What does Google+ mean for communications people?

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Google+ – What’s the Plus About?

Last week we saw Google make yet another leap in to the social networking market (remember Google Buzz or Wave…. anyone?). This time, though, seems to be more promising. On first sight, Google+ is not only visually appealing, but has many features similar to Facebook, Twitter and other social networks that people are already familiar with – as well as some new features and functionalities.

When starting with Google+ you can add people to circles, which then aggregates their updates to your stream. This is very much like Twitter: People don’t have to confirm a friendship request for you to be able to see what they are posting. On the other hand, the circle approach provides an easy-to-understand privacy concept – it makes it easy for users to arrange a personal network while controlling the distribution of their content as well as the content itself. For example, I have a circle with all of my German-speaking contacts and another one for international postings. Additionally, I have certain circles based on my relationship to people (friends, colleagues, acquaintances etc.) and others based on topics such as Football or Social Media. This makes it very easy to keep in touch and avoid annoying people with content they may not be interested in.

For more information on the features included with Google+, this video provides a good first overview.

For now, it seems the focus of Google+ is more on people and their personal networks and not so much on business or brand presence. Although right now users can only have personal profiles, many brands are hard at work on building a company presence – for example Ford Europe who also started their first competition on the social network.

A few of the new features of Google+ may make it in to a strong competitor to other platforms out there: its group video chat functionalities, a possible integration with Google Docs, Sparks (a potential Delicious competitor), location-based services as well as the integration with all the other existing Google offerings such as Picasa, Reader, Maps or Gmail (not to mention Search!). With the Google profiles integration and possible group functionalities it could also turn out to be a competitor to business social networks such as LinkedIn. And it’s all wrapped up in a user-friendly, visually appealing package.

So it appears at the outset there are lots of opportunities but only time will tell if this new Google project will really have a sustainable impact in the social media landscape. Google+ is still invitation-only and up until now there are a lot of the usual social media suspects using the service. Feedback until now is largely positive. Just have a look at what Robert Scoble or Jeff Jarvis wrote about Google+ and you get a sense of the fact that Google truly did a good job developing this (as opposed to the fate of Wave and Buzz) and that the social media “geeks” especially are keen to explore something new beyond the mainstream. But of course, Google has to embrace the mainstream if they really would like to compete with Facebook and Twitter. So it’s not hard to say that there will be more to come to attract the masses: company profiles, games, competitions, groups etc.

So what does it all mean for communications people at this early stage?

First of all, the same advice holds true as with all social media platforms: sign up and try it yourself (as it’s still invite-only, let us know if you’d like us to send you one). There aren’t any official growth rates yet but just to get a sense of how fast Google+ is growing, even without being publicly available, just have a look at the Top 100 most popular Google+ users (yes, these lists already exist!) and the number of people who have them in their circles – or just look at the media coverage.

While there is already a very engaged and international community happy to share and discuss best practices on Google+, we are eager to see what kind of impact this service might have as a collaborative business tool. The video “hangout” option might be beneficial for teams spread out across cities or continents. But what features will be put in place to ensure content posted within circles is kept secure? Will Google+ become advanced enough to become a match for other internal collaboration tools like Salesforce Chatter or Yammer?

Google+ is a platform worth watching, especially as more features are rolled out. As more social networks continue to diversify, so will your digital communications strategy. - by Lars Basche, EMEA Digital Lead

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