OK, Google...#WTH?
OK, Google...I am trying. Really I am. So #WTH- Why This Hard?
I don’t know about you, but I am finding it difficult to adopt and adapt to Google’s social platform. The main reason? To me, it’s still just another social tool and not yet an intuitive behavior. I’m not running to upload pictures of my recent afternoon with the girls, or post the location and a picture of the amazing burger I’m enjoying. With G+, I am still trying to figure out where my friends are, and apparently, I didn’t get the invite to the cool kids “hangout.”
Last night in a Facebook exchange with an industry peer, my friend echoed what the vast majority of users are saying about Google Plus: “It’s like going to a playground, where no one is playing.”
“Yeah,” I responded, “...and hopping on the seesaw by yourself.”
Last week during a chat at #SXSW, Guy Kawasaki pressed Vic Gundotra (Google’s VP for Engineering), on the perception that, right now; G+ is a virtual ghost town. Gundotra, in his now famous response, defended the giant.
“Make sure you’re using it correctly,” he responded with a laugh. I’m not sure how many laughed.
While I found his statement amusing, I think it gets to the heart of the problem. I don’t want to have to learn how to use it correctly. If it were intuitive, it would become an ingrained social behavior for me and countless others. As with Facebook, everyone would be on the playground and playing, not just hanging by the fence.
Gundotra was also quoted in a recent New York Times interview. “Not only is Google Plus not a ghost town,” he said, “…we have never seen anything grow this fast. Ever.”
The company recently shared its Google Plus user numbers, citing that nearly 50 million people have created a Google Plus account and use Google+ optimized services daily, totaling about 100 million active users in a 30-day period.
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