How Google+’s Structure Prevents Its Success
Now more than three years old, Google+ continues to attract a huge amount of focus from the company. Yet, why can’t Google, the most popular website on the Internet, make Google+ successful? The graph below shows the level of interest in Google+ vs a few other other social networks that began growing traction around the same time. Google+ had the highest traffic spike in 2011, but why did it fall so quickly?
(From: Why Google Plus Is Irrelevant)
Social networks are prime examples of the importance of network effects. A social network with no users loses its “social” aspect, and becomes a website with an empty (and boring) feed. In order to gain popularity that sticks, social networks require two steps: a large portion of users must sign up immediately, and then these users should generate shareable content that brings value to the website.
While Google was able to leverage its sheer size to succeed in the first step (as of 2013, Google+ was the second largest social network behind Facebook* with 343 million users a month), it failed at the second. In fact, the shared expectation graph of a social networking website is not based just on the number of users or interest, but the stream of content generated.
And this is where Google+’s structures comes in. One of Google+’s innovative features was the Circles grouping, where users can fine grain their sharing to specific groups of people. The implication is that content does not become public, and user activity is hidden from view. So while it is easy to see when Twitter is buzzing, Google+ has a smokescreen that makes it appear like a barren desert. There is no value in a large user base if it is inactive (whether truly or just in perception).
Ultimately, users see that the amount of content on the site does not match their requirements (shared expectation of benefit does not surpass z’), they lose interest, and the network is pushed toward a lower market share. And since its initial spike in interest, Google+ has seemingly lost any natural interest (excluding direct pushes by Google to integrate its products). It would take a large push to send the shared expectation beyond z’, after which it will be able to grow on its own. However, that seems unlikely now and the social network will continue to decline in popularity.
* Source: http://www.fastcompany.com/3005157/so-how-popular-google-plus