Now let me be straightforward here and say that this isn’t meant to be a Google bashing post.  Even though I argue that Google has lost its innovative spark over the past few years there are still products of theirs that I use on a daily basis – like Google Voice.  What I really wanted to find out, to ask of others, was not so much “Why didn’t Google+ succeed?” but rather “Why aren’t you using it?” – of course you can’t have one without the other, but for each question there are different answers.

So I e-mailed a few friends and talked to a few colleagues who had used, or are still using, Google+ and asked them their thoughts.  The answers I received back pretty much followed a single thread, mainly they saw nothing “exciting”, “different” or “new” about Google+ compared to their usual hangout (Facebook for almost all of them).  One colleague of mine put it this way, “It’s like driving a 2010 Toyota Camry with 20,000 miles on it and the car dealer calling you up and asking if you want to trade it in on an identical 2010 Toyota Camry with 20,000 miles – what’s the point?” 

Google+ never had anything that differentiated it from Facebook.  The one thing it did have going for it was the Google name – and true enough when it was first released we saw this massive frenzy of people who wanted to get in on the ground floor.  Nothing says prestige like exclusivity, and Google did a great job of making it a “you can only get in if you know someone who is already in” type affair.  This kept the initial momentum for the service high for a period of time, but people soon found out that once you were “in” there really wasn’t anything “cool” to keep you around.  Worse yet, the majority of your friends were still hanging out over on Facebook and a party of one gets very lonely after a while.

Meanwhile … In grocery stores marketers use a variety of techniques to watch what you buy and how you decide what brand of peanut butter to purchase.  They use everything from hidden cameras to researchers just blending in with other shoppers to observe your behavior.  I decided to borrow a page from the professional market research playbook then and sort of wandered the aisles of the Internet to see just how much people were using Google+.  It soon became apparent that this was one brand of peanut butter that people weren’t buying.

First I went seeking out popular news articles from some of the major news sites that have Google+ tie-ins.  My first stop was MSNBC where I checked out a number of popular news stories and decided to use one about the death of Andy Rooney as my example (full MSNBC article located at http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45173371/ns/today-entertainment/).

Just take a quick look at the social media share statistics listed for this article.  Over 27,000 Facebook recommendations; 4,700 other shares (e-mail, LinkedIn, Newsvine, etc) – and only 58 Google+ shares.  Compared to Facebook that represents just two-tenths of one percent.  Not exactly a rip-roaring testament to the popularity of Google+.

It was recently announced that Google+ is throwing the doors wide open for everyone – including businesses to set up their own pages.  The exclusivity factory is now moot.  However, again I have to ask – where’s the innovation?  Sure, I can put my business page on Google+ but why?  What are you going to offer me that the other guy isn’t?  And why should I do it at all if all my customers are hanging out on another site?

It’s sad to see Google lose its way with innovation and become a “me too” player.  If you look at the history of both AOL and Yahoo you can see the same fate pretty much played out the same way with both of them.  Yahoo created a lot of firsts for the online world, but then they started slipping.  Instead of innovating they started to copy, acquire, play the “me too” game.  Now, they are pretty much known for only two products – Yahoo Mail and Flickr.  Some argue that these two pieces of Yahoo are the only real saleable assets they have left.  Sad.

What’s the future hold for Google+?  Without innovative new features I don’t see the need for Facebook to get worried about the competition anytime soon.  The problem is that people have already tried it out, kicked the tires, and left.  It’s going to be hard for Google to get them come take a test drive again.  It’s going to be even harder for them to convince people to try their brand of peanut butter.

Blogs were great back in the days when pretty much all the content came from the “big companies”.  Blogs were a way for people to have their voice heard and to actually use the web interactively instead of just one-way.  It was no longer acceptable on the web to have a static web page in which you blasted out information about your product/company/etc and only update it once a year and have no way for the readers to interact with you and the content.  Blogs allowed us (and businesses) to update their sites non-stop and for discussions to be two-way.  They were the first step into the Web 2.0 world.

Today, blogs are just a pain to maintain – at least from my perspective.  It’s so much easier for me to Tweet my current thoughts via Twitter in 160 characters or less, or to update my Facebook status (and even then I’m wondering is Facebook is getting to be a little 2000 and late).  In a nutshell, I find that Twitter is giving me everything I need without taking up a lot of my time.  Even better, its allowing me to find the topics that interest me via a real-time search engine.  The important stuff bubbles to the top because of the re-tweeting taking place, and those people I trust the most I follow so I can always see what they have to say.

Now before I say blogs are dead and gone, let me state I do think that blogs still have a purpose.  After all, you can’t dive very deep into a subject when you are limited to 160 characters!  I think blogs are becoming the website instead of being a part of the website.  Take my site for example, sure I have this “blog” if you will on the front page – but really the entire site is a blog.  I’ve just adapted it to display the information I care about.  I might not update it for a month, or I may update it every day for a week – but the idea here is to share information that I want others to add to and use over time.

Compare this to Twitter where I am interested in sharing information and collaborating in real-time.  A year from now (or even a month from now) I am not interested in what happened on Twitter 30 days ago – I only want to know what is going on right here and right now.  A real-time search engine.

