Google plus, where to go from here?

Yesterday I happily got an invite to Google+ from @quagliero. Not sure if it’s still invite only but I’ve been having a go with it yesterday and today. Also installed the Android app which brings everything together really nicely. So far I can safely say I really like the service.

However, I have a bit of a gripe with there being yet another social network service. It’s only a social network if your real world social network are all using the same service!

The problem with saying that not everyone wants service X and that for those people they could use service Y is that being the minority on a social website is useless by contradiction. If the majority of people that you want to connect with socially on the internet use a particular service then your decision is pretty much made for you.

The social web needs to move towards easy integration for it’s users sake. The big guys need to come together and figure out a way of allowing a user of one social network to connect with their friends on a different social network. However, the problem with taking an opensocial approach is that the leading sites end up opening themselves up to losing sign ups and therefore losing potential income.

I guess from a business perspective it comes down to potential income and for that you need sign ups on your social network, not someone else’s. However, I do think that the problem is there to be solved and certainly is solvable. It shouldn’t be open source like opensocial it should be a private network of proven web companies coming together to define a closed approach to integrating their services. Open source isn’t the answer here due to the competitive nature of market share and income.

Aggregators and/or API’s are also not the answer. They force the user to move away from the social network experience they really want due to the equal want to connect with all their friends across different networks.

This entry was posted on July 2, 2011 at July 2, 2011 and is filed under Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.