The cool argument is the wrong way to go with why Google+ will fail. The real value that Facebook provides is information. Free and open information about anyone and while some people view this as an invasion of privacy they are kidding themselves. The reason Facebook has become so addictive is because of the things you can find out about people, different people who aren't necessarily your friends. I understand that people have this idea that they only want to share things with their friends and there is an easy and simple way to do that on Facebook, only add your friends. In reality we don't want to or really we don't mind that people who aren't our closest friends know the things about us we put on Facebook. Facebook's lack of "privacy" is its most valuable asset not only to their own business model but to their user base as well. As someone in another comment said its the college kids that push the adoption of sites like this and from my own perspective and that of people I know, Facebook's privacy issues have never been the big deal they are portrayed as by the media. Google+ is shooting themselves in the foot by focusing on creating "real friendships" and closed information circles because in reality the reason many people like Facebook is because of the openness it inspires.
A feature that I've seen a lot of the media cover as well, Hangouts, is one that while useful in certain situations I think displays how Google is missing the overall concept of social networking. Hangouts is a great feature if you're in a pinch and need to for some reason host a multi-person video chat but so is oovoo, another group video chatting fad. Its a feature that while nice is not a hook for many people and really doesn't relate to the overall theme of social networking. Social networking's goal is not to create the most realistic online portrayal of your life. It's really, from the perspective of the company, to make managing your network of friends easier and make connecting with them easier and more efficient. Video chatting is not the most efficient way to manage these relationships and is not a unique way to conduct it either as there are many video chatting services that are widely adopted such as Skype. While video is still an important part of our lives with streaming content and live broadcasts, in the sense of the video chatting it is more closely relatable to the phone call which we all know is not favored today like the text message. Which should tell Google something, we as consumers don't want "real relationships" on our social networking site. We want like the text message to have our social network be an efficient and fast way of sharing information, something Facebook has mastered.
Overall Google+ does not bring a bad platform as much as it brings an unnecessary platform to the table. Could there be a cult following by older people who want to strictly share content with their family members? Possibly but more likely than not I see this idea getting a long for a while on its Google name and then folding. The best application I see for Google+ would be a simple collaboration tool for small businesses through the use of group chat and video chat along with the rest of Google Apps.
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The cool argument is the wrong way to go with why Google+ will fail. The real value that Facebook provides is information. Free and open information about anyone and while some people view this as an invasion of privacy they are kidding themselves. The reason Facebook has become so addictive is because of the things you can find out about people, different people who aren't necessarily your friends. I understand that people have this idea that they only want to share things with their friends and there is an easy and simple way to do that on Facebook, only add your friends. In reality we don't want to or really we don't mind that people who aren't our closest friends know the things about us we put on Facebook. Facebook's lack of "privacy" is its most valuable asset not only to their own business model but to their user base as well. As someone in another comment said its the college kids that push the adoption of sites like this and from my own perspective and that of people I know, Facebook's privacy issues have never been the big deal they are portrayed as by the media. Google+ is shooting themselves in the foot by focusing on creating "real friendships" and closed information circles because in reality the reason many people like Facebook is because of the openness it inspires.
A feature that I've seen a lot of the media cover as well, Hangouts, is one that while useful in certain situations I think displays how Google is missing the overall concept of social networking. Hangouts is a great feature if you're in a pinch and need to for some reason host a multi-person video chat but so is oovoo, another group video chatting fad. Its a feature that while nice is not a hook for many people and really doesn't relate to the overall theme of social networking. Social networking's goal is not to create the most realistic online portrayal of your life. It's really, from the perspective of the company, to make managing your network of friends easier and make connecting with them easier and more efficient. Video chatting is not the most efficient way to manage these relationships and is not a unique way to conduct it either as there are many video chatting services that are widely adopted such as Skype. While video is still an important part of our lives with streaming content and live broadcasts, in the sense of the video chatting it is more closely relatable to the phone call which we all know is not favored today like the text message. Which should tell Google something, we as consumers don't want "real relationships" on our social networking site. We want like the text message to have our social network be an efficient and fast way of sharing information, something Facebook has mastered.
Overall Google+ does not bring a bad platform as much as it brings an unnecessary platform to the table. Could there be a cult following by older people who want to strictly share content with their family members? Possibly but more likely than not I see this idea getting a long for a while on its Google name and then folding. The best application I see for Google+ would be a simple collaboration tool for small businesses through the use of group chat and video chat along with the rest of Google Apps.