For Google, the last frontier ( Social Media) still remains out of reach. Google+, their foray into Social, first came on the scene a few years back and it showed a lot of promise back then. Few experts believed that it might even challenge Facebook. Nothing of that sort happened, infact far from it.
The Google+ vision of being a platform that unified Google’s sharing models seems to have actually backfired. This has not only led to confusion among users, but many have severely criticized some of their integrations. This has been especially true in case of Google+ comments being integrated into Youtube.
It seems Google has now understood that this is not working and is actually alienating users from their platform. In an official announcement made couple of days back, they are said to be bringing whole lot of changes in the way how Google+ will get not get integrated with other Google products. The announcement states,
“In the coming months, a Google Account will be all you’ll need to share content, communicate with contacts, create a YouTube channel and more, all across Google. YouTube will be one of the first products to make this change. As always, your underlying Google Account won’t be searchable or followable, unlike public Google+ profiles. And for people who already created Google+ profiles but don’t plan to use Google+ itself, we’ll offer better options for managing and removing those public profiles.”
On their Youtube blog, they have announced,
- With today’s announcement from Google+, you’ll see more changes. The comments you make on YouTube will now appear only on YouTube, not also on Google+. And vice-versa. This starts rolling out today.
- Creators told us they liked the moderation options on their channels, like reviewing comments before they’re posted, blocking certain words, or auto-approving comments from certain fans. All this stays.
While Youtube will be the first where these changes will start to reflect, all other Google products will follow suite in coming months essentially unbundling Google+ from various Google services!
Within Google+ itself we have already seen number of changes being made – the first one came about few days back in regards to Google Photos, which is now a completely separate product/app.
In another update, Bradley Horowitz, who took charge of Google+ a few months has made it amply clear that Google+ will now NOT be required for any other services. He said, “We decided it’s time to fix this, not only in YouTube, but across a user’s entire experience at Google. We want to formally retire the notion that a Google+ membership is required for anything at Google… other than using Google+ itself”
Does this mean Death of Google+?
In our view, it is pretty much a “YES”.
Millions of users were on Google+ because they were forced into it – as they were using other Google services like Gmail, Youtube etc. However, with that need gone, very few will have any separate need for Google+. Google wants to now push it as a platform where “users around the world connect around the interest they love”. In our view platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest are doing a pretty good job of that. Unless Google+ adds something that is missing on other platforms, it will be very difficult for them to attract new or even existing users.
Google+ seems to be a done deal to us.
Anyone disagreeing to this?
