The likelihood is, in the past 24 hours you’ve probably been one of the 2 billion searches registered on Google’s web stats – and with heated debates usually ending in calls to ‘Google it!’, it makes you wonder how we ever survived without Google.
So when Google threw their 2 cents in to the Social Media pot, the world waited with baited breath. In a technology-led industry, we’d heard a great deal about Google +1, and what it was intending to bring to the table. The reaction has been perhaps one of trepidation – after all, this was internet giant Google, surely they were about to pull something fairly spectacular out of the bag?
Whilst Google’s + 1 is a good idea in principle; giving your ‘seal of approval’ so that your friends can easily locate sites you’ve recommend –it becomes a little more complicated in practice.
To begin with, you either have to have, or create, a public Google profile. Once you have done this, you can then ‘+1’ websites you rate and your +1’s will be stored in your +1 tab on your profile, which is where you’ll manage all your +1’s and select whether you want to publicly display your +1 tab – and, regardless of whether or not you choose to publicly display your +1 tab, your +1’s will still be visible to others viewing content you +1’d. Essentially, though your information wouldn’t appear publicly, if you did choose to have a private profile, you’d appear as part an anonymous aggregated count of the people who had also +1’d the same thing.
This process is pretty long-winded; let’s just remember why we go to Google – it is a simple search engine – input what we want and get instant results. Usually if we’re ‘googling’, we want an answer, and we want it as soon as possible. Google has been used by so many for so long – and it boils down to its simplicity. Which begs the question, is this latest add-on to Google an over-complication of a site that’s nailed its place in the market by being so simple?
What should just be the click of a button to inform friends of useful websites has fast-become a rather complicated process. In reality, something very similar also exists – the Facebook ‘Like’. As soon as I like any product, page or link, it’s posted to my profile, which in turn posts it to all my friends’ news feeds – and just like the Google +1, my ‘Like’ is essentially a recommendation of sites I like. Realistically, Facebook already does the +1, and does it a lot better.
As Google aims to compete with, rather than adopt Social Media, it begs the question of just how on-brand Social Media is for Google, and, whether they should ‘stick to what they’re good at’, rather than attempt to break into an industry whose key players are already well established.
Will you be creating a Google account in order to manage and +1 websites, or will you stick to Googling-on-the-go, selecting results for yourself without the recommendation from others?