In the past few weeks, curiousity about Google's new social network, Google+ has been sweeping the web. Some would say the new platform has gone viral... But to what extent?
The term "viral" has been hot since the spread of social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube, where a bored group of college kids could create, upload and share a 2 minute parody clip that could spread like wildfire among their friends, their friend's friends, their likers and their friend's likers in a matter of minutes. Instant popularity and Andy Samberg status.
Viral capability is what Facebook is notorious for. It's what product, service, cause and self-promoters love about it. And just like email, we've learned how to infiltrate the system and use it to spam people. "Save the Date" "Tickets on Sale" "Join us at"... They should rename the News Feed to Promotion Board, because that's really what it's become. As a result, people have started to wonder, are these people really my friends?
Take a look around at your friend profiles and see how many friends they have. Is it over 1,000? 2,000? My own sister has close to 3,000 and I saw only 2 of these people at her last Christmas party. Friends... Really? Hold the phone.
Now enter Google+... Like their other products, it's clean and easy. Immediately you see a collection of buckets or "circles" to place your contact lists into, eliminating the need to label someone you've obviously never seen out of work before a friend, yet still keeping them on the radar for networking purposes. Nice feature.
But my real question is, is it viral? When relationships are no longer defined as simply "friends" "likes" or "follows," where does the mass-sharing component fit in? The easy answer... it doesn't. And I think that's what I like about it. Google+ is semi-private, intimate. And marketers are going to have a tricky time infiltrating it on any kind of mass level. As an online marketer who's exhausted after 5 years of jumping on the latest web 2.0 platform craze, this might be one I don't have to worry about and can actually enjoy. Google+ brings social networking back to the basics... relationships. And if only for a little while, I hope it stays that way.
From Facebook to Linkedin to Twitter to Foursquare to Quora... all shouting their viral capability and threatening that if you're not using us, you're not being heard. There's a reason they call it viral networking and it's because you'll usually get a virus from it.
Hats off to Google.