Why Google+ could be a Twitter killer
In my report on Google+ on Monday, I pitched the social media war as between Facebook and Google. I roped in my producer and graphics designer to don Google and Facebook t-shirts and (complete with computer generated TV screen heads) fight each other in a boxing match.
But having immersed myself in Google+ over the past few days, I think that the most immediate threat is not to Facebook per se but rather to Twitter.
There are many cool things inside Google+ that give Facebook a run for its money not least video hangouts and the really simple “circles” feature that allow you to bunch your friends/ followers/ family members/ work colleagues et al into groups and decide which circles see each posting you make. As it goes, I already do this on Facebook. This means my work colleagues don’t see all my photos, only my closest friends can see my location and some status updates are only for my family. Google+ makes it easier, but it is still something that Facebook can do if you want it to.
But when it comes to Twitter, there is much that Google+ does that Twitter can’t. As invites to Google+ are limited, I only have a handful of real friends on it, but many of the people I’m interested in and follow on Twitter are already using Google+. When I compare what is effectively the same status update that they have made on Twitter and Google+, the Google+ experience is so much better. Here’s a few reasons why
+1 the “+1″ function is Google’s answer to Facebook’s “Like” function
On Twitter you can retweet something, but that means sharing the content with all of your followers, it’s not as discreet as a Like where you are in effect saying to the author that you appreciate the content they have posted.
I’ve long found it annoying that Twitter doesn’t have that function. Google+ also allows you to look through another user’s public “+1″s.
Sharing is better than Retweeting
Retweets can be annoying and inefficient when there is a breaking news story, Twitter can become really cluttered with RTs of the same message again and again. It makes the browsing experience slower and more cumbersome. Google+ instead lists the people you follow/ are friends with who have shared a particular post or link. It makes you consider the value of a link before you click on it.
Comments on Google+ have more context
While it is possible to see the original tweets that a reply has been made to, in general it is not that easy to understand the context of individual posts. It’s also not possible to easily see all of the responses made to a posting that someone you follow has received. With Google+, I can see all of the responses that someone has generated and if I wish to, I can respond directly to one of them. Also, if a posting isn’t interesting you, it’s possible to mute all of the subsequent discussion. Something that Twitter doesn’t allow.
Media can be tagged
One of the key features of Google+ incorporates is Picasa, Google’s photo service (soon to be renamed). It meant for one thing, that as soon as I joined Google+, I had more than a thousand images already on it. Just like on Facebook, it is possible to tag yourself and other individuals within photographs. By being a more multimedia platform, the embedding of video and other media, is just so much better than on Twitter
The challenges ahead
When Google+ lets everyone join, I think it will be clearer what it is used for. In my mind, it’s a perfect replacement for Twitter but I’ll have to use both until most of the people I follow there move over or until Google is able to reach a new deal with Twitter to allow Google access to its system.
Ideally, there would be some form of interoperability, where I could auto follow everyone I already follow on Twitter. At the moment, there is no easy way of doing that, not least because at the moment, there are no simple Google+ usernames. An unofficial system is at gplus.to. Ideally, there would be a mechanism so that you could claim your existing Twitter username on Google+, not least so there is consistency. Although, I doubt that Twitter will help Google out with that! I’d also like the ability to allow my posts on Google+ to be shared onto my Twitter and Facebook feed.
The other challenge is from Apple. Google has submitted a Google+ app, but there is no guarantee that Apple will allow it. It has blocked numerous Google apps in the past. Apple’s new operating system for the iPhone and iPad has Twitter built into the core, so Google need to get the app approved in order to get serious usage. I would certainly use it much more if it was, particularly to do things like uploading photographs.
So what about Facebook?
I’m not ruling out that Google+ will one day challenge Facebook too. It replicates the best bits of both Facebook and Twitter, in a much cleaner interface. But Facebook is a very difficult company to challenge and the number of my friends that would need to move over to get me to stop using Facebook in favour of Google+ is very high.
But with Twitter, I think the move could be easier, the degree of integration into everyday socialising is much smaller than with Facebook.
You can find me on Google+ at http://gplus.to/benjamincohen, if you’re already in, let me know what you think!
