Facebook offers. Merely having a google+ account for your business can boost your SEO efforts in search rankings. It’s a very underutilized tool that will give you more visibility within local search queries, so take advantage of it. The biggest sell that Google+ offers, to me at least, is the ability to control who sees what I post and what posts are able to make to my home page. Whereas Facebook is steadily becoming the white pages of the internet. A bloated carcass burning in an effigy of likes and whiny 1st world problem comments. Facebook’s recent acquisition of virtual reality start-up Oculus Rift has many users wondering where the future of social media is heading.
There’s a little bit of a learning curve to Google+, but its features aren’t anything out of the ordinary and are worth learning how to use. The content sharing aspect takes the form of “+1” system. This is the Facebook equivalent of like. People can determine how popular your business is by how many +1’s your receive on your page. This in conjunction with google authorship can provide a boost to your sites search rankings. Google authorship allows you to link content that you publish on a certain URL to your google+ account. This allows Google to recognize quality content coming from your G+ account and boost your Author Rank.
Google hangouts is a creative way to integrate online video calls. It feels similar to Skype, but it integrates your contacts and relationships in a much more fluid way. For example, sending a message to a friend you might see a stopwatch/clock appear next to their name. After a while I discovered that he was idle on his account and appeared inactive after a certain amount of time. It’s the automated AFK (Away From Keyboard) we never knew we needed, and it makes the user experience that much better. Google+ Communities is an efficient way to create/participate in focused groups and promote them in a non-intrusive way. You can invite people (with the conveniently named “invite” button) to your group and let them join in the conversation either publicly or privately.
So why does it fall short for everyday users and their personal lives? Google+ has the wonderful opportunity to decimate Facebook with mobile users. Anybody who has the Facebook app for their iPad on their android device knows it’s a more of a hassle than its worth. Google+ is aiming to integrate more and more with Google’s other services. I wouldn’t be surprised to see “+” symbols on google docs and g-drive in the near future.
The problem lies in Google’s forceful approach that makes users create hollow accounts just to access their services. If you try to comment on a video on YouTube, you will be told to sign-in or create a g+ account. If you decide that you don’t want to create an account, you will receive a seemingly passive-aggressive prompt, “Alright, we’ll ask you again later” Uhh…no thanks. I just wanted to express my discontent for disguising Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna give You up” with a How-to-Video.
Another problem I for see is the Gmail and g+ integration. Before, emails from companies and spam would be filtered in the promotions tab of your Gmail account. Your personal tab would remain relatively pure with mail you wanted to see. With google+, communities and other social groups that you aren’t familiar with will be able to find their way into your precious Primary tab. These forceful social media integrations pose not only a problem to Google, but to the industry as a whole. Privacy is becoming more sought after, and people may simply drop these great services if they feel the personal cost is too great.
Joshua Henrikson 