We know by now that Google is shutting down its social platform Google+. Seven years ago, the social network was launched with much ballyhoo. The announcement comes after the claims of finding a bug for more than two years that led to the exposure of millions of user data, internally, it was already known about the imminent death of Google+.
Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin once confessed that he was not the right person to be in charge of a social network. “It was probably a mistake for me to be working on anything tangentially related to social to begin with,” Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin once confessed prior to the big Google+ shut down.
Why Google+ failed and didn’t make a mark alongside the big players?
Google+ was launched as they were influenced by Facebook, which had already been making waves and was around for quite some time. It came to play without a plan in place and no clear differentiation in terms of users and what they were going to do on the platform. A major backdrop and why Google+ failed.
People now already had been used to simpler and user friendly formats of the different platforms already there. With the introduction of circles on Google+, users found it a little difficult to navigate, share and stay connected. Why Google+ failed was people also confused circles with groups, which was not exactly the case.
Google+ was more about Google than the users. The main focus of the social media network revolved more around the company itself. Even Google Employees thought that the platform aimed at solving the company’s problems than connecting people around the world. Google+ failed because it made sure that the business did not have to manage profiles from its various other services and apps. For example, once a user logged on to Google+, it automatically connected them to other Google services such as YouTube but when it came to connecting with other users it was not as simple.
Google+ wasn’t mobile friendly. The whole mobile experience for the social platform wasn’t satisfactory enough though most of the users were on the phone. This is also one of the major factors for Google+ to not take off.
The founder of Google+, Vic Gandotra’s exit from the company also caused major disruption in taking the social platform forward to the next level. There was no smooth succession plan in place and this is also why Google+ failed.
Google needs to rethink its purpose when it comes to creating a new social platform, if at all. Understand what the users are looking for and give them a solution instead of trying to give them something they don’t want.
While we have a few more months to go, the enterprise will continue to live on. It looks like there is no thinking twice about closing the platform but Google+ for G Suite customers will continue getting new features.
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