Google Plus Attempts To Reach Tipping Point By Selectively Rolling Out Ability To Make Business Pages
Google is beginning to open up its Google Plus service to businesses. It is starting out this transition by opening up the services only to select businesses, such as Pepsi and Toyota. It will even include features such as when you search “+Pepsi” It will link you right to Pepsi’s Google Plus page.
Allowing businesses to make Google Plus pages is a great way to compete with Facebook’s pages for businesses, although Facebook is clearly more widely used than Google Plus by a longshot, boasting 750 million users to Google Plus’s 40 million.
Google’s tactic of starting out selective by giving pages to only a few companies before going public with it is a smart move in light of “tipping points” (in a discussion of network effects). Since social networking sites like Google Plus rely heavily on how many users are using the site, if there are not enough users to reach the “tipping point” the number of users will shrink down to zero. If it does reach the tipping point, then number of users will grow dramatically. So, in starting out by giving pages to a few big companies, Google is attempting to establish an online presence for Google Plus pages before inviting the public to make pages for their small businesses, because if they see the presence established by big companies they will be more likely to create them as a marketing strategy.
We will see if this has any effect on Google Plus’ user base, although many would agree that is is hard to compete with Facebook when social network sites have everything to do with how many of your friends are on the site. Since everyone is already on Facebook, people are hesitant to make a switch to a site where possibly not all their friends are immediately on the site. There is little incentive right now for people to switch over to Google Plus given Facebook’s established presence and dynamic interface (referring to its frequent updates to the website).
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45194877/ns/business-us_business/#.TrivtlZVdoB