Future of Google+

I read the Forbes and business insider articles:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2015/02/26/exclusive-sundar-pichais-plan-to-keep-google-almighty/2/

 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-breaking-up-google-2015-2?utm_term=10+Things+In+Tech+You+Need+To+Know&nr_email_referer=1&utm_content=bufferfae08&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

This seems to be a major announcement from Sundar Pichai, Senior Vice President of Android, Chrome and Apps, mentioning Google+ could be broken down into different components.  Primarily, he meant that Google Photos and Hangouts would be separated from Google+.  At the same time, he also assured that none of the Google products are disappearing or closing down. This is especially interesting since from a social media perspective, Google+ could not make any significant impact as Facebook made. In fact, currently Google+ is not even in the top 5 in the list of leading social networks based on the number of active users. While Facebook currently leads with about 1.366 billion active users, Google+ is far behind at number 7 with 343 million active users. Please refer to the following link:

http://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/

To understand the future of Google+, it is necessary to briefly discuss the history. I think most would have already forgotten Orkut by now. Orkut was a social networking website owned and operated by Google. The service was designed to help users meet new and old friends and maintain existing relationships, a social media platform. It started in 2004 and soon had many users world-wide especially in Brazil and India until 2008. Facebook also launched later in 2004 and ensured it was the most popular in the US and most of the Europe. Soon, Orkut could not match the advanced features and the tremendous growth of Facebook. At the end of April 2010, Orkut had 19.7 million unique visitors compared to Facebook, with 18 million visitors worldwide. Facebook grabbed the number one position for the first time in July 2010 with 20.9 million visitors, up 179%, a year ago. Since then, Orkut could never catch-up and had to be closed for ever last year in September 2014.

In addition to Facebook’s growth and its ease of use especially with mobile devices, I think another major reason for Orkut’s demise was Google was focusing on Google+ instead of enhancing and saving Orkut. Google+ was born in 2011. Google+ seemed to integrate in a better way as compared to Orkut on mobile devices but still has not caught up with Facebook yet. I think the key advantage is that Google+ provides a way to ensure users signed in to different Google services could have a common identity across all products. For example, if one is logged into his or her Google+ account in Chrome browser, he or she will be automatically logged into Gmail, Google Drive, and the Google's other services. This integrated user experience is critical for Google to ensure it has the accurate customer behavior. This is perhaps one of the reasons why Google+ is still very useful for Google even though it is not having a deep market penetration with active users as compared to the leaders such as Facebook. With that in mind, I think Google+ would soon be re-branded as an integrated platform for Google as compared to a Social Media network.

Reference:

http://knowtechie.com/google-plus-227/

http://marketingland.com/google-breakup-coming-photos-hangouts-119730

 

"Tweeting" the News

Online newspapers already have enough trouble developing successful marketing models for their webpages. Now, with the current demand for up-to-the-minute news, the same newspapers are scrambling to keep up with the reporting of social networking sites. As more and more social networking sites penetrate society, many are finding that the sites are developing a speed and reach that rivals some of the best news outlets. PaidContent.org's Brian Solis even referred to Twitter as TNN, the "Twitter News Network," because it is continuing to break news and trends faster than more traditional media outlets.

While better access to news may be good, it also poses some problems. Social networking webpages may have the latest news, but is the "reporting" always accurate? Can a website edited by any individual with an online account really rival the quality of a true staple of the news world like The New York Times?

Interestingly enough, many reporters are now turning to social media sites in their reporting. 55% of journalists sited social media as being either "important" or "somewhat important" in developing their stories, with blogs coming in as the #1 social media info source for reporters and Twitter coming in at #3. Does this mean that the social media users are actually reporting to the reporters? And when putting together their advertising campaigns, where will advertisers choose to put their money--in the struggling online newspapers, or in the blossoming social media industry?


Check out "The Information Divide Between Traditional and New Media" here:

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-the-information-divide-between-traditional-and-new-media/

MySpace... how do we really monetize them and other social networks...

I came across this article (http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article?article_id=136617) of how Vitaminwater is linking up with MySpace Music to offer free mp3 downloads for the people who buy their new line, Sync. It's great news for drinkers of Sync and serves as a very effective campaign for Vitaminwater, especially with the large following in MySpace.

