Here’s a mid-Summer prediction for you… The Google Plus v. Facebook debate is a sideshow. The real battle will be between G+ and Twitter… and while Google+ will become a franchise for The Goog, Twitter will win.
Here’s my thinking.
Before Google Plus, Facebook was mostly for personal, LinkedIn was mostly for professional, and Twitter was in the middle:
I think G+ will make people focus Facebook all the more on their personal lives, and LinkedIn all the more on their professional ones. I’m already considering de-friending all of my professional contacts on Facebook, so I can post family and political stuff there without having to master the Byzantine administrivia of Facebook’s “privacy controls.”
I’ve already started to interact more with my professional contacts over on G+, which has become the default among the digerati crowd with remarkable speed. But while the Circles feature is brilliant, simple, and useful in clustering groups, I’m not going to get my Aunt Lala to dump Facebook and master G+ at this point, so home base for family etc. will stay in Facebook.
G+ is actually more about Twitter’s franchise, in the great middle of indiscriminate social networking. But while the feature set in G+ is much more robust than that of Twitter, in the end Twitter works because it’s simple, and it will win the shootout for the center because of two other important factors in this dialogue: Apple and Microsoft.
Apple has already embraced Twitter in it’s new OS, and I predict Microsoft will make a few more lame attempts at a consumer social net before realizing it’s franchise is in Office and setting it’s sights on LinkedIn by acquiring Slideshare. With that said, the OS wars will keep Google at bay, and ensure Twitter’s franchise as the mass market social medium of choice.
The result will be this:
That’s my take, anyway. What’s yours?
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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
I think a small addition to the equation may be FB is going to get the double whammy of G+ & Mozilla BrowserID. But most people I can see (not scientific) are reporting using Twitter less.
That’s another wrinkle in this, yes. It’s an unfolding story, kind of fun to watch.
What does winning mean as it relates to Twitter vs Google+? What does it look like?
It’s a great question. Between those two, whichever becomes the preferred method of content sharing and discussion among influentials will have the better business… more traffic, more targeting data, more ad revenue, and a stronger strategic platform on which to build other content assets. I think that’s what’s at stake here.
By including ad revenue in the measurement of winning, I can’t see how Google can lose. Will people want to “go over there to Twitter” to share and consume, or will they just want do all of that “right here” on Google? (Search, maps, pics, email, music, etc.)
In order for Twitter to be right here for most people, and to be competitive revenue-wise, it seems to me that Twitter needs to be a part of Apple (more than just a partner).
I wouldn’t mind Twitter as a part of Apple. Would you?
I’d love Twitter as part of Apple. But I don’t think of them as some kind of destination site… more of a “link layer” that sits on top of everything online. Twitter is everywhere, with no vested interest in Picasa over Flickr, to give just one example. The only reason they’re not minting cash right now is they have the most notoriously dysfunctional board in tech… a grown up CEO would have that thing humming in a year, without screwing up the user experience for us.
I like the idea of it as the link layer. I’ve been talking about Twitter in a similar way, as the Web’s throughway, with everything you need to know as an exit. (Unfortunate similarity to “info superhighway”.)
I think you nailed this perfectly. I’ve had the same lines of thinking….
Facebook was mostly for personal, LinkedIn was mostly for professional, and Twitter was in the middle. The facebook security controls are a pain.
Will we ever see a privacy outcry on G+ like we have on facebook? They make it SUPER EASY to share. They pull in videos, photos, etc automatically from the mobile client. Yes, I did allow it with the check of a button….but that takes reading. Much like facebook security settings did. We will see.
For now, I’m going to start attacking google+ like you mentioned above.
Well thanks. Let’s connect there: http://gplus.to/miketrap
This is interesting, I haven’t checked out Google+ that much yet, but I thought it was a total competitor of facebook only. It’s interesting to know that it’s mostly twitter.
That’s our take on the long run implication. Guess we’ll see.
Not sure I quite agree with you, mostly because Twitter is evolving into something else now. It’s not really a social network - more broadcast medium.
Facebook, Twitter and Linked In all have their own problems and from what I’ve heard Google has taken the time to study what those problems are, and solve them in Google +
Having said that none of these guys are made for life. New kids on the block will keep challenging them, find ways to destroy their business models.
What has definitely changed is people’s behaviour – from desk top to cloud, from confidentiality to publishing and from broadcast to conversation.
All excellent points. Thanks for contributing them.
Your correct getting grandma to migrate to G+ is a major hurdle. That being said, I don’t think your analysis is correct. As you inferred Facebook privacy is a joke and most people I know have their walls filled with app spam and other nonsense. That is pissing off a lot of FB users. While G+ is super easy to control privacy, integrates well with existing Gapps and most importantly (though most don’t realize it is) is that G+ is an open network where your data is yours. To me that blows FB out of the water, gives Linkdin a run for its money and overlaps twitter. Linkdin is very well enginered to profersional networking so will survive until MS buys an buries it. (either through mismanagement or on purpose.) Twitter still has its own niche, its more a broadcast to the world thing. But Facebook? well, we’ll see how long it survives on fanboi’s and people not tec savvy enough to switch.
I think you’re right on all the attributions, Corey, but not the conclusion re: Facebook. Inertia is the most powerful force in nature, not the wont of privacy and control. But I guess we’ll see together, in the meantime thanks for the thoughtful insights.
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