Do You Remember Google+?

You’re forgiven if you missed the long anticipated demise of Google+ which was announced recently.

Many people already thought it was gone and were surprised to learn that it’ll pass from this mortal coil next August.

Let’s talk about what this means.

What was supposed to have happened to Google+ when it was first announced back in June 2011?

Google+ was going to be giant killer and Facebook was the giant.

Small potatoes like LinkedIn would be just brushed aside.

A new super nova would arise in the social media firmament.

After all, this was Google’s fourth try at a social network, and everybody knows four times the charm, right?

But, none of that did happen.

What exactly did happen?

Not a lot apparently.

In their shutdown announcement, Google stated that 90% of user sessions lasted under five seconds on Google+.

You’re not going to get a lot of advertising revenue with those figures.

Mark Schaefer summarized Google+’s shortcomings best in his blogpost about its demise.

He wrote:

1. Facebook was too entrenched
2. There were no got-to-have killer features
3. No pizzazz

(I’m paraphrasing Mark’s words slightly.)

Mark sums up Google+’s failure as due to Google’s arrogance.

Can’t argue with the man when he’s right!

Oh, and did I mention that Microsoft purchased LinkedIn while Google+ was slowly twisting in the wind?

Plenty of money and talent to turn that ship around.

Google+ didn’t lack for money or talent, they lacked a direction.

Google+ had been dying quietly for some time.

I suspect GDPR didn’t help things along.

Why would Google make further investments in it?

Google just decided to cut its losses.

What does this mean for social media and social networking?

Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter with smaller players like Pinterest are going to be the only game in town for quite a while.

These key players are behemoths in some cases and the others occupy niches and may become acquisition targets.

But, the wild card will be the US political situation and further regulations along the lines of GDPR.

The big question for me is with social media looking more and more like an oligopoly every day, will we see continued innovation or a gradual hardening of the arteries?

Only time will tell!

That’s it for now!

Please check-out my 8 step approach for developing a social media program to get some more ideas on how to use social media.

Also, never forget to reach out to either ask questions or to ask for help from someone like myself!

In the meantime, thank you for following and reading my blog!

I look forward to any and all comments that you may have. I will reply to any comments made to this blog post as promptly as I can.