There are 9 comments on this post
If Google doesn’t open it up to the majority soon it risks being another dud product that’s dead on arrival. I know the idea is to build up anticipation but I reckon in a lot of cases it just fosters resentment. People read about Google+ in newspaper articles, go to the bother of finding it only to discover they can’t join this exclusive club. Many never bother trying again.
Actually the idea is to build a stable, scalable product during this beta testing phase, but hey, think what you want.
Remember that Facebook once had *actual* exclusivity. If you weren’t in a certain set of groups (Schools) you could not get in.
Google is merely limiting the numbers while they get it ready for primetime.
Google+ doesn’t have a very important piece of functionality that Twitter does – the ability to search what everyone on the service is saying about a particular topic. I love browsing through strangers’ opinions about football, the Apprentice, political events etc. Someone described it as an encyclopedia of current public opinion.
Google+ feels very closed compared to Twitter – much more similar to Facebook.
John V. Karavitis I think it’s funny how these two Internet “giants” are “duking it out” over who has the biggest “social media” site. Have people learned nothing at all about the Internet? Fads come and go. People are fickle. Remember MySpace? Once invincible, now in danger of extinction. In addition, it seems to me as though Facebook is looking more and more like just an AOL clone. Remember AOL? Does anyone still go there? Wasn’t it once “THE” Internet? I think that we’re approaching a limit where the Internet as we know it has “maxed out”. Any new ideas will have to leave the PC and go somewhere else: our cellphones, wearable computers, maybe even “The Cloud”. Regardless, Google won’t score any points (or make any more billions) by copying a “comnpetitor”. Google has to offer something better AND different. Given Facebook’s incredible rate of growth and its dominant brand position, Google must be starting to feel what Microsoft, Yahoo, etc., felt when Google arrived on the scene. What goes around….. John Karavitis.
I don’t know much about social media as i am not a facebook user and only occasionally interact with twitter, but my understanding is that they largely serve different purposes.
Facebook is where you go to see what your friends are up to or show off your own latest antics and is where those pics of the office party get posted. Judging by those i work with it is visited approx once a day after work as lightweight entertainment. It sits with the culture of reality tv and rampant consumerism.
Twitter seems much more focussed on reporting or reaction to world, national or local events in real time. People will tweet away on their phones throughout the day – often about events happening around them. Narcissistic celebs may tweet about themselves but many users look to follow rather than promote themselves. It is considered a (slightly) more serious platform that facebook.
How then, is a merging of the two going to work? Wouldn’t it be like trying to merge the content of the Sun with that of the Times and assuming both sets of readers would want the result.
I wrote about the circle mechanic on my own blog and for HuffPost Tech last week: I agree that Twitter is the one facing stiff competition here, way before Facebook, Google are simply moving too fast for Twitter to keep up at the moment.
Let’s face it: since the start of this year what have Twitter done? They’ve introduced short URLS, which we already do ourselves, without analytics; they’ve introduced the @anywhere follow button; they’ve made better follow suggestions, introduced https and added a bunch more native languages.
But what have they not done? Twitter still doesn’t update live in the browser; you can still only search through your most recent 3200 tweets; search itself only goes back five days or so; there’s no more meta information in tweets than location, still; and their biggest announcement of the year, photos, is still on the horizon, and is insert-URL and not meta-tag based.
Google are going to overtake Twitter unless the actual service improves drastically, soon. And I don’t think Twitter have the time…
What happens when your business provides a service in which your clients want to remain anonymous?
In reply to BH:
Google did the same thing in the past. Primetime came and went and the company missed the boat. They should beta test in private.
As far as I remember, when Facebook was exclusively for colleges, it wasn’t promoted to the wider population in numerous newspaper articles? That’s publicity money can’t buy but Google has just frittered it away and frustrated people.
The lack of decent one-to-one messaging/chat and absence of groups so far mean that people won’t leave Facebook any time soon. I like some aspects of the interface but overall it doesn’t seem to be gripping my friends so far.
Also, having had my GMAIL account “temporarily disabled” for absolutely no good reason in the past and been forced to hand over my mobile phone number to get it back, I don’t trust Google enough to put my time and content into any service it has control of.
[...] Rory Cellan-Jones and Channel 4 News’ Benjamin Cohen – an early advocate who predicted Google+ could be a Twitter killer – are among those posting with [...]