Google, strangled by arrogance

Google Plus and its target group were my concern in October 2011. I thought the service was technically well made, but lacked a clear reason for a particular group to choose it over Facebook.

Google Plus and its target group rather than a broad attack

I praised the interface and the idea of circles, among other things. My criticism concerned positioning, not Google’s ability to develop software.

I used ideas from the book Marketing Warfare to explain my view: A challenger could concentrate its efforts on a narrower area rather than trying to compete with a strong player on every front.

Who should choose the new offering?

I suggested several possible target groups and was particularly interested in a social network for business. Those were my suggestions, not information about Google’s actual plans.

My idea was first to make the offering relevant to a clearly defined group, then consider expanding.

Registered users weren’t the whole story

I’d followed people on Google Plus but didn’t experience as much activity as I’d expected. I thought rapid sign-ups alone didn’t show whether the service had a living community.

That was my experience of the slice I saw. It wasn’t a measurement of all users’ behaviour or evidence of employees’ motives.

The video contains very categorical statements and a prediction about its lifespan. They are my criticism from 2011, not a current description of social media or an explanation that alone establishes the cause of later events.

Also read about creating participation and community in a discussion forum.

Google Plus and its target group: Why technology wasn’t enough

When I’d reviewed Google Plus a few months earlier, I was actually positive about the product itself. Technically, I thought Google had done an excellent job. The interface was good, and circles showed they’d also thought about organising contacts. There was some innovation, although I didn’t think it was enormous. Facebook also quickly offered similar options.

But a good product wasn’t enough. Google had billions behind it and skilled engineers. Of course it could build something that worked. My concern was that it hadn’t chosen a particular niche. It apparently wanted to be a social network for everyone, and I thought that could kill the service if it didn’t change course.

I still thought it could change direction in time. What I doubted was its willingness to admit that size and money didn’t exempt it from the basic rules I believed applied in marketing.

A strong fortress is easier to defend than to capture

My favourite marketing book was Marketing Warfare by Al Ries and Jack Trout. In the video, I explained how they used strategic thinking from Clausewitz and the book On War to understand competition. I was interested in how to challenge a strong opponent and maintain a strong position yourself.

In my eyes, Facebook looked like a very strong fortress. It had a large market share, a strong brand, lots of money and goodwill. It covered a broad range: Young and old, rich and poor. Google wasn’t facing a weak opponent.

My image was a fort on a hill. If 100 soldiers are up there defending it, you can’t necessarily take it by sending 100 soldiers against them from every side. In my example, it might take 500. Those figures illustrated the difference between defending and attacking, not a calculation of Facebook’s or Google’s resources.

Instead, you could concentrate your forces in one place. Use a battering ram and get through a single opening. That was the spearhead I missed in Google Plus: An offering for a particular group, strong enough to give that group a real reason to move.

Choose a group and build something special for it

I mentioned several possibilities. Google could target business. It could make a social network for high-tech people and early adopters. It could try thinkers, although I thought Twitter already had a strong position there. Or it could choose children, women or men. The point wasn’t that one group was automatically right. The point was to choose.

I used men as a hypothetical example. If Google chose that group, it would also need to develop features and an experience to suit it. I mentioned a more masculine appearance, technological gadgets or forums about fishing and hunting, among other things. I hadn’t thought through a finished product that morning; those were examples of making a choice concrete.

Once you’d gained that group and made it work, you could gradually expand to others. Just as soldiers who’ve entered a fortress can entrench themselves, get reinforcements and then spread out. You don’t have to start by taking everything. Also read E-pusher about my experiences of online marketing.

My criticism of Google was that it had chosen the broad attack. I saw the ambition as: We’re so big and have so much money that we can do exactly the same as Facebook for everyone. I thought that was arrogant.

Invitations could create sign-ups, but not a community

Google Plus began with an invitation requirement. Google had also succeeded with that model for Gmail. I remembered people seeking invitations on forums and spreading word of Google’s services that way.

I was very critical of the ethics. I saw it as a spam engine, with users spreading invitations and demand while Google avoided sending it all out itself. In the video, I used very harsh words about that approach. That was my criticism of the mechanism.

It could make Google Plus grow quickly. Integration with Gmail and Google’s other services helped too. But my experience was that people came in, poked around, invited some friends and left again. I didn’t think there was a sufficiently new reason to stay when Facebook already did so much of the same.

When Google opened the service to everyone, more users arrived and there was plenty of coverage of the growth. That didn’t surprise me. With the search engine, Gmail, PR machine and invitations, they had enormous momentum behind them. The problem, as I saw it, was the content and participation.

I think I followed a few hundred people there, around 300–500, but couldn’t remember the exact figure. My slightly provocative comparison was that together they produced as much content as five Facebook users or two Twitter users. That was my experience of my own feed, but it illustrated what I meant: Sign-ups alone don’t create life.

Business was my suggestion for a new direction

If I’d been at Google then, I’d have started by admitting we’d missed the mark and reinventing the service around a clear target group. My best suggestion was a social network for business.

I thought LinkedIn was a useful tool for HR departments, headhunting, CVs and contacting particular people. But I didn’t feel it had created the social sense of belonging I missed. Many people I knew had an account they mainly updated hoping the next good job would appear.

I was also tired of automatic updates from other services and irrelevant company news. When I saw news about Amino, it was often about something else with the same name. That was noise rather than a useful community, as I experienced it.

So I thought Google could find an opening there. I associated Twitter with intellectuals and celebrities, while Facebook was the broad medium for ordinary people. A proper social network for business could be Google’s spearhead.

Finally came my very categorical prediction from October 2011: If they continued without focus, I gave Google Plus something like two years to live and compared the risk with Google Buzz. I feared the ambition to be master of the universe would prevent them choosing a niche. That was my assessment at the time.

My book reference from 2011: I mentioned Marketing Warfare as one of my favourite marketing books.

Best wishes, Martin