We are starting off our review with the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard because the title is intriguing: “What Google+ could do for news.” It peaked our interest because if it can do it for “news” it will do it for “brand journalism” – one of our specialties.
We give Google+ a B+ because it’s a project, not a finished app. Definitely not a killer app. Not yet. Remember MySpace, OS/2 (what you never heard of it? – my point exactly), etc?
Google+ will be a strong player in marketing and PR. Much better than Google Buzz. We’ll have to wait and see what develops and how innovative marketing and PR pros develop its use in the integrated marketing mix. I have some initial Ning like ideas, especially with the Circles feature, but that will be a later post.
Take a look at these reviews, see it for yourself, and let me know what you think:
“TechCrunch had one of the first and best explanations of what Google+ is all about, and Wired’s Steven Levy wrote the most comprehensive account of the thinking at Google behind Plus: It’s the product of a fundamental philosophical shift from the web as information to the web as people.”
Mark Coddington
, Nieman Journalism Lab, Harvard: What Google+ could do for news
http://bit.ly/oV3j71
“Google, the world’s largest search company, is formally making its pitch to become a major force in social networking. The product it announced Tuesday is called Google+, and observers might wonder whether it’s simply one more social effort by a company that’s had a lousy track record in that field to date.”
Steven Levy
, Wired: Inside Google+ — How the Search Giant Plans to Go Social
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/06/inside-google-plus-social/all/1
“Google+ is a bold and dramatic attempt at social. There’s a reason why Google calls this a “project” rather than a “product” — they don’t want people to think of this as the final product, but as a constantly-evolving entity that permeates every corner of the Google empire. Overall, Google+ is solid. But I’m not going to call it a Facebook killer or a game-changer.”
Ben Parr, Mashable:
http://mashable.com/2011/06/28/google-plus-review/
“This is the way Google always wanted social networking to work, and this time the company may have pulled it off.”
Jason Hiner, ZDNet: Is Google+ about to transform the Web?:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/is-google-about-to-transform-the-web/52004
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