“It may not be dead, and it’s entirely possible I’m shoveling dirt on something that’s still writhing around, promising me it is in fact the next big thing, but I’m now deaf to its cries. Google Plus is a failure no matter what the numbers may say,” Paul Tassi writes for Forbes.
“25 million users in barely a month is nothing to sneeze at. Google Plus holds the honor of being one of the fastest growing websites in history, and these early numbers had analysts screaming that Facebook would be all but dead in a few more months,” Tassi writes. “But today I click on my newsfeed and see tumbleweed blowing through the barren, blank page. It’s a vast and empty wasteland, full of people who signed up but never actually stuck around to figure out how things worked in this new part of town. One simple click takes me back to Facebook, and my wall is flooded with updates and pictures from 400+ friends. This just isn’t a contest, and it never will be.”
Tassi writes, “To know why G+ has failed, we must first look at how Facebook succeeded.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Premature.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
My newsfeed is quite busy. I think the writer is missing a very important point.
Yeah, this author just has no friends (read: loser)…so he’s blaming the service?!? Sadly typical reaction in this day & age.
But on FB he has 400 friends!!!
(Makes you wonder how many he would actually recognize should he run into them while he is out and about in the real world.)
Yeah.. just like me! I have lots of great friends on FB, and it’s really fun. No one’s on G+ except the technorati.
Very premature. I’m a Fanboy (besides a marketing and pr pro), but wait until businesses get integrated on this platform.
Boom.
Businesses aren’t going to get integrated until Google+ can show that there are some users actually doing something on it. There’s no need to try to connect with people who aren’t doing anything. The whole point of businesses on social media is to generate new/repeat sales, not spend time talking to nobody.
Business have already started integrating…so you’re wrong.
What Social media needs is something WITHOUT businesses crawling all over it, analyzing your every move and click. Facebook started great, then came the capital and almighty love of the dollar. Now it is nothing more than a tool to part you with your money and in some cases your freedom. When did we all become such lemmings??
Yep same here. Busy and I seem to have new requests every day.
Maybe its just the writer’s friends who bailed. lol.
What’s Google ? 🙂
Google is coming far too late to the world of all-encompasing social networking sites. Fragmentation and specialization is happening, and the idea of ‘1 social site’ to serve them all is already on the decline.
You guys are likely diehard geeks, but what about the droves of people who have finally come around to Facebook or MySpace? Google isn’t making a simple, convincing, clear case of why people should adopt. The newsfeed looks like anything else and a few circles to click isn’t going to cut it.
I consider myself a hard core geek, but I don’t FB or MS. There comes a time to get a way from the screen and interact with real friends.
You SHOULDN’T trust them, ever. You are the product, the commodity they are selling, you voluntarily opted in. DOn’t be fooled, your data is now theirs and they will sell it out to whatever end they see fit. That is the simply reality of Facebook.
I have also a “gmail” account and I haven’t subscribed yet to Google + since they haven’t fix the bug (they cal l feature) that expose all your personal info. Not that I have much but I don’t like the idea that google will sell you for a dime. even that, I don’t think I will ever do that.
It maybe a little premature but I have stopped using it. Why maintain two social networks when one just works just fine….
“… and these early numbers had analysts screaming that Facebook would be all but dead in a few more months”
I think any opinion that follows the word “analyst” can safely either be ignored, or used as a signpost to travel in the opposite direction.
+1
I’m embarrassed already by the fact that I have a FB acct, and have dabbled in with Twitter even. I follow ZuneTang and Craig Ferguson on Twitter, I think.
Have no urge, curiosity etc. for Google± etc. However, if FB and G± can kill each other, I say, so much power to them then.
Honestly don’t think google is going to succeed, definitely not going to take down Facebook now or ever.
Yeah, that’s me. I was full of enthusiasm for Google+, dreaming of getting an invitation by my birthday. Then I got one, and I discovered that all the privacy settings are default to the most public – just like Facebook’s behavior, i.e. no promise of a more secure, privacy-respecting site. Then Google dropped the clanger and started deleting accounts, including some people’s gmail accounts, without telling them. Sure, they wisened up after the outcry, but consider the arrogance of the people behind Google+ that they think they can just delete gmail accounts because we didn’t meet the conditions of some EULA that we hardly read when we clicked to agree. And then I discovered some privacy settings that don’t change when you make changes to it. I had it. I’ve got 400+ people in my Facebook account, and I’m happy to share my feeds with all of them.
Vic Gundotra is a convicted rapist and thief. He’ll screw your ass for free and sell your newborn to advertisers for $5.
