When Google debuted its social network, this time for real, this time
for really real, about six weeks ago, it was big news. Once Google+
arrived, many wondered whether or not a true Facebook rival was finally
here. People focused on features, apps, APIs, and Google's potential to
scale to measure whether this thing would ever be a real Facebook rival,
or another dud, like Google Buzz.
While all those things are all important, there's another factor at work
in the rise of Google+, which, by most measures, has been incredible.
And that's Facebook. More specifically, the things about Facebook that
annoy and frustrate its users. When PCMag put the question to readers,
"Will you ditch Facebook for Google+," a whopping 50 percent said they
would. Even if most of those who answered yes don't actually end up
quitting Facebook, that statistic illustrates a general frustration with
the service that's probably familiar to anyone who's on it.
Facebook has been annoying its users probably since its inception. Now,
every piece of software has its problems. Some users of iPhoto might be
annoyed that it doesn't have built-in integration with Snapfish. Twitter
users may not like that a direct message looks almost identical to an
@reply (Anthony Weiner certainly doesn't). That's normal. Facebook's
issues go deeper, though. Facebook's integration into our lives is so
personal, so far-reaching, that when it does something users don't like,
irritation can quickly become outrage.
There have been numerous cases of Facebook making some kind of of change
to its features, users responding with an uproar, and then Facebook
proceeds to make the change anyway. A good example is friend lists,
which were recently replaced with Groups. Facebook gave its users lists,
noted that (after a while) only 5 percent of users actually used them,
and then took them away.
"I know that they say only 5 percent of users really cared about that
feature, but they cared about that feature a lot," says Paul Allen,
founder of Ancestry.com, Facebook app developer, and an self-described
unofficial Google+ statistician. "In the end, everyone had to comply and
go along with all the Facebook changes, some of them pretty radical,
because they had no choice."
Unitl now, of course. There have been other social networks since
Facebook came on the scene, sure, but Google+ is the only one that has
the features, the scale, and—possibly most important—the buzz to be a
real Facebook competitor. Until now, quitting Facebook was a difficult
prospect. Not necessarily physically difficult (though Facebook does
bury how to leave the service on its site), but socially difficult. I
personally know at least a half-dozen people who left the network at one
time or another only to inevitably return. The reason? Some variation
of "All my friends are on it, and I don't want to miss out."
In other words, there was really nowhere to go that offered the same
experience, so they returned. But now that there's another place for
people to get social online, things could be different the next time
someone walks away. Google+ isn't quite the Facebook alternative Google
wishes it was, however, since the new service doesn't actually have all
your friends on it—yet. While the growth has been extremely rapid, it's
still 25 million to Facebook's 750 million.
"Google has a big chicken and egg problem," says social media analyst
Lou Kerner. "Nobody's going to use it until people are on it. But that's
a problem that all social networks have. But to the degree that anyone
can solve it, it's Google."
Even though Google+'s member base is a drop in Facebook's bucket, it's
actually a pretty notable drop. Google was selective about whom it let
into its private playground when it debuted its social network, making
sure the initial users were, in a word, smart. What Kerner sees as a
weakness of Google+—that it's been limited more or less to the digital
"cognoscenti"—Allen sees as a strength. Google+ is already the cool new
thing, and a dynamic population of first-generation users (see the
slideshow above) multiplies that perception.
"The geek crowd has fallen in love with Google+," says Allen. "Those
first 10 or 20 million people who first jumped into Google+, it's like
the cream of the crop in technical and professional circles. I have
never seen this kind of online discourse and communication."
In the end, the cool factor could be the one that ultimately matters the
most. A couple of months ago, when it looked like Facebook's popularity
in the U.S. was starting to wane, I entertained the theory (one of
many) that Facebook's time might have come. I dismissed it right
away—rightly, since user engagement on the site is still rising—but all
endings have a beginning. Facebook, for all its impressive features and
vast statistics, not to mention a looming IPO said to be potentially
worth $100 billion, just isn't cool anymore. Even Allen says the people
he talks to about Facebook say "It feels so much like MySpace."
Cool, almost by definition, isn't quantifiable. But there's virtually no
question that Google+ currently has loads of it, and Facebook is
running dry. Mark Zuckerberg probably isn't losing any sleep over
Google+ just yet, and maybe he's shouldn't given Facebook's collosal
size and influence. But he should definitely think twice before pulling
the trigger on the next Facebook feature with questionable privacy
implications. As soon as Google+ opens its doors fully (it's still
invitation-only and limited to users 18 or older), every single Facebook
user will have the chance to try something new. And they may decide
they like it better.
