What’s Missing in Google+? - Page 2
But AdWords isn’t the only potentially relevant monetization platform for Google+ content. Imagine if you could monetize your own personal stream through an AdSense account. I have inserted a Google AdSense widget on my web page to monetize my blog’s content, so shouldn’t I be able to also monetize my content stream on Google+ in the same way?
The word ‘beta’ or ‘labs’
After Gmail launched, it took Google five years to remove the word beta from the product’s branded page header. With this 2009 post, however, Google declared that “beta” was meaningless; in the real time web, change is a constant. Google has had varying levels of commitment and success with its social products, in large part because of the general geek-factor of its search brand or the enduring sense of un-readiness that the word beta portends.
Google + is also not tagged as a spawn of Google Labs, unlike the company’s “real time communication and collaboration platform,” Google Wave, which indeed also launched in 2009, carried the label of the Mountain View-based company's prototyping playground. Google is calling Google+ a “field trial.”
Friends
Sure, there are people joining Google+ daily, and the invite link is staying on longer so I can invite more of my friends to join me on the platform. But being an early adopter of social technology can feel like the early arrival at a cocktail party. There is a reason that people arrive “fashionably late” to social events – it is much easier to join a conversation than to start one.
It remains to be seen if Circles, Sparks or Hangouts can become the scene-stealers of social. It’s also too early to tell whether users will feel like abandoning other social platform to use Google+. It took Facebook 4 years to reach 100 Million users, but less than seven months after that the company had 200 Million users. Can Google beat those numbers with Google+? Let me know your thoughts.
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