There’s has been a lot of talk in the ether the last couple of weeks about Google+ and whether or not it will be a Facebook or Twitter killer. (Google Steve Rubel for some smart analysis.) I have an invite to Google+ and added a couple of friends — figuring out the difference between friends, acquaintances, family and even created a circle called Business Peeps. The fact is, though, thanks to Facebook, I’m not always sure who’s an acquaintance and who’s a friend. I love the promise of multipoint video chat and think it will be a big deal for Google+. Also circles is cool, but streaming to circles I haven’t given much thought to. I like Twitter too much.
Here’s my initial take. If you can’t tell which website app Google+ is going to “kill” then perhaps it won’t kill either. Google+ is probably over-built – because it wants to take on both Facebook (the stream page looks exactly like Facebook) and Twitter – and when you try to do too much you often fall short. That’s not to say Google+ will fail; I suspect there is enough cool stuff there for something really great to stick. I just don’t think it’s going to bang Facebook or Twitter off their perches.
There’s no doubt that Google knows, thanks to research and the algorithm, people want all the features and functions it has devised for Plus. But putting them in one candy bar, is going to be a little hard to chew. There is no killer here. Just a lot of cool stuff bouncing off itself. Peace.