Since its launch nearly a decade ago, search giant Google has acquired or developed dozens of free web services. Everything from mail to maps, videos to voice chat, Google’s had a hand in just about everything. So it might surprise some people that it’s taken this long for the company to make its first foray into social-networking. While Google+ actually isn’t Google’s first social-networking experiment, it is undoubtedly the first serious threat to Facebook’s monopoly on the market. With Google’s sterling reputation for innovation and privacy protection as well as its vast existing network of apps and services, the official launch of Google+ last week had millions of fed-up Facebook users watching curiously.

Google first attempted social-networking nearly a decade ago with its oddly-named “Orkut.” Originally a pet project of Google employee Orkut Buyukokten, upon its launch the service received neither the publicity nor the popularity of Google+ and only limited attention from niche groups within the tech community. Orkut never became the social-networking success story Google may have hoped for, but 8 years later its two domain names rank 116^th and 94^th in overall traffic on the web, with over 66 million active users.

So what does Google+ have on its less popular predecessor? As the undisputed leader in internet-search, mapping, and soon to be e-mail (though growing by leaps and bounds, newcomer G-mail is still in third place), sporting the Google brand name is a clear advantage.  Besides its namesake, Google+ has just about everything its competitors offer, and even more. Its “hangouts” feature allows up to 10 friends to video-chat with one another, even offering support for mobile users with smartphones and fast networks. “Circles” allows users to easily organize their contacts into groups, and a “data-liberation” feature offers one the option of downloading all of their online content directly from the site. Though perhaps more relevant to the success or failure of Google+ is the growing distrust amongst social-networkers in regard to Facebook’s willingness to share user information with just about anyone. That, in addition to the near impossible feat of deleting a Facebook account makes Google+ a very desirable alternative for many.

Unfortunately for Google, none of this may matter. Within the first two weeks of its beta launch nearly 10 million users had joined the site. The first lucky few Google+ users were given 150 invites for friends. Surrounded by positive buzz on social news sites like Reddit it seemed like everyone wanted an invite. By early August Google+ had grown to 25 million users. Whether Google was trying to build anticipation or deal with unexpected growth is unknown, but invites were quickly put on hold and growth to the site slowed significantly. For the next month Google+ was stagnant, some even declared the half-budded site dead. With a nearly 3 to 1 male to female ratio, many saw Google+ following in familiar footsteps.

However, within the first 2 days of going public on September 20^th, Google+ added another 10 million users. While Google+ currently boasts an estimated 43.4 million users, a fraction of Facebook’s 750 million, it seems like it’s still too early to make any concrete predictions. Did Google’s decision to cap invites during the beta test doom the new social network before even going public? Only time will tell.

-Daniel Menon
Black Rhino Solutions, Inc.

What do you get when you combine just about everything cool that Google has to offer? The answer is Google+. The company recently went public with its previously top secret social media network; launching a limited public release of what are are calling Facebook’s newest competitor.

Google+ essentially ties in most Google products with a social network at its core. The Internet giant’s latest initiative brings new lingo like the Stream, Circles and Sparks to the world of social media. But what does it all mean?

The Stream is similar to Facebook’s News feed, in that it allows users to share multimedia like photos, videos, links or their location with friends. Circles is the most innovative aspect of Google+, which helps to separate it from Facebook. The Circles system allows users to target their sharing with various social groups. Thanks to HTML5, Circles enables the user to simply drag-and-drop friends into and out of various social circles; whether it be friends, schoolmates, co-workers, family or a customized group.  Sparks is the content recommendation engine behind Google+. Using an algorithmic system that relies on information from other Google products like Search; Sparks is a collection of articles, videos, photos and other content categorized by interest.  Users can search for various topics of interest throughout these collections and then share their discoveries with friends.

Other features that we can look forward to with Google+ are its group chat feature (which is being called “Hangouts”), an Android mobile app that has an auto-upload capability for photos or videos, and a whole lot of +1 buttons throughout the web from here on out.

Although a great deal of speculation regarding the anticipated success of Google+ has been mostly positive, let’s not forget that this is Google’s second attempt at creating a super social network. So what kind of obstacles should Google+ be on the lookout for in order to prevent any minuses this time around? Let’s take a look.

