Google didn’t build its new Plus service simply to have an online hangout like Facebook. Rather, Google’s new social-networking endeavor is about trying to gain valuable insights into people’s lives and relationships. This could help the company do a better job of targeting ads so that advertisers would pay more and have less reason to spend their money on Facebook.
If it succeeds, Plus represents Google’s best shot yet at muscling into a market that has threatened to topple the Internet search and advertising leader, as Facebook leads the way in making the online world social.
Plus is Google’s carefully scripted venture into a territory where its previous efforts have been duds.
On the surface, Plus is reminiscent of Facebook — with a Google touch. It lets people share photos and status messages, chat with friends and acquaintances and follow news updates. A prominent feature called circles allows users to organise the people they interact with into groups, such as family, close friends or mates. Users can choose to share things only among certain circles.
Google Plus is still in a restricted, test phase, and invites to join are highly coveted. Only time will tell if it takes off among the broader public or if it’s too little, too late to face off with Facebook and Twitter on the social front — just as Microsoft has failed to surpass Google in search with latecomer Bing.
Google Inc. has done quite well without its own social network. Its online search engine accounts for two-thirds of queries made in the US, and even more in parts of Europe. Its revenue is expected to surpass $36 billion this year.
But people are spending more time on Facebook and other social networks. They are increasingly relying on their friends’ recommendations when deciding where to eat and what movies to watch.
Google, meanwhile, has bungled past social media efforts. A sharing program called Wave was quickly killed off because users didn’t know what to make of it. Buzz, a later venture, was the center of a privacy fiasco. Google had been too aggressive about automatically creating circle of friends, which inadvertently revealed whom they had corresponded with on Gmail.
Early response to Google Plus has been positive. But that’s no guarantee for broader success. As Google botched one social media effort after another, Facebook grew exponentially.
Today, half of Facebook’s 750 million worldwide users log on to the site every day. Google’s chairman and former CEO, Eric Schmidt, has acknowledged that the company failed to respond to Facebook’s threat fast enough. His successor, Google co-founder Larry Page, has made social networking one of his top priorities since he took over in April.
Google does a good job already of targeting ads based on what people search for, write about in emails and watch on YouTube. Social data could help Google do even better.
Eventually everything is going to be a social network. But as we have found out to our dismay in terms of economy, every bubble bursts. Will it be the Facebook bubble or the Google bubble that goes first?