Upping the ante in the social media wars

Digital Chameleon Blog

Upping the ante in the social media wars

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Within the last few weeks, two major players in the social media world have offered significant updates in their current offerings. Google’s Google+ project and Facebook’s new videoconferencing capabilities both have implications for marketers. Let’s take a look at each and see why.

Google+

Google has been trying, unsuccessfully, for some time to tackle social media. Google Wave never got off the drawing board and when Google Buzz launched in early 2010, it was plagued by data privacy issues and quickly faded. This time it looks like Google has finally got it right with Google+. Here are some key elements of the new social media network:

Circles- Google+ provides you with a dashboard for organising your own social media networks. It is a simple drag and drop operation that allows you to build as many different social media circles as you like (for example, a work-related circle, a family-related circle, a political circle and so on)—all from on central point.

Sparks- Google+ publishes streamed content you can respond to, with whatever sparks your interest.

Hang-outs- Google+ gives users video conferencing capability, integrated right in to the social network.

Huddle- This is an instant messengering option that provides Twitter-like functionality.

Google+ supports their own Android platform and presumably will support other platforms too.

So what are the implications for marketers? First the demographics which were initially overwhelming male, is quickly shifting, with 1/3^rd of users now women. Even though Google+ is still in beta, it already has about 10 million users. Google can easily push search engine users and the almost 200 million Gmail account holders towards Google+. In other words, we’re potentially the biggest thing to hit social since Facebook! Here’s a link to the developer’s blog for more on Google+.