Google has launched another new social media thing. I’ve gotten past the velvet ropes and had a chance to look around. So far there’s nothing much to report.
You may recall that Google has tried a few things before that had some hype but then fizzled. Google Wave was one, remember? And anyone remember Google Buzz? That one is still around and sort of is merging into Google+.
Google+ or 1+ or whatever it is that we are now supposed to pay attention to is maybe like Facebook. Or not. But it’s definitely social, and it’s supposed to be a rethinking of how to connect to people we really want to be connected to.
Great, I’m all for that.
What I’m not really enthusiastic about is having to pay attention to a new social media tool that, in a year or two, may wind up being another cyber ghost town. I really hope that Google figures it out this time. But I’m not expecting success, just hoping for it.
Google is really good organizing information, but up to now it hasn’t found a way to organize social information in a way that is appealing to the masses. Facebook did this and stumbled into becoming a large force. I guess Google figures, if Facebook can stumble into it, then they can strategize their way into it.
Engineers are good at solving algorithmic problems, but I’m not sure that social media maps cleanly to an algorithm that super-bright engineers can capture. We’ll see how this new plus thing works out. If it doesn’t pan out then that’ll be at least 3 strikes against Google, and I’ll never buy into any future social media efforts that they offer again.
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It seems odd that Google has decided to start a social media project as invite only. It’s hard to utilize a social network when you don’t know many other people using it. Maybe they’re going for hype, but that doesn’t seem to be working too well (at least not for me).