Rich Fiscus
5 Dec 2011 17:45
When Google+ was announced earlier this year, it was hailed as a possible Facebook killer. Despite their previous failure with Buzz, Google was looked at as the one company who might have the resources and know how to truly compete with the social networking giant.
But the reality hasn't lived up to the hype so far. In fact, all the signs have pointed toward Google+ actually being something of a disappointment.
When the invitation-only beta was announced, people seemed to be lining up to get in. It took less than a month to reach 20 million users.
But it didn't take long for the initial excitement to subside. Data from Experian Hitwise seems to indicate their decision to open Google+ to the public occured immediately after traffic started dying down.
There was an initial spike after that, but once again the public seemed to cool on the service. Analysts at Chitika pointed out that Google+ traffic returned to more or less the same level as during the closed beta just a couple weeks later.
Further data from NetMarketShare seems to be confirming that trend. Their measurements of social networking referrals, which measures the number of times someone arrives on a website by following a link from a social networking page, show Google+ referrals peaked before the closed beta ended, and have been dropping ever since.
Obviously Google+ is still relatively new. There's plenty of time for Google to make it a success if they remain committed to it.
In fact it appears they are pulling out all the stops to do just that. Even bringing Google Music out of beta, before the developers had a finish remove the Beta tag from the interface, seems to be aimed at that goal. One of the key features of Google Music is the ability to share purchased music via Google+.
The bigger question is whether even Google can provide something people consider valuable enough to switch services. It's been done before. Let's not forget Facebook did it to MySpace.
Of course, despite MySpace's success, they hadn't grown the social networking space to the size Facebook has. MySpace was a big fish in a medium sized pond. Facebook is more like a great white shark in the ocean.
It will take something the public finds really impressive to do the job. And apparently Google+ doesn't qualify yet.