google +, rules, technology, and use
The introduction of Google + has generated a lot of discussion generally and in orgtheory.net. I thought I would provide a technology management perspective to what is going on competitively. Technology scholars label social media applications platforms (see Tom Eisenman’s work on this), meaning that they provide a technology that mediates interactions within a community. These interactions may be between different groups – think of the buyers and sellers within eBay – or within a single group – this is at least how Facebook started. Platforms consist of both the technology that enables these interactions and the rules of participation. For example, eBay has certain rules that buyers and sellers must abide by in order to participate. The combination of the rules/technology both enable and constrain how the platform is used as well as its growth and evolution. Rules are also what makes these kinds of technology sociologically more interesting.
So we can compare Google + and Facebook in terms of the differences in their technology/rules. One area that has received a lot of attention is Google + use of circles – a means to create smaller groups which gives you some control over who can read what you post. Now, I am told that Facebook has something similar, but it is far less intuitive and it is less central to the platform. I believe this feature has significant implications for how Google + will be used and its growth potential. Why would Google use circles? One reason is that Facebook has a significantly large network of users already. This should be a good thing – potential users will value Facebook the more potential friends they have to connect with. However, the positive aspects of network effects can taper off (something I might add that we not well understood during the Internet bubble). This is exactly the point of fabiorojas funny post on the video about Facebook hatred. It is getting big enough such that you are connected to people that you do not really care about and this is getting in the way of connecting to the people you do care about. The network is becoming congested. Circles help address this problem by segmenting the friend population into distinct groups. In a way, circles can be thought of as a small world (Watts). So, one thing to consider is how the circle feature impacts the growth and the structure of friends network in Google +. My prediction is that it will be structured much differently than Facebook. One potentially interesting thing to monitor is the recruitment patterns of getting people to join Google +, will it be different than Facebook?
Another interesting aspect of Circles is how will it impact the ultimate use of Google +. On the one hand, it seems really appealing to have tight control over these groups, but at the same time it sacrifices one of the major appeals of social media networks – the ability to get information from a wide variety of sources. So, we might ask under what conditions do circles really make sense? One might be families. Another might be certain kinds of work-related projects (perhaps not innovation though). This is intriguing considering that Google is talking about integrating Google + with it other technology, most notably is productivity software, that are more closely tied to enterprise use. The name Google + seems to signify this product adds on to what Google already has (as opposed to earlier attempts which had different names). This suggests another prediction. Google + will penetrate the business user, e.g. small enterprises, much more substantially than Facebook. This may mean that circles are less permanent then the friends networks of Facebook. They disband when the project is over.
Lastly, there is the issue of trust. Facebook started out as a network that promised a commercial free zone, but over the years as it has morphed, Facebook has repeatedly tried to bring commercial interests into the network in an attempt to make money. This has generated significant backlash among the users – remember the bill of rights movement? Google, on the other hand, has always had commercial interests in mind dating back to its initial search engine. So, creating trust among users who interpret friend networks as non-commercial will be a significant hurdle for Google. This may be another reason why Google targets business users – where this issue may not be as much of a concern.
What other predictions do you have about how Google + will be used and grow given its unique set of technologies and rules?
[...] Kahl has an interesting post up at OrgTheory about the way Circles play a key role in the (current and potential [...]
“Circles” – just foci renamed/repurposed? « Permutations
July 22, 2011 at 4:57 pm
The platform distinction you make in the first paragraph is one of the things i feel like i have to explain more than anything else when i tell people i study networks (but NOT online networks). i’m not sure i’ve ever come up with an explanation that is quite as precise, clear and useful as what you gave here. Thanks! i just might have to borrow from it in the future.
jimi adams
July 22, 2011 at 5:03 pm
“It is getting big enough such that you are connected to people that you do not really care about and this is getting in the way of connecting to the people you do care about. The network is becoming congested. Circles help address this problem by segmenting the friend population into distinct groups.”
So basically, the appeal of circles is to create a face-saving compromise between the previously binary distinction of accepting and rejecting a friend request. That is you can avoid the insult of rejecting a friend request by creating a circle called “I don’t really know or care about this person and will never post any content to this circle, but I didn’t want to be rude by rejecting the friend request or go into a lengthy explanation of how I’m sorry but I don’t friend undergrads / people I haven’t seen in at least 5 years / people who were always better friends with my ex than with me / etc.”
