Friday Fives: First Impressions of Google+

Welcome to the Friday Fives series. Each week, I ask selected Tweeps a question to answer in five parts. This week’s question (surprise, surprise):

What are your five first impressions/thoughts about Google Plus?

This week’s answers come from:

• Danny Brown is Chief Executive Officer of Bonsai Interactive Marketing and an award-winning marketing and social media blogger. He’s @DannyBrown on Twitter and http://gplus.to/dannybrown on Google+.
• David Teicher Former Social & Emerging Media Strategist at McCann Erickson NY and current Social Media & Event Content Manager for Advertising Age. He’s @aerocles on Twitter and http://gplus.to/aerocles on Google+.
• Erica Allison is the owner of Allison Development group, a public relations and marketing firm. She’s @ericamallison on Twitter and http://gplus.to/ericaallison on Google+. You can read her blog at Spot-On.
• Margie Clayman works for Clayman Advertising, Inc., a third-generation Akron, Ohio marketing firm. She blogs at MargieClayman.com and is @MargieClayman on Twitter.
• Myself, Neicole Crepeau I’m the Online Strategist at Coherent Interactive, and specialize in social media and website and mobile application design. I’m @neicolec on Twitter and http://gplus.to/neicolec on Google+.

Here are these social media power-users first impressions:

Danny Brown

1. It’s Not a Killer of Anything. When Google+ came out, you had the usual hullabaloo of “It’s a Facebook killer!”, or “It’s a Twitter killer!”. While it might impact on how these services (and others like them) are used, Google+ won’t kill Facebook or Twitter or email or anything else. Ineptitude by the management of these platforms will kill their offerings, not Google+ (although it may be there to take in the displaced).
2. It Can Potentially Scupper the Facebook/Skype Deal. It probably didn’t surprise anyone that Facebook’s big announcement last week was their deal with Skype to offer video chats on Facebook. Nor was the timing – based around a more public version of Google+. The thing is, though, Google+ allows multiple video chats on the same call with their Hangout feature. If they can make this a bit more interactive (screen sharing, social activity, etc) while improving the latency of the calls, Google+ might just make the Facebook/Skype deal less relevant.
3. It’s What Facebook Should Have Done With Friendfeed. Friendfeed used to be great. Threaded comments, image sharing, recommendations, etc. In a way, it was the forerunner to Google+. Then Facebook bought it in 2009, and promptly did nothing with it. Jump forward two years, and Google is showing Facebook exactly the kind of opportunity they had with Friendfeed. Gotta love stagnation, eh?
4. It’s Better Than Quora for Crowsourcing. When Quora first arrived on the scene, it was seen as a great way to crowdsource answers and opinions to questions you had. Then the self-promoting spammers got involved, and now a lot of Quora looks like a TechCrunch comment stream. With Google+ Circles, you can filter exactly who you connect with, and ask questions of, and who can reply. This ups the quality ante immensely, something that could be a great tool for businesses looking to gather intelligence prior to a business launch.
5. It’s a Lesson In User-Friendliness. Google’s taken a few hits over the years in the products they bring to market, and how intuitive they are (Google Wave, anyone). But something just feels right about Google+. From its seamless integration into other Google Apps, to its clean User Interface, to its excellent Android mobile app – Google+ feels like something designed with care. Like anything, it could be better (more integration with Google’s full directory), but on the whole it’s a great product benefiting from a great implementation.

