I was reading up on what this whole Google+ fervor is about. Maybe it's because I'm getting older but I find it frankly quite useless. Why do I need another social media outlet and why would I want to have to create another network from scratch (although I can see why that would be appealing to some)? Can't I just do it all on Facebook, Twitter or with real life conversations? There doesn't seem to be much differentiation in its services, however, the Circles feature is neat and helps users connect with different segments of their social groups. To me, Google+ seems a bit contrived; it is just a way for Google to compete with Facebook in terms of consumers and page views. Is this just a corporate initiative or is there something more substantive behind Google's new venture? I was recently reading an article about the
privacy concerns with Google+, based on its Terms of Service:
You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.
This sounds a bit scary.
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To build up on this, I was asking myself the same question about aSmallWorld, for which I recently got invited. I was quite curious about this so-called “exclusive network” and wanted to understand why some people seem so desperate to get an invite (yes, there are plenty of forum with people asking for invites and even people trying to sell invites!). I must say I was a little disappointed by what I found. So far, I don’t really see the interest of it: It is not really for jobs, not really for friends (my friends that are in the network don’t really use it neither), not really for sharing news, etc. Even though the site allows users to post job offers and participate in discussions, I don’t really see what makes it better that Facebook or Linkedin or now Google+.
aSmallWorld has attempted to create an Internet niche by cultivating an air of exclusivity. However, with around 600,000 users today, I guess that the network has lost some of its original appeal. And indeed, if I am in, then it’s definitely not only for very rich/exclusive people!
While a lot of users still believe the network is very useful, especially for business, it seems that most of its original members now prefer smaller and much more exclusive sites such as Decayenne, Elixio and Luxurysociety.
I believe ASW needs to transform itself as a product, because so far, it doesn’t seem that it has a strategy or any real differentiation factor (except the “exclusivity” factor which doesn’t seem to be the case anymore). And from a business perspective, ASW is stuck at a point where it has members and needs orders of magnitude to make money. It needs to up advertising and expand the kinds of groups it advertises with. It needs to possibly change its attitude and encourage users to invite more of their friends, all while trying to make them still feel like they're in a special, exclusive group. It needs to basically do all kinds of things that its original user base is horrified by in order to generate significant revenue from a certain percentage of its user base.
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