1. Will the population really leave Facebook?

Yes, we live among a generation of the “bigger and the better”. But how many of the millions of people who are already established (that have been building their profile for years) are going to leave Facebook? I know I don’t want to risk losing the past five years of photo albums. Sure, some people became Tweeters, but how many people do you know that completely left Facebook for another type of social media network?

2. The Twitter-Facebook Alliance.

Speaking of Twitter and Facebook; is it me, or do you feel like these two have become like a married couple?  It’s almost as though, you can’t have one without the other and they need to be linked at all times.  That said, I’m not sure where Google+ will fit into this match made in social media matrimony?

3. If you look up privacy in the dictionary…

Google is probably the last thing I would associate with privacy. The issue of maintaining users private information has become a hot ticket surrounding social-networking sites like Facebook, who recently received public and legal scrutiny for misleading users about the safety of people’s information that was being stored. Google itself received particular criticism regarding privacy issues, after it launched Google Buzz.

4. When you want to know something – you Google it.

One of Google’s biggest challenges in becoming the worlds great social networking site could also come from within. Google’s done such a great job branding itself as the number one way to search for anything, that this is what people now associate the company with. For most people right now, Google means search, Facebook means to share with friends.

5. Where do Bing and Yahoo fall into all this?

Although Bing doesn’t quite compare to Google, it is known to be gaining market share – something for Google to think about as it continues to fall under various legal scrutiny from organizations like the FTC. Although its no longer king of all the search engine giants; Yahoo, still makes up a significant segment of search market share and maintains a stronghold in other sectors such as email, finance, news, etc. Part of the Google+ strategy is that it extends across various other Google products, some of which compete directly with those of Yahoo’s strong points: another battle that Google should consider before it spreads itself too thin.

Regardless of whether Google’s attempt at creating the next social-networking phenomena is a plus or a minus, its sure to be interesting as usual watching it all pan out.

For the past two years the social media phenomena, Twitter, has exceeded everyone’s expectations with its success. At first, Twitter was a relatively unknown online application that people criticized for being pointless and confusing… In spite of the initial critiques, however, companies and celebrities (or maybe just Ashton Kutcher) started to recognize the amazing benefits that Twitter had to offer. Like many of those before it, Twitter was the next online app to go viral, and the rest is history.

Today Twitter is a quick and easy way to communicate with your target audience as well as an exceptional approach for finding potential new fans and/or clients. Something to think about, however, is that, while there are notable business and communication benefits, not all Twitter users are using it solely for business or “posting” purposes.

Having been ignited by Kutcher early on, a great deal of “celebrities” have taken up tweeting as well.  Today, celebrity gossip and celebrity news  also consists of what the A-list stars have been tweeting throughout their day.  Fans have become intrigued with Twitter purely because they believe they are “talking” to celebrities and can communicate with them via the site.  But are people really talking to celebrities on their Twitter pages?

Not to be the one to burst anyone’s bubble, but at Black Rhino we have clients who make less money than what some celebrities bank and they pay us to manage their social media because they don’t have the time to do it themselves. Most of the time, people hire companies to manage their social media campaigns as a means of PR, publicity, advertising and marketing.  Suffice to say, I’m sure that A-list celebrities are at the top of this list. Clients hire companies like us in order to utilize our social media services and skills to reach out to their target audience and increase their website traffic along with new potential customers. In saying that, what makes you think that you are not speaking to a social media marketing company rather than your favorite celebrity on Twitter these days?

We would all love it if our favorite celebrities like Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber were really responding to us on their social media sites, however, most likely, it’s their PR or marketing firm that they spend their pretty pennies on. Now this isn’t saying that they don’t ever look at their Twitter page, but most of the time it’s not really them. I do believe there are celebrities that do take their fans seriously such as Ellen Degeneres. I know she does have an internal team who manages her social media, she is always up to speed on what is going on in her social networks and makes reference to her Twitter posts during her show. But lets be serious, do you really think most celebrities like for instance, Barack Obama has time to be on Twitter and tweet his every move?