If you listen to all those social media wanna-bees who jumped on the Google+ bandwagon as the latest and greatest social media tool. Seems as soon as they received their beta invite the avalanche began.
Proving that ‘tigers eat their young’ those same pundits are already calling Google+….the next GoogleWave.
Wave? Oh, how quickly did you forget about Google’s last B-L-U-N-D-E-R in social media? Feels like yesterday Google was so slowly handing out Wave invites that it actually killed user adoption by the time they got around to “launching” the product.
Wave was so over-hyped by those same pundits who were also on twitter begging for a Wave invite. I recall them wishing they could be part of the Wave hype….until the exact moment they logged into Wave they found out how complex the UI was presented. Boy did Google deserve one hard shot right to the groin for that social train wreck.
So those who consider themselves social media leaders (or innovators) are actually voicing their displeasure with Google+ after its been public for just 30 days? Oh the irony. I cannot help but relish that quote from earlier this year that puts all those social media so called leaders or innovators into context:
“99.5 Percent Of Social Media Experts Are Clowns”
-Gary Vayerchuk interview
I attended a social media briefing two weeks ago where the guest ‘innovator’ actually stated Google+ would “totally wipe out LinkedIn” but not kill Twitter. Interesting since LinkedIn plays to the business hiring community. And with a mid-May IPO valuation of $4.3 billion (yes that’s B — as in Billion) I somehow think the hype got the better of them yet again.
Expectations regarding Google and social media are simply out of control. It will never be what any of those pundits want. With today’s accepted fast user-adoption model it might be time to re-evaluate a “3 strikes and your out” policy. Will it be strike-two and your out for Google?
I hope not especially since they have been upfront to keep business away for the moment from embracing Google+ as a replacement for corporate Facebook. It helps when you generate AdSense revenue of $2.04 billion.
Here is one sales method Google successfully employed in the UK to secure Wave penetration into the Higher Education community: Tie Wave accounts to every University student, faculty, staff and alumni when the institution migrates costly legacy email services to Google Apps for Education. Wave made inroads in UK Universities using that exact strategy. If Google truly wants Plus to establish a social media juggernaut, then make Plus a standard component of the Google Apps for Education strategy. And throw in Google Voice for good measure too.
If Wave was killed due to languishing in beta Plus has a chance. Today Google can scale more efficiently than it could just four years ago (Google server infographic) However even with their infrastructure in place they have stumbled a bit out of the gate regarding Plus.
But its not a killer after just 30 days people!
Remember – in the end its all about managing expectations. Unfortunately social media pundits expect Google to scale Plus into the stratosphere where Facebook sits. Even with all of Google’s servers they are still not engineered to take advantage of this type of roll-out strategy…..yet.