Blogs at one time were the public squares of our time – where everyone went to shout out their thoughts, opinions and advice.  Today that role has been taken over by Twitter – and instead of a lengthy speech we hoped a few people would read now have bullet points that we shout out to the crowds in short, digestible chunks.  Sort of like moving from a Microsoft Word document to a PowerPoint slide if you think about.

How many other companies do you know (especially ones that are as big as Sears) that would engage with you 1-to-1? 

If you aren’t on Twitter, the only question I have for you is, “Why?”  Get on there and then start following Sears to see how Twitter can be used as a customer service tool.

In the past year, I’ve talked about a lot of things with a lot of people.  I’ve interacted with social and professional networks.  I’ve written in my blog, and commented on others.  What type of digital footprint have I left behind?

What will the rest of the world find out about you? What will you find out about the rest of the world?

* World clouds generated by Wordle.

The closer you get to someone, something, some brand, some organization… the harder it is to demonize it, objectify it or hate it.

 

So, if you want to not be hated, open up. Let people in. Engage. Interact.

So many companies are scared to death to let customers interact with them — and then they wonder why they are hated.  Microsoft was all too famous for doing this, for being secretive and closed during a period when the rest of the computing industry was going to open standards.  They finally realized the error of their ways — but after how much damage was done?

Will it really hurt you or your company to develop an API that others can use to help make your product better?  What about hosting a forum or a blog for others to leave comments on.  One-way communications is dead in marketing, and trying to keep that method alive will lead to people finding ways to demonize your product and your brand.

Regardless of what you think of Obama (and for the record, I’m a big O-man fan), what took place last night – and all throughout the 2008 election – is a sign of how the social landscape has changed.  In years past it would take hours, sometimes days, for researchers and survey firms to tabulate how people felt about an event such as this.  Even then, they were highly limited in what they could measure.  It was impossible to measure second-by-second response, and you only got a few people which (you hoped) represented the masses.  It was time consuming, inaccurate and limited.

Fast forward to 2009 and the social networks have transformed how we view any event, political or not.  Almost instantaneous reaction to the different parts of Obama’s speech flew through the Twittersphere.  Facebook and CNN provided a direct link so you could not only watch online, but also provide real-time feedback of what you thought.  Responses and reactions by the masses were available within seconds, not days.  The Whitehouse blog (let’s not forget this is the first Administration with a blog!) was updated with video and transcripts of the speech within minutes of it ending.  You just know that Obama’s administration was keeping tabs on what worked – and what didn’t.

We now live in a digitally connected world in which our social networks are a part of us just as much as the networks we form with our family, co-workers and “offline” friends.  No longer is it acceptable to “wait for the data” or to claim that you aren’t sure of how something played out in the marketplace.  We no longer need the polltakers or the research firms to tell us how the world reacted – we know how they reacted, and we are a part of that reaction.

The transformation to social media is still in the early stages, but nobody can deny it has already crossed the point of no return – and let’s be honest, who would want to return to the old way?  We know the value of being active in the social media; and we know what happens if we aren’t.    This is the golden era for the 3rd generation of marketing – and it’s exciting to watch it all unfold.

Think I’m off base or right on the money?  You could leave a comment, but how about dropping me a tweet instead?

So what do I mean by this?  Start by looking at the URL for my blog.  You’ll notice it isn’t being hosted at some 3rd party blog service, or being run off a commercial site.  Instead my blog is being powered by my own domain – robertstinnett.com.  I’ve also setup my email and Messenger programs to all tie back through this domain.  It is important that you register your name as a domain as soon as possible before someone else gets it and does “who knows what” with it.  Even if you have no skills whatsoever in domain management take 5 minutes to go to Godaddy.com and search for and register your name as a domain.  You want to make sure that you retain the power of your name and securing your domain is an important first step – if you are not already too late.

Next, let’s hit the social networking sites.  Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Bebo, etc.  Here you want to practice the same thing as above, except you want to try and secure as your username your real name.  On almost every social networking site I belong to my username is my real name.  Again, the philosophy here is you want to make sure you control it before someone else does.  Plus, by by securing your name you are forming a 1:1 relationship between searches for you and results pertaining to you.  You are, in essence, helping to build your own rank.  Call it SEO for peeps like me!

Next, integrate!  By this I mean that don’t make each social networking site an isolated island in the middle of nowhere.  Use the tools provided to integrate and share between the sites.  This is an excellent way to make sure that all your social sites stay up to date and it also helps make your personal brand stronger in search!  See the pattern here?  It’s the same techniques we’d use for commercial clients, just applied to you!

Finally, be yourself – but remember on the Internet it lasts forever.  You don’t have to be afraid of posting.  Living your life in a vacuum is going to hurt your personal brand.  You may be the world’s greatest auto mechanic, but if I can’t find you in Google then you don’t exist.  Participate in forums, be active in the social networking communities and know when to eat a piece of humble pie.  Before you know it, your personal brand will sing your praises for you – all thanks to the 3rd generation of marketing and social networking.

Taken from Craigslist (click on the image to zoom in):