However, if you read the article a little further, it actually goes into the large question that social networking sites face. How do we monetize them? Labels who've invested in MySpace music is frustrated that even though there are 27 million unique visitors, those who actually download music are few and far between. (which also goes to what we learnt in class: What metrics should we really use to measure performance? The number of unique visitors is impressive, but it's not drawing in the $$...)

Even in a recent interview with Fortune magazine, both the Facebook founder and Chief Operations Officer (whom used to work at Google), acknowledged openly that they have no idea how to effectively monetize the sites. What was weird to me was that the venture capitalists are not in a hurry to get their return on investment as well.

I'm pretty sure there are monetization opportunities (advertisers, sale of apps, games), but the key challenge is for the users (like us) who'd pick up the tab and use them. Till they reach a critical mass of paring-users, it may seem that it would be very far down the road before the money comes in for them.

Social Media Detractors Continue to Sound Off

Even as social media companies like Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube continue to amass users, there continues to be no dearth of critics who doubt the value and sustainability of a service that to-date appears to have little revenue-generating capacity. Since simply railing against the service as being a meaningless social-contact medium for vapid youths hasn’t stopped the phenomenon, it appears that the scientific community is now weighing in.

Much like Hulu claims to want to rot your brain into a cottage-cheese like mush, to be scooped out with a melon-baller and gobbled up (Hulu, an evil plot to destroy the world), social networking sites, according to Oxford University neuroscientist Susan Greenfield, may be contributing to the infantilization of the brain. She worries that “these technologies are infantilising the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a small attention span and who live for the moment.”

Her argument is that if the young brain is exposed from the outset to a world of fast action and reaction, such rapid interchange might accustom the brain to operate over such timescales. When in the real world such responses are not immediately forthcoming, perhaps we will see such behaviors and call them attention deficit disorder.

Of course, without a scientific report to back up her claims, the video game and social networking communities are content to ignore the claims.

Billy Bragg Thinks Musicians Deserve a Cut of Lucrative Bebo.com Deal

Musician Billy Bragg wrote an Op-Ed in the New York Times on Saturday sparked by the recent $850 million sale of Bebo.com to AOL; in it he argues that musicians who posted their original work on the site are entitled to a cut of that astronomic sum, since their work contributed to the site's high traffic. For those unfamiliar, Bebo.com is a social networking website akin to MySpace whose primary membership is in Great Britain. Bragg is an outspoken British musician and political activist, who in 2006 publicly shamed the creators of MySpace into revising their terms and conditions in order to clarify their previously cloudy policy regarding proprietary rights to the music posted on their site. While I tend to agree with Bragg’s politics, and applaud his efforts on behalf of MySpace musicians, I’m not sure that I can get behind him on this issue. While his ideals are in the right place, he fails to address the important structural changes that would necessarily unfold from the introduction of royalty payments to musicians.

Fundamental to any successful networking site is the symbiotic relationship that exists between member and website. The website provides a space where members can post and view information, and in some cases, media; in return the information that the user makes available to fellow members attracts new members and site visitors. Bragg’s suggestion that the sites should pay their members for their contribution would surely upset this give-and-take in multiple ways. Not only would it inevitably lead to the sites being forced to charge for memberships, it would also necessitate the formulation of a “pay-per-click” system by which those musicians whose pages had the most visitors were paid the most money. But how do you determine what, besides music, is worthy of financial reward? Would those members who poured hours of their time into witty and artfully written personal profiles also demand the same recompense?

Furthermore, Bragg’s suggested revisions to the structure of these sites fails to thoroughly address the fact that musicians, and artists of every medium, have almost always needed the help of an intermediary, whether it be a manager, a gallerist, or a PR firm, to achieve commercial success. In order to access the type of exposure and platform that sites like Bebo and MySpace offer free of charge, musicians have traditionally paid large fees to major record labels. Bragg briefly touches on this argument and denies its veracity:

The claim that sites such as MySpace and Bebo are doing us a favor by promoting our work is disingenuous. Radio stations also promote our work, but they pay us a royalty that
recognizes our contribution to their business. Why should that not apply to the Internet too?

