The Shape of Things to Come – Google+ and the “Next” Social Network

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The Shape of Things to Come – Google+ and the “Next” Social Network

July 6, 2011 by jkd

It’s been less than 10 years since the initial rise of Friendster, the first mass-popularity online social network. Since its rise and (lamentable) fall, MySpace has grown and shrunk, and Facebook pioneered an ever-upwards trajectory. Though the implementation and particular social networks harnessed in each of these cases has been different, all have shared a similar initial launch strategy – focusing on the tightly-knit real-life networks of young people. For this reason, it’s become something of an article of faith that this is how social network services do and have to build and grow.

This is the core of Henry Copeland’s skeptical take on Google+, which I encourage you to read if you’ve not yet done so. I’m on record as saying that Google+ is already a success, and Henry’s post has clarified for me exactly what I meant and where I see it going. Henry’s main points are that (and I’m paraphrasing here – do read the whole thing):

community is the value, not the interface
you can’t grow a social network from the top-down
elite, diffuse users are the wrong initial population
Google doesn’t know social and doesn’t have the patience to grow a social network

I don’t necessarily disagree with any of these, but I also think that in the case of Google+ much of it is beside the point. What I think is the point, is that Google already has a massive collection of embedded, real-life social networks. They don’t need to do a frontal assault on Facebook at college campuses, don’t have to do a below-the-radar launch in Silicon Alley (which would be, at this point, totally impossible for either Google or any other social network), and don’t need to worry as much (which isn’t the same as “not at all”) about the particular shape of their multiplier effects. What they do need to worry about is how to expand the range of social tools that their current massive user base of real-life social networks uses within the Googleverse.

Keith Kleiner has a very positive run-down of his reactions to Google+, and while in the long-run I think that the enthusiasm for enhanced privacy features and the multiple-context management of Circles will prove more popular among the technorati than the general public (as killer apps, anyways), I do think he hits the nail on the head here:

That secret weapon is everything that Google has that is not Google+. A formidable armada of Google products including Gmail, Picasa, Calendar, Docs, Maps, Search, News, Youtube, Chrome Web Browser, Blogger, Translation, Android, and more stands at the ready to assist and join Google+ in the battle for the future of social networking. These products are best in class, extremely difficult to replicate, and are used by more than a billion people across the planet. As these products are seamlessly integrated with Google+, we are about to witness an incredible two way explosion of value and utility. Google’s products will gain all of the powerful attributes that social networks deliver – virality, discovery, crowdsourcing, sharing, “liking”, and so much more. Meanwhile, Google+ will be given a steroid boost of products that deliver content, tools, and capabilities to its hungry hordes of social minions.

That’s exactly right, and I’d like to go a little further here. Google’s social network service won’t look like other social network services because it can’t – because of who Google is, and because of Facebook’s near-monopoly on certain sectors of the social graph. What it will look like will be different, and potentially more organic. As danah boyd excellently documented [PDF], in the early days of Friendster there were two main user communities who latched on to the service, both located in the Bay Area – gay men and Burners. When the two communities eventually discovered each other, the reaction was something akin to, “What are you doing here?” Social network services since then have been the story of this context collapse again and again, over many kinds of communities. There are many, many, many more communities and real-life social networks already extant and embedded in one or several of Google’s currently-owned suite of social services, from gMail to Blogger to YouTube. Google+ will be a success not if it displaces Facebook but if it can deepen usage of Google’s already-formidable user base on the social web. As Luis Suarez notes in an insightful post,

“Its unique opportunity to be pervasive enough to be part of Google’s entire ecosystem makes it tremendously powerful.”

Because of the varied nature of that ecosystem and where different users find value, the growth, shape and experience of Google+ will vary substantially between different networks and different users. But that’s okay! Different people have different needs, both socially and informationally, and an approach that views mediated sociability as best addressed by a suite of services and possibilities – which is how I conceive of Google+ and how I believe they do, as well – is fundamentally just different than the one-size-fits-all approach of Facebook (or Twitter, or LinkedIn, or any of the predecessor SNSes)

Robert Scoble exemplifies this perfectly:

Anyway, it’s clear Google has turned a corner. They have now proven to everyone that they can do social and get on the playing field.

But they haven’t yet proven that they can convince your mom to use it and that’s just fine with me.

That all is a long way of saying that I really love Google+ and I don’t care what the average user thinks of it. I’m getting a ton of utility out of it and I am having a blast with it. Hope to see you there soon, but please leave yo momma over on Facebook, OK?

In point of fact, my mom will actually like Google+ just fine, but Scoble’s point is a good one and flows the other way, too. There are plenty of “average users” who will like parts of what Google+ does just fine, and won’t give a fig that Robert Scoble and assorted other nerds (e.g., myself) are using it for if it can help them chat, share pictures, and video chat all in the same place easier than they could before with just gMail, Facebook or Skype. Does that count as “beating” Facebook? I don’t know that it’s that simple – I expect Facebook to be around a while, but not at the current level of buzz or valuation – but if Google+ can give a better and more holistic social experience for its users, I would count that as a victory for everyone.

Posted in sns | 1 Comment

One Response

on July 7, 2011 at 5:39 pm | Reply danbraun

where’s the +1 button?

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Jacob Kramer-Duffield thinks

JKD's periodic thoughts on identity, technology and democracy