5 Social Networks Which Google Plus Failed To Eat Up

This is an old post, which spoke of the promise that Google+ had to give to the interwebs. It failed. I’m going to have to revise this later on.

Facebook is King when it comes to social networks. But what will it do when everything online’s big brother, The Google, wants to play? It just sits tight and waits to see what happens…

Google recently launched Google+. Looking it over, and studying its possible implications on the Social Media scene…well, let me just put it this way…Google’s going to be taking HUGE bites out of everything social, and those percentages of traffic may just add up to it leading the pack…

Here are the social networks that will be hit:

1. Facebook. Duh. Anything new on the social media scene wants a piece of Facebook. Facebook has about 750 million registered users. Around 250 million of these users log on via their mobile phones, which is nearly 70% of the estimated 375 million people who log on every single day. Google+ happens to have a feature called Circles, which does Facebook’s social network system one better. A simple feature allows you to separate people into different ‘Circles’. It aims to mimic how we separate people in our real lives. Friends, workmates, acquaintances, family can all be bunched together. This allows us send different messages to different groups. It actually makes sense to me. Sometimes a funny thing I want to share on Facebook, CAN’T be shared. There are just some status messages, pictures and videos that I can’t share with my family or colleagues. You know what I mean, right? But upon further research, I see that Facebook kinda has these segregation features too. They’re just more complicated than I would want. Well, it’s going to be a catch up game, with the only clear winner being us online denizens. Great!
2. Twitter. Speaking of statuses, if Twitter had no tweets, what would happen to it? Twitter also doesn’t have a segregation of followers allowed to view your status updates. Twitter processes about a billion tweets a week. But if tweeting more targeted status updates (or photos and videos) to different groups of people appeals to the users,(it does) this number will go down. Twitter’s been stealing followers from Facebook consistently. Now its got to protect its following.
3. LinkedIn. LinkedIn has been seeing a rise in its number of users for their more productive social network. It’s the professional network for people who want to connect professionally. It’s also used to find jobs and to expand business contact bases. I always thought of Facebook and Twitter being the ‘personal’ networks, while LinkedIn was the ‘serious’ network to have. But again, with the segregation of the contacts on Google+, this niche that they hold dominance over may soon change ownership. Plus, I think that not being flooded by game apps is the definition of a ‘professional’ social network.
4. StumbleUpon. Bookmarking on different platforms will definitely take a hit. Facebook has already taken up a large section of bookmarking traffic with their Facebook Like Button. When Google+’s Spark feature rolls out to the public, it’s going to do just that. I was looking at the Google+ profile of Felicia Day and her bookmark grabbed me. Made me think about the whole Google+ eating social media. Look at what I mean…Right? Makes you feel like grabbing a bite somewhere? Hehe. Anyway, this is just to show you how bookmarking worked for Google+. It was from FEI to Huffington Post to Google+ to Felicia Day to Me to You. That’s Bookmarking/Social Networking.
5. Delicious. Del.icio.us is another bookmarking website. They are seen in 9% of websites which use social widgets. This is equal to about 1.8% of ALL the websites. But I think the same problem is bound to happen here. A chunk of their website traffic is going to be eaten up by Google+.

Here’s a graph of the percentages of websites which use these social buttons:

• Facebook  – 1,317,246 websites.
• Twitter  – 545, 838 websites.
• Stumble Upon – 266,415 websites.
• Del.icio.us – 260,069 websites.
• Google Plus One – 126,927 websites.

…Although, this isn’t Google+ in effect yet. This is just a graph of how many websites use the Google Plus One Button, something like Facebook’s Like button. (It’s the button on top that says +1.) But this should be a good estimate of how powerful Google + will be. Let me show you some of the videos Google released…

Amazing, right? Too bad it’s still in beta mode. They have more features coming, but they’re still working out the kinks. But it should be out soon. In the meantime, The Big Blue Facebook monster, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and Delicious should think of ways to hold on to their market share. Its great that everyone’s competing to make the Internet a more promising land, After all the main beneficiaries of these changes will be us, the humble online traveler.

As Search Engine Optimization Consultants and Social Media Practitioners, we should stay ahead of the curve and be updated of the latest trends and foresee the coming changes. I’ll try to make things easy to understand. Let me do the analysis, and all you have to do is read, comment and like my posts.

I like studying trends and making assumptions about what’s going to happen next.

I also like working on these things.

If these make sense to you, Contact Me!