David Teicher

1. I love Google Plus so far, but the fact is the mainstream user doesn’t need or want another destination site to hang out on all day. They already have too many of those. The real potential for Google Plus lay in the Chrome Browser. Yes, there are already extensions that try to port or mimic some of the G+ features into the browser, but I’d imagine a much more successful integration if Google made it a standard part of Chrome. Imagine if all the social, email, content, and other functionalities were part of that browser that followed you around the interwebs in a minimizable or collapsible mechanism. I would only imagine that this type of integration, and eventually with ChromeOS, is Google’s long-term vision for G+.
2. We’re all still waiting to see what G+ for businesses will bring, and if there will be anything significantly different than the regular user pages. My biggest hope is for built in eCommerce functionality through Google Checkout, perhaps their most undervalued and underutilized service. Bringing Checkout into Plus would boost usage for the service and add an option for true, simple, social shopping, in a way Facebook has yet to do with their brand pages.
3. Group Video chat has been one of G+’s most talked about features, and arguably their biggest weapon in the social wars. I would love to see them build on this, maybe allow people to easily record these chats and post them to YouTube, or regularly facilitate brand chats, like Dell has already been doing with the service.
4. One of the biggest weak points is integration, or lack thereof, with other social networks. I understand the problems with Facebook, and have already implemented the workaround via Yahoo, but there’s no excuse for not easily syncing with Twitter. I’ve spent many hours building Twitter lists to help curate and filter the flow of information coming from different people and sources – I shouldn’t have to repeat that process when they could just as easily have an option to import preexisting lists from Twitter.
5. Google News. Yes, “Sparks” is interesting and holds promise, but with all Google is doing to add social layers to Google News, adding “authors” to search results, and with the recent loss of Twitter’s data for real-time search, I would love to see better integration with Google News in the left sidebar. This might be a nonissue once brand pages are fully introduced, in which case people will have the option to create circles of news outlets, but I still don’t think that will be enough to make it a go-to hub for news.

Erica Allison

1. “Oh no, not ANOTHER platform to investigate, use, monitor, check and engage on!” My very first impression could be related to timing, having just returned from vacation and being met with a LOAD of work to hop on, trying to discern how best to use Google +, what to do with it when, and checking it became less than pleasurable for me. It made me tired. Yet another platform to check. I wasn’t entirely sure (and still not) how to integrate this new shiny into my work flow and my new found desire for life and SM balance.
2. Wait, this is kind of fun! When I did spend time “playing” on Google +, the circles were highly addictive and totally intuitive. I found myself creating unique names for circles of folks that I don’t normally follow or interact with, but wanted to hear from. That was very cool and helps get me out of my usual suspects tribe mode.
3. Ok, this is fun, but what does it DO for me? However, after playing, creating circles, chatting and commenting, I’m still struggling with overall value for me. Folks like Gini Dietrich see it becoming extremely valuable and if you could integrate your Google Reader, I would agree. I’ll bet that’s in the works, but for me, I’m not there yet. I wasn’t “there yet” for Twitter early on, either. I have to figure it out for myself and my purposes before I just go along with the crowd. That’s my plan with Google +. And for the record: Google + will NOT replace my blog, nor should it for anyone else. Stop that urban myth now, please.
4. Who are these people? And what are they doing with me? Now, what in the world to do with the people sharing with me that I have absolutely NO idea who they are… There have been some great posts from the folks in my Social Mentors & Leaders circle (ha! Let one slip out of the bag) on this and when I get back over there (see #1), I’ll read them again and possibly follow suit. But, what I find most curious is the secretive nature of the circles. No one can see my circles – yet. And, what’s most intriguing is that I have no idea what kind of circle I’ve been placed into. Is it the “WTH is this Person” circle? That’s the who the heck, by the way…keeping it clean for you, Neicole. Or is it the “Stalker” circle? I don’t know. I’m not 100% sure I want to. Will Google suddenly surprise us one day and remove the curtain? Will we see who is behind Door #3 or better yet, find out what someone really thinks about me?
5. Holy Moly, it drives traffic! Finally, I was blown away by the most recent uncovering of info yesterday, and by info I mean ANALYTICS. I LOVE analytics, really and truly. I tend to over-love them sometimes, so I monitor my use of them. To say that I’ve just amped up my analytics for my blog is an understatement. Mack Collier shared an awesome post on the integration of Google + with the upgraded Google Analytics. After reading it, I went straight away and upgraded my own. What I found after 4 days on Google + and with my updated GA, was that Google + brings traffic to my blog! I had 5 visits (not tremendous, but I can track them) from the Vlog post I did for Waxing Unlyrical. The post was shared first by Joe Hackman and then John Falchetto. This was good traffic, the low bounce rate kind of traffic. So, that being said, I’ll begin further exploration and see what I come up with

