Image via CrunchBase
The technology has got advanced to a great extent, even; social networking phones are running on a fuel cell. But the main competition is in the field of social media network of goggle. There have been a lot of speculations that users made regarding Google’s social network known as Google Plus. With its rapid growth which surpassed other networks by 25 million in just a month, by far surpassing the growth of huge social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have achieved in their past years, it has shocked the entire online community and has even posed as a threat for the existing social media giants. However, true the figure is, it is still not enough. Google+ was still unable to draw in a huge number of followings and keep them intact in the network unlike what its giant competitors did. Google+ indeed has some unique features such as their “Hangouts” feature and other video conferencing tools which can’t be seen within any other social networks. In fact, these are truly impressive but the point here is how come that Google’s latest social networking attempt is a big failure?
There are in fact several reasons behind why users tend to stick to their current social networks rather than deviate to a whole new one. And for the part of the premature Google plus, here are some reasons why the network just won’t catch the heart of the crowd.
Nobody wants another social network as of this time -:
“Nobody wants another social network right now”. Those words came straight from Brian Solis, a well-known social media analyst from Altimeter Group. This might sound to be quite illogical, but it is in fact true. People are just too hooked up to the already famous social networks, and they just can’t find the time to jump off to a new one. Even though Google plus have just reached about 90 million registered users, it still pales in comparison with Facebook’s 845 million monthly users and 100 million that of Twitter. These numbers only show that you can find a lot of your colleagues and friends on Facebook and Twitter than you can on Google plus.
Also by comparison, ComScore has the number that Google+ users only spent a few three minutes per month on the network from September to January as compared to that of Facebook which goes around an average of 405 minutes per month.
Negative aspect of G+ -:
Lately Google has been coming under pressure in recent weeks because of the news that their user numbers and the amount of time that people are spending on the site are getting down by great time. To be honest here it is no surprise as I’ve been very negative on their chances since day one, but even I can’t believe on the sort of stuff they are releasing now. They have just announced that their latest feature is a mask that you can add to their Google Hangouts product so as you can turn yourself in to, wait for it….A cat or a dog. I literally thought it must have been April fool’s day or something when I first saw the story but it clearly isn’t and this is the level they have descended to in order to get attention for something that is turning in to a huge failure for them. People will turn around and say that this is only a bit of fun and a quirky little feature but Google seem to be doing more and more of this useless attention seeking stuff in recent times and it really is bordering on pathetic.
Google continues to ship upgrades to Google + at an unprecedented level. Even though Google considers it’s users of Google + as more of a “product” versus a customer they are obviously concerned about keeping the users satisfied and making sure that their over all experience on the site is a positive one. There are at least two new upgrades this week worth noting: New invite feature to Hangouts and the change to the +1 button.
Over a million websites use Google+ plugins — like the +1 button and the badge for Pages – to help visitors connect with their brand and share their content with others. Today we’re excited to announce a number of improvements to these plugins that make sharing and connecting even easier.
Easier to share from the +1 button -:
Well, starting from today itself, it’ll be a little easier to share right from the +1 buttons all across the web. Now, after you +1 something, the share box will pop open right away, without an extra click. Add a comment if you want, choose the people you want to share with, and you’re done.
Easier to follow brands and businesses -:
When you add Google+ pages to your circles, it’s typically to follow their news and updates. That’s why we’re updating badges for Google+ pages to read “Follow.” With just one click, this button adds a business or brand to your “Following” circle, and if you want to customize which circle they’re in, you can do that too.
If you’re one of the many businesses and brands with a Google+ page, we’ve also put together a handy style guide (pdf) which includes recommended language and images for promoting your page.
Adding a badge for people, not just pages -:
We heard you! Now anyone (including Britney Spears!) can add a personal Google+ badge to their web pages, and let visitors add them to circles quickly and easily.
We’ve got lots more planned for the Google+ plugins, stay tuned!
About the author: Claudia is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on luxury and technology. These days she is working on google autonomous.
