Monday, March 9, 2015

Should Your Business Go the Way of Google+?

Another great article from my good friend, speaker and social media guru, Dave Nelsen. 
He's so smart!!



On a single day in early March, two compatriots independently sent me different articles about Google+. The story from CNN Money was titled, “Google+ is about to be broken up.” The piece from The Independent (a UK publication) was titled, “Google Plus might be dead, as ‘Streams’ and ‘Photos’ take its place.”
As a devoted Apple fan I find it rather odd to be helping tout Google, Apple’s archenemy in mobile. Google ‘stole’ countless ideas from Apple’s iOS (aka iPhone operating system) for their Android operating system and today powers more than 6-times as many smartphones globally as Apple. Of course tablets (iPads, which also run iOS) are a different story, still favoring Apple.
For whatever reason - probably because everybody likes to see big successes (people or companies) stumble - these articles present the Google+ “evolution" as negative news. The Germans have a specific word for the secret delight that we all take in seeing another’s misfortunes: Schadenfreude.
But is Google+ really failing?
Perhaps you’re familiar with compete.com (aka an independent, third-party measurement service) that tracks unique monthly visitors to virtually all websites. According to compete.com between February 2014 and January 2015 (the most recent data available as I write) Google+ (plus.google.com) grew by almost 40% and now exceeds 65 million monthly users (about 20% of the US population).
Also according to compete.com, after peaking in March 2014 Facebook.com visitors actually declined by 4% through January 2015. It now looks like a definite down trend. Yes, according to these stats Facebook is still 2.5 times larger than Google+, but a year ago Facebook was more than 3.5 times bigger. Of course this is just one measure; it doesn’t tell the whole story (level of engagement, etc.). Still, Google+ doesn’t exactly look dead to me.
Breaking up is not the same thing as being dead. In fact, it looks like Facebook is breaking up too. Have you noticed that Facebook never integrated Instagram (a $1B purchase) or WhatsApp (a $22B acquisition)? At the same time Facebook now offers an enhanced news feed as a separate app (Paper) ... and their texting function as yet another separate app (Messenger). I now use these various apps far more than Facebook.com.
Facebook and Google+ are both doing essentially the same thing ... not because they’re failing, but because all businesses must adapt to the mobile revolution. They’re being driven by the tsunami of smart mobile devices, which now outsell traditional computers by 6-1 (and are pulling away). I predict that someday Google+ and Facebook will be held up together as models of leaders that made the early transition - from the web to mobile - that all winning companies will make to survive.
Google clearly cares deeply about succeeding in “social” (Google+ is their fourth try, following Orkut, Wave, and Buzz) and they have awesome market power. You would ignore Google+ (or the resulting collection of social/mobile/communication apps that evolve from it) at your company’s peril because Google also dominates mobile (Android), search and video, services that are together evolving under a new umbrella called Google “My Business.”
Remember that half of all Internet traffic starts with a search. Google will happily send traffic to your competitors if not to you. Even as an Apple fan, I plan to be Google’s friend too.


You can find more formal details here: 

To contact Dave directly:
Dave@DialogConsulting.com

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