Margie Clayman

1. Is it for men? The very first thought I had about Google+ was based on a post I saw by Robert Scoble before I had joined the platform myself. My thought was, “Is this a platform primarily geared towards men?” I thought that because of the points Scoble made in his next (follow-up) post, which was that the “techie” crowd tends to be dominated by men. I also thought that men seem more interested in categorizing people than women are.
   Women seem to be more inclined to smush people together whereas men really do seem to compartmentalize people based on how they all became acquainted.
2. It’s overwhelming My second thought, after finally getting into the Google+ platform, was that it seemed (and still seems) quite overwhelming. There is so much functionality that it seems impossible to find enough time to sit down and figure it all out. Since I am already overly busy with everything I’m doing already, this makes Google+ fall down my priority list.
3. Please, no video chat Thought number three is actually something you (Neicole) and I talked about in Google+, and that’s the whole “hang-out/webcam” feature. Not only do I
   not want to be thrust into a video chat, but I am concerned that you can see when someone is using that feature AND who they are hanging out with. This is a tool that a lot of people are touting for businesses, but I’m highly recommending you check out those security options first.
4. It’s self-promotional Thought 4: “This is the most self-promotional platform yet.” A lot of people are saying that Google+ will “kill” Twitter and Facebook because you can target certain circles with your message and you can do so with a lot more than 140 characters. What people are doing with that space is writing their blog posts in Google+. Imagine skimming through Facebook and seeing a whole blog post in your stream…that’s what Google+ is starting to look like.
5. Is it going to be another unhappy place? My final thought right now is that it feels like a lot of people are jumping into Google+ with the same mindset that led them to unhappy places in other portions of the online world. People who have been complaining about all of the “noise” on Twitter are gathering people on
   Google+ like there’s no tomorrow. People who are saying they have no time to keep up with Facebook and Twitter are spending time creating countless “circles.” I fear that Google+ will not necessarily help businesses and will also discredit other Social Media tools.

Neicole Crepeau

1. Another social network? Like Erica, my initial reaction was, frankly, irritation at having to explore and learn another social network. It’s so hard to keep up as is.
2. Circles are great Circles are exactly what I said Facebook should implement in my blog post a year ago. Google+ has made it easy to create circles of people to share with (though I agree with David that they should have made it easy to import your Twitter follows and lists). So far, the implementation of circles seems excellent.
3. It’s going to be way too noisy As I blogged about on Monday, G+ is no Twitter-killer, partially because the stream isn’t scannable enough. Of course, the Facebook-like stream allows for great conversation, but dang, I’ve only been on it for a week, and already it’s way too much information. As my Circles get bigger, it’s going to become completely unwieldy. So many people are talking about the pleasure of real conversation and engagement in G+, but it’s hard to find and engage in those conversations when you have either very large circles or a lot of circles to hop around in.
4. It’s a sophisticated play Google really has done a great job. They took the best from Twitter, Facebook, and others and brought all the features together in a way that made sense for their new network. The user interface is much cleaner and more intuitive than Facebooks, but gets to leverage the mental model that people have already created through Facebook use (rather than requiring a completely new one as Twitter or Google Wave did). And, of course, Google has so much technology to integrate with, it can quickly add incredible depth to the social experience, as we’ve seen in Hangouts and Analytics.
5. Mainstream adoption will require a different strategy I think that Google will face a hurdle after the early adopters have come on board. While they may get some mainstream people exploring it, I think it’s going to be hard to attract or retain people who have already built up their Facebook and integrated it into their daily life. If I was Google, I’d attack the problem via the early adopters, as they are doing, and via youth. I’d provide easy steps to dabble in Google Plus via (as Jay Baer said) YouTube, gmail, Google maps/navigation, Search, etc. The user needs to be invited to either view and/or contribute on Google Plus from these ubiquitous tools/sites. And it needs to be easy to do so, with just a click or two–very few barriers. If Google Plus can capture the youth market through enticing features and easy entry, on top of capturing the early adopters, the rest of the market will follow in time.

That’s the takeaway from these experts. Are you using Google Plus? What are your impressions?