Bragg fails to note an important difference between radio stations and networking sites, and that is selectivity. Not every song makes it on the radio. Only the songs that would seem to have the most commercial viability are selected, otherwise radio stations wouldn’t pay for them. If Bebo instated a policy whereby musicians who post their work received compensation, then they would most certainly be forced to become more selective about what music they allowed to be posted. Musicians whose songs were deemed less appealing to the masses would likely be unable to post their music. This quickly eliminates the concept of universal access within these forums, a destruction of the very foundation upon which these sites have prospered.

The internet has turned the music industry on its head, and the major record labels have suffered the most; they failed to see it coming, and they continue to fail to address it in progressive ways. As Bragg notes, most musicians are also still trying to figure out how best to navigate the new possibilities of distribution and marketing that have been opened up by the internet. While I wholeheartedly support Bragg’s efforts to promote an open discourse about these issues, I don’t know that introducing a fee structure to social networking sites is necessarily the best solution.

And so the post microsoft decline of facebook begins...

So facebook just announced a new way to create marketing revenues. The basic jist is that consumers, based on their profiles, will be contacted by branded companies and asked to promote the brand among their friends. It sounds like most marketers are pretty excited about this and are comparing the ingenuity of it to that of adwords, when it was first released.

My own gut tells me that this may work initially and that some people will feel honoured Americans take note of the correct way to spell this word) to have been selected as a 'social networking hub/leader/influencer' and will probably start encouraging their friends as designed. However, as soon as people start to feel like branding tools, they will rail against what's going on. Additionally, formerly 'cool' friends may quickly turn into 'spammer buds' that are to be avoided at all costs. Then people will see facebook as not being a safe online environment anymore and will feel tracked and monitored too much. What will they do? They'll leave and go wherever is next.

If you want to read more about this, there's a decent enough article on adsense

Facebook Fatigue?

Just in case you don't read all of your industry e-newsletters, here's a compilation of articles about Web 2.0 superstar Facebook. Once an also-ran to the MySpace juggernaut, it has gained tremendous momentum in the past 9 months and is clearly being viewed as the company to beat in Social Networking. Here's just a sample of what's being reported on and speculated about the company:

Facebook: New Threat to LinkedIn? (Just An Online Minute)
http://blogs.mediapost.com/online_minute/?p=1576

Facebook Charges Forward (USA Today)
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2007-10-02-facebook-suitors_N.htm

Facebook "Barnacles" Find Success (The New York Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/technology/04facebook.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=technology

Three Warnings For Facebook (Wired)
http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/10/three-potential.html

Facebook Grabs Fed-Up MySpace Users, Lifting Value (Bloomberg)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a8RinPzEzIPQ

Facebook Initiative Will Help Define Digital Future (MediaDailyNews On Media)
http://blogs.mediapost.com/on_media/?p=18

Facebook Targets Musicians (Just An Online Minute)
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=68803

Would love to ready anyone's predictions on the future of the Social Networking space. Will Facebook topple both MySpace and LinkedIn? Will Microsoft value the company at over $10B? Can Facebook actually develop a sustainable business model?

MySpace: Design Anarchy That Works

The social-networking site is no looker, and the freedom it gives users leads to some pretty loud results. But that may be the secret to its success

It came late to the market -- so late, in fact, that by the time it launched, people were already declaring the product category dead. It offered no new technology -- virtually every feature of the site was an imitation of something someone else had already done. It looked amateurish, lacking even the most basic level of visual consistency and appeal, never mind the high-gloss polish of its venture-backed competitors.

It seemed like an also-ran. But in less than two years it built up a community of more than 20 million users. And then it sold for half a billion dollars.

The site is MySpace, a social-networking space where people connect with their friends and make new ones as they share their interests and personalities through the blogs, photos, comments, video, and audio they post. MySpace has developed a particular appeal for young people because the site makes it especially easy for bands to set up pages to communicate with their fans.

Read the entire article.

I found this article particularly interesting given my distaste for MySpace and its poor design concept.