Yesterday’s launch of the Google “+” suite of products was a pleasant surprise. Google’s “social network” project has long been rumored, and Google’s approach to social — a suite of independent tools — was forward-thinking. It is abundantly clear that Google has great minds working on this project; I enjoyed seeing Googlers I follow start Tweeting about their parts of “+”.
The knee-jerk reaction the announcement of these tools is to contrast them against “traditional” models of social software, such as the profile-centric ego network embodied by Facebook. “+,” much like Twitter and post-2007 Facebook, thrive on activity streams within a set of bounded networks; these tools move beyond a profile-centric notion of sociality and into content-rich activity streams. “+” treats these streams holistically – they could be comprised of links (e.g. Circles) or real time conversation (e.g. Hangouts). In a way, this next-generation “social networking” is somewhat of a return to roots, leveraging technologies and modes of interaction that are well-worn and comfortable rather than new and challenging.
The natural question for Google’s “+” is: Will it succeed? To consider this question, we must define success. One definition of success is displacing Facebook; I do not believe this is Google’s goal. Google’s long-term viability depends on social in the sense that search must be made social; to do this, Google must — through one way or another — discover our social networks and employ this information in relevance judgments. Google’s definition of success, I believe, is the creation of a technology that enables the enumeration and active maintenance of each user’s weighted social network going forward.
The maintenance of a network going forward implies long-term vibrancy – for “+” to be central to Google’s social reinvention, we must keep a copy of our up-to-date social networks in “+.” The logic here is simple: Google must be able to adapt to network dynamics to stay socially relevant. If you move to a new town or job and fail to update your “+” then the relevance of social search will suffer.
Over the years, I’ve thought and written about a few successful models for social networks. Sites such as Last.fm or Flickr depend on social objects around which we construct shared experience. LinkedIn succeeds because of latent value in networks; you probably don’t check LinkedIn a ton – but when you are in need LinkedIN may contain very powerful ties. Curation has emerged as a powerful model – think Tumblr other sites where highly selective sharing is the norm. Finally, the traditional model of social is that of the ego network, in which a site overlays your social networks with a technical infrastructure. Facebook or Myspace are canonical ego nets, and Google’s “+” fits squarely in this mold with promises to “bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software.”
As Google and countless other companies have discovered, the development of an ego-centric social network site is challenging. Getting past the standard UX/UI challenges, we must be motivated to use the software – and I have argued a key factor for success is that the site addresses a situationally relevant information need. Facebook was so successful because it captured a population in the midst of life change; the software was immensely useful for addressing the information needs of students. Perhaps my greatest worry about “+” is I can’t figure out how the software is situationally relevant.
At this stage, it seems that “+” attempts to differentiate based on privacy. That is, Google feels that monolithic models of sharing are “awkward” or “broken” – and the definition of sharing groups solves the problem. I have worked in privacy long enough to know two things. First, privacy is not a market differentiator for privacy-inelastic populations. Second, privacy is not a feature – it is a process. My work with Woody Hartzog on boundary regulation shows that privacy is just one of many motives for disclosure regulation. danah boyd and Alice Marwick’s latest draft on teen privacy practices highlights the practice of finding privacy in public. While I appreciate Google’s nod to the problems of boundary regulation, I am skeptical of the feature’s actual value.
Of course, there are plenty of other ways to drive interest to a social site. Designing something intrinsically cool is one. Designing something intrinsically valuable is another. Making a process less expensive — in terms of capital or labor — also works. I look at the Hangout product and I see something that I had to pay for from Skype or Adobe. But what I don’t see is a clear informational advantage to motivate use of the service, and that worries me.
With the launch of “+,” Google has demonstrated facility and creative thinking. Google has also clearly been chastened by Buzz, which was nothing less than a dangerous, brute-force attack on our social graphs. Google’s social search strategy requires our networks, and it requires networks that we maintain over time. To construct a vibrant social place, Google must move beyond cool design or cost displacement, it must create a product that is valuable, that truly betters our lives. That is Google’s challenge, and I will be interested to see how “+” rises to the challenge.
“…it must create a product that is valuable, that truly betters our lives.” I agree. One way Google+ might do that is by delivering consistently, substantially better search results for sufficiently common queries. A good many people have been complaining about what they feel is the declining quality of search results, whether Google’s or anyone else’s (e.g., http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/12/search-still-sucks/). If Google can make the promise of “social search” a compelling reality for even a modest number of early users of Google+, it could catch on in a big way, much as Google’s original product caught on in a world dominated by AltaVista.
Hi, Fred,
The other challenge in distinguishing itself based on privacy is the centrality of ad-based revenue to Google’s very existence. Will “privacy” mean not just allowing users to play around with various graphical representations of contextual/boundary regulation? Will it also mean, e.g., that Google doesn’t capture all of this rich data and deliver it (i.e., us) to advertisers in ways that disrespect those boundaries? For example, will its existing policies on “information sharing” remain in place?
“Privacy” is a concept that doesn’t sell – but I do think easy selectiveness could be a sell – certainly to the some sections of the population.
My own use of Facebook has dwindled to a trickle, because I have at least 3 distinct circles and Facebook doesn’t make it easy to have different conversations with those circles. (Please note, I said easy, rather than possible.)
This is not something a lot of students are interested in, but in a lot of ways the student market (despite replenishing every year) is rather saturated. Google+ may have the potential to “get there first” in demographics that Facebook (who appear to be plateau-ing somewhat) isn’t yet reaching.
[...] to opt out of a public profile.” Fred also delves in greater depth to the question of “What problem does Google+ solve,” and I’d like to explore that at greater length, here. Fred offers that [...]
Just thinking along your thoughts on pseudonymity – Google+’s “community standards” do state clearly that, while Google provides spaces on its services for anonymity, pseudonymity, and “identified,” Google+ is a space for “identified.”
That said, it differs from Facebook in that identity is not a strict, on-your-passport thing – pen names/stage names seem to be allowed (so no Michael Anti situations), for example. I just did a writeup on this, see website link :)
Hi Jillian – Good point. I suppose it is good that Google doesn’t enforce strict naming, but I’m not sure I give them that much credit. My name on Facebook isn’t the same as my passport – and lots of people use pseudonyms and name variants on Facebook. Without any sort of real apparatus to verify names, it strikes me that both policies are nominal and largely ineffectual (though, of course, there are cases of enforcement).
What rubs me the wrong way about Google’s naming policy is that it breaks exactly the problem Google is trying to solve (network segmentation). We may go by a different name at work (F. Daniel Smith, Esq.) and to friends/family (Frankie Smith) – with +, we are forced to decide on a single identity, and that identity is enforced across ALL Google profiles. If F. Daniel joins + as Frankie, this is now his identity across all Google services (Docs, Gmail, etc). This design decisions breaks multi-faceted identities and forces a unary identity within the service and across all Google platforms.
The more I think about these design decisions, the more I wonder if Google’s stated desire to support our sharing needs is anything but window dressing.
Fred, privacy per say may not be a differentiator, but what do you think about signal to noise ratio. Facebook and Twitter get less and less useful over time as one’s networks become more heterogenous.
A tool that helps maintain signal to noise ratio might be appealing – the challenge is to make the ongoing tweaks needed to maintain signal to noise to feel easy, painless and natural.