As Google+ crawls out to a select worldwide audience, the debate continues over social networking site's future impact on the online landscape. Recently, CMIQ weighed in on the future of Google+ and the new social CRM opportunities it might create. To get further perspective, CMIQ brought in social CRM guru Joakim Nilsson to share his initial reactions to Google+ and the new social engagement opportunities the site affords and why search engines were on the way out.
Google has tried to differentiate itself from Facebook by touting its enhanced privacy measures and easy-to-use selected sharing options. Google+ lets users share information with user-created "circles" of their choosing. An easy and cute drag-and-drop feature lets users divvy up their friends. For companies, the less public information shared about them is, the less benefit there is in investing resources to encourage sharing.
"What Facebook tried to do was bring companies in," said Nilsson, who is the the head of social media at BetClic Everest Group, one of Europe’s leading online gaming operators. "There are certain functionalities in Facebook to bring companies in. Google+ seems to be more about the user."
Which means companies should invest in their products and services over Google+ social engagement platforms.
"Aside from the Google+ button, there aren’t many functionalities companies can use [with Google+]."
Nilsson, who had a few days to play around with Google+ before speaking with CMIQ came away with a positive response to the interface, but had "reservations" about the potential for the site to become ubiquitous.
"What needs to happen is some sort of tipping point. I’m not sure if it’s going to go mainstream of if it will turn out to be a niche," he said, mentioning LinkedIn as a successful niche social engagement platform. "I don’t think google has positioned this as a niche. They are out to fight the big war with Facebook."
Indeed, Google executives have called the project "make or break" for the company and many Google employees’ bonuses will be based on the success of Google+.
"Google is predicting that search is not the future," he said. "The future is how individuals sort content within networks. So that goes from search optimization to newsfeed optimization."
According to Nilsson, though, Google does have some advantages.
"Good has a past of organizing content on the Internet," Nilsson said. "Facbeook doesn’t have that. Initially, users had to create all the content. Google is still indexing content, but now with the power of the user."
In a sense, Nilsson explained, Facebook set the internet back even as it changed the way we use the internet forever. Facebook created a closed web, which became a single entry point to the rest of the internet that only members could access. Initially, the World Wide Web was simply an open expanse that anyone could navigate in an infinite number of ways.
"The World Wide Web [concept] sort of became obsolete," he said. "Google is not doing that. On paper, I think [Google+] is healthy for the internet. It’d be good if people caught on."