Google, as bad as they are, isn’t even the same league as the slime KISSmetrics for invading privacy with unbeatable cookie structures. (See RESPAWN REDUX by security researcher Ashkan Soltani for the scary details.)
FAceplant needs competition. Wy not Goople the new evil tech company next to Microsoft.
Both claims are premature and unsupported – the demise of Facebook or the failure of G+. Every new thing has to start at ground zero and build up a critical mass. Certainly G+ has a bigger hurdle that most given the hundreds of millions of Facebook users, but that does not mean that their failure is certain, or even likely.
If you consider Apple’s success with the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, it is clear that each one started in a relatively modest fashion and only gradually reached a critical mass that drove widespread adoption. Ironically, now that they are so dominant in their respective categories, all of the analysts seem to feel that their only course is down.
Analysts as a whole are very poor at predicting trends. Otherwise they would be independently wealthy through the application of their prognostication skills and employing others to work for them.
I’ll go out on a limb and say that G- won’t be a total flop – Google will park billions behind it to ensure its survival even if it makes no money at all. But I’ll also say that G- won’t be displacing FaceBook any time soon. In fact they will foreshadow the demise of social in short order because the next new thing will come down the turnpike to consign them to a fate similar to MySpace. G- will, however, remain in beta phase for the foreseeable future.
I signed up. I’ve not been back since. I just don’t think people are ready to manage two separate social media sites regardless of how cool the new kid on the block is.
If you read the article, check out the comments. The author was raked over the coals. Every comment posted takes him to task for writing a crap article.
——RM
Im no fan of Faceliftbook, but sure I will switch all my private data over to the company who’s proven it can be trusted.
After all, Google has already all my emails, web searches, geo locations…. Why not surrender all the rest of my private data and be done with it.
These circles look more attractive every day!
Don’t forget financial data. If you’ve ever used Google Checkout, you’ve foolishly agreed to their super probing, all of your transaction/ financial details sold to multiple third parties, and all your subsequent web history flagged for detailed combing.
I wish something better would happen. Facebook is starting to look like MySpace, but in a worse way… so many businesses are encouraging me to “Like Us On Facebook!!” it’s becoming just another advertising vector.
Vector? I’m afraid you lost points for the overly pretentious description of ‘ad space’.
Also, are you new to the web? Most businesses had a presence here long before social media websites and profile pages. If anything, Facebook infringes on their established turf.
The web belongs to (in this order)
1. Pornographers
2. Advertisers (non-porn)
3. Cat people
4. Virgins
5. Nerds
6. Geeks
7. 15 year old girls (and 40’ish men pretending to be girls)
8. Your Mom
9. Network Admins
10. You and the rest of us (though I personally straddle #1 & #6 and every other Tuesday #8).
This made me laugh so hard…I have tears streaming down my face.
Items 4, 5, and 6 are somewhat redundant.
Furthermore, you have to understand that NORMAL PEOPLE (not the cast of This Week in Google) actually have NO PROBLEMS with Facebook, I can talk to everyone I know, add new friends, video chat, bla bla bla. Facebook is actually really really really good. G+ has nothing, and basically prided itself on being ‘a place for people who hate Facebook’.. so neurotic nerds.. Imagine that, a Social Network founded on the principle of hating people…
Google is pretty sweet. Bunch o’ peeps here just mad because Google made Android. Let’s not forget that this Google thing is still in beta mode. Get mad at social networking all you want, but ask yourself, which OS will literaly integrate Twitter in itself?
WP7 already does this, for a while now. Your point?
His point was that an OS that has sold over 100 units without BOGOs, has the largest app and only ecosystem that people are actually willing to spend money on in this economic climate is about to integrate Twitter.
*hint: it’s iOS
i have 1 button for uploading pictures from my iPhoto/Aperture Application. how bout G+?
I wonder if some of you don’t realize that the MDN Take is a riff on other MDN Takes re: Google putting out premature products. It’s not about the article’s assessment of Google+ being premature.
* It’s not criticizing the article as being premature.
Eh think about how gmail started out, at first it was the same thing, lots of people wanted one, but no one really used it as their primary account. Overtime, that will change.
Give credit where credit is due. Google+ is pretty slick.
Way better than Ping anyway
Yeah, take THAT, Google! Just you jerks wait. All your Google+ users are going to flock to Ping any time now!
G+ and FB are not like a software program that you can change if you like the features in one better than the other — because you can’t get your friends to all change over and start doing all there posts in the other software. FB has won because that is where the people are and where they will stay. FB is to big, all that will happen is all the good ideas that G+ comes up with FB will copy. I have an G+ account, I know nothing about it at all, I never post, I never log in, FB is all I need and more, and my 400 plus friends are all there posting and commenting on my wall.