Far from giving up on Google+, Google is going to give it a big makeover. Google has always been a struggling social network. That is, if it’s a social network in the usual sense of the word, in the first place.
With nothing like the growth of Facebook, against which all networks are compared, it’s often been called a “ghost town” and worse.
Google has tried again and again to galvanise Google+ and direct users to it, but although it has 2.5 billion users, but then Google forced this by linking Google+ with everyone’s basic Google and Gmail accounts.
For the past few months all is dead quiet with regard to Google+.
The network’s early and loyal users continue to use it because they have built up communities that are deeply engaged and interactive. That’s perhaps how Google wanted the network to be used, but it takes some work and dedication. For a while, after Vivek Gandotra, ex Senior Vice President of Social at Google left the company, it was thought Google would gradually just forget about Google+. But no such thing.
Google has announced that there’s a new Google+. And indeed, if you make your way to the Google+ app, you’ll find the focus is now on Communities and Collections, the two areas that Google says are growing fast, Communites at 1.2 million new users each day and Collections “even faster”.
“Whether it’s the Nonfiction Addiction Community, where people can be found discussing the best in Crime or Travel storytelling, or the Watch Project Collection, where more than 40,000 people are following an antique watch hobbyist, these are the places on Google+ where people around the world are spending their time discovering and sharing things they love,” says the official Google blog.
The redesign is still in beta but can be accessed and is really quite interesting. The Collections feature is in big photo tiles and allows you to aggregate content around your interests. It’s a little like a cross between Flipboard and Pinterest in that respect. You can follow any number of Collections by other users, quickly populating your Google+ feed.
All the Circles and other features from before are still there. With Communities, users can share interests with others, publically or with circles, and populate these with hangouts, videos, photos etc. It tends to remind people of Reddit.
Google has tried rather hard to make Google+ work. It’s been stubborn in emulating other social networks with their intense interactivity, despite the tools being available. It’s been often thought that Google just isn’t the type of company that can pull of a social media network and this is not at its very core which is ore technological. But perhaps the noise at other networks may just drive some users to the Google+ in its new avatar. We’ll have to watch whether its new lease of life will make it immortal.
BW Reporters
Mala Bhargava has been writing on technology well before the advent of internet in Indians and before CDs made their way into computers. Mala writes on technology, social media, startups and fitness. A trained psychologist, she claims that her understanding of psychology helps her understand the human side of technology.
