PRINT

What is Google+ trying to achieve?

with S. Rajeev, Adjunct Faculty

Google+: Social Networking Justified?

SR: While Twitter is clearly a broadcasting mechanism which doesn’t require users to post much information about themselves and Facebook at the other extreme end of the spectrum, Google+ is poised somewhere in between. Google+ too could develop a marketing strategy and improve user convenience similar to that of Facebook where different sites would allow you to use your Google+ IDs to sign up as an alternative to email IDs.

SR: Google created Google+ out of necessity. While Google’s core competency is its search engine, it cannot search for information inside the Facebook domain. The definition of search is today redefined by social networking sites in the sense that, you might as well ask your friends for say some restaurant choices or good travel options, rather than using search engines. If that information is in the Facebook pages, Google cannot access it. Google definitely wants to be a leader in this market too and hence Google+ is intended to compete with Facebook.

Google+: A Winning Proposition?

SR: Google+ was not created to recover from the failures of Google Wave and Buzz. Google+ is a god example of Architectural Innovation with core concept of social networking reinforced and the way in which the components are linked together in terms of new features, changed. Though Google+ provides a plethora of new features including ‘Google Circles’, ‘Sparkz’, ‘Hangout’, it has a sustainability issue in the long run because it becomes difficult to add novelty beyond a point. Today, the drawback with Circles is that it might lack activity due to infrequent posts and might lose the connectivity which is the very essence of social networking. On a lighter note, while in Facebook, unfriending a person is not an easy thing to do, as the other person will learn of it, in Google Circles, you could probably create a Circle named ‘unwanted connections’. Statistics says that Facebook has 63% of its users as females, hopefully, Circles would achieve a better gender ratio. On the whole, Google+ is good, but not earth-shaking.

SR: Sparks, which is similar to Google Alerts on topics of interest and Hangout which facilitates multi-user video conferencing are two particularly useful add-ons in Google+. Hangout can be termed much more efficient and reliable when compared with Webex, Skype, etc. Besides being able to remotely connect friends, it could also be used for corporate meetings and other business applications such as recruitment and interviews. However, the main attraction for users to open up accounts in Google+ is its Circles feature, which provides more privacy for users in terms of random people being able to view their posts and other personal information.

Ethical Considerations

SR: There is always a tradeoff: you are generally trading your privacy and personal information for something else for e.g., you get Gmail, a free mail service, but you are letting Google know what your interests are. Similarly, you get a Google map, which is very useful for navigation, but then that means advertisers can track your location and at the same time send you location based ads. It is a question of how much privacy you are willing to trade for other things that are also valuable.

SR: There will be many fights by people with violently opposite opinions. This is not different from what happens in real life, except that people tend to be far blunter on the net and in email than in person. Copyright violation will be there, but it is probably not much of a problem. This is why the whole digital rights management movement and copy protection have been rendered somewhat superfluous by technology changes. Many people are willing to pay for content they consume, so long as it is easy to pay for and doesn't cost too much.

Conclusion

On the whole, Google is trying to corner Facebook in every way to emerge as the undisputed leader in every method of search possible. This is because the definition of search is today redefined by social networking sites in the sense that, where you might ask a friend for something rather than query the same on a search engine. Google+ is clearly a case of incremental innovation which is set to provide a host of features that users are really looking for, e.g., privacy provided by Google Circles.

Profile

S. Rajeev is currently an Adjunct Faculty of Innovation and Strategy at IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore and IIM Kozhikode and at the Asian School of Business, Trivandrum. He is currently an Investment Committee member at Canbank Venture Capital Fund. He has had extensive experience in the IT industry in Silicon Valley and India, working as a Consultant at BlueAlly (A Megasoft Company), Saraansh Software; Director of Java and Strategic Alliances at Sun Microsystems and of Product Marketing at Siemens; Marketing Manager at Sun; Product Manager at Ada at AT&T Bell Labs; Associate of Strategy Practice at Booz Allen Hamilton and as Member of Technical Staff of Compilers at Bell Labs. He has also served as the Vice President at Bonsai Networks and Megasoft. He was on the investment committees of the Canara Bank Venture Capital Fund and the Kerala Venture Capital Fund. He was educated at the Stanford Business School, Syracuse University and IIT, Madras. and as a guest faculty in the Strategy and Marketing area at the Asian School of Business. He had his education in reputed schools such as Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Syracuse University and IIT, Madras.

• What is New About Google+
• Sustenance of Google+

• Value Proposition of Google+
• Battle Against Facebook

• Intrusion of Privacy
• Common Issues in Social Networking