Sort of Goffman meets SNA. I like it.
gabrielrossman
July 22, 2011 at 5:38 pm
I like google+ for the reasons you specified, but unless they do some non-obvious integration with other google products I don’t see this becoming a serious competitor to facebook. The entrenched user-base / network externalities are hugely important, and facebook can easily develop their equivalent to circles if their is demand for it.
Michael Bishop
July 22, 2011 at 6:09 pm
Facebook strives on connecting everyone on pretty much equal terms. They even suggest you to become friends of your friends. Google+ would seem to provide AoM Connect and Facebook rolled into one for me.
The difficult question is whether people will post the same stuff in facebook & g+ to begin with, or simply to FB, where there are inevitably more readers initially. Network effects are seldom as strong as they are in facebook.
I think the issue of platforms was not really pursued through though. I can imagine that Google is much more open and fair in terms of 3rd party applications than FB is. I heard FB is charging 30% of all revenue generated by fb apps, which sounds a lot more than what Google would likely be asking for (given my understanding of their corporate culture and strategy).
Henri
July 22, 2011 at 9:20 pm
Henri,
I would have thought that network externalities would create a natural monopoly but that wasn’t enough to save MySpace and Friendster. I’ve occasionally heard arguments that the interplay of network externalities and congestion costs effectively create a sort of dialectic for social networking platforms.
As for revenue, my understanding of Google’s strategy is that most of what they do is about preserving their existing search and AdSense businesses. Google’s current business model is premised on the open internet and this is threatened by the growth of walled gardens. Hence you have Google+ as a strategic competitor to Facebook and Android as a strategic competitor to the iPhone/AppStore, both of which were threats to Google’s advertising business. Aside from advertising, there’s the additional thing in that Facebook has been attacking Google’s search engine through its partnership with Bing and so Google+ (and its ubiquitous “+1″) buttons provide a defense in case “social search” (ie, using the social graph to inform search results) ever becomes really popular.
gabrielrossman
July 22, 2011 at 10:15 pm
I guess Google+ has two main advantages over Facebook: (1) much easier to use privacy settings (Circles) and (2) much easier to post articles for everybody who is not on Google+. This latter feature makes it a powerful tool; your readers don’t need a Google+ account, whereas to read Facebook comments, your readers need a Facebook account.
As Felix Knoke has pointed out at Spiegel Online, this makes Google+ more a competitor of WordPress, Twitter and Co. than for Facebook (Source in German: http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,775920,00.html). A good example is https://plus.google.com/u/0/105749312561403163256/posts/4T3b9WTuwAn. You guys at orgtheory could easily convert to Google+!
Christoph Rosenkranz
July 23, 2011 at 11:46 am
@gabriel:
The lesson from MySpace and Friendster is that network externalities only kick in once you have achieved a certain technical superiority. The monopoly comes from the interaction of network effects and usability. I dabbled in Friendster and know people w/MySpace accounts, but these platforms didn’t quite have the ease of use of FB. IMO, Friendster was “almost” FB. It had many features that are like FB, but not quite as easy to use or seamlessly integrated. MySpace was a disaster – I stopped reading MySpace pages after one of them attacked my laptop.
The real genius of FB was a very simple, useful and flexible format that was restricted by network and management who didn’t let people do their own HTML. That’s why, so far, google+ doesn’t strike me as a FB threat because google+ doesn’t remedy a massive problem with FB, in the way that FB beat Friendster and MySpace by attacking major gaps. Circles solve a problem for FB, but it wasn’t the type of problem that struck me as a deal breaker for users. My sense is that people who don’t use FB right now wouldn’t really seriously use any social networking platform.
fabiorojas
July 24, 2011 at 4:58 pm
@fabio:
>My sense is that people who don’t use FB right now
>wouldn’t really seriously use any social networking platform.
and as it so happens, I have in fact not taken up the G+ invite somebody graciously sent me. there may be a large difference in my attitude towards FB vs G+ when expressed on a continuous latent variable (roughly “no fucking way” versus “I can kind of see the appeal”), but in both cases it still cashes out in behavior as me not doing it (at least not in the short run).
gabrielrossman
July 24, 2011 at 7:22 pm
Hear, hear.
cwalken
July 25, 2011 at 6:08 am
http://blog.tnsemployeeinsights.com/?p=432
TNS_Employee_Insights
July 28, 2011 at 3:10 pm
[...] Ansätze für wissenschaftliche Erklärungsversuche gibt es bereits. Steve Carl hat auf orgtheory.net versucht eine erste Erklärung aus einer technologischen Management-Perspektive zu geben. Er sieht [...]
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