We’ve spent a lot of time exploring why Facebook isn’t disrupting Google. So with the (pre?) launch of Google+ earlier today let’s ask the question Will Google+ disrupt Facebook?
The simple answer comes in the form of another question. Will Google+ provide young girls between the ages of 11-16 (and even some older ones between 17-25) or better still boys in the same age category with a life changing experience? If you think the answer is no then chances are Google+ will prove to be yet another one of those late to market Me2 that misses the market opportunity by a wide mark.
Why? Simply because (as I have said many times before) I suspect that Facebook’s magic formula was to create a “Game for Girls”, the boys followed the girls and the (overly protective) parents (and grandparents) followed to keep an eye on what was happening.
In many ways Facebook created an innovative social problem that encouraged the community to actively become involved to try to self regulate the issues created by launching this virtual experiment in “the Lord or the Flies”.
To some extent that’s what makes today’s TechCrunch interview with Sean Parker about the demise of MySpace with its Lord of the Rings overtones (e.g. “the one social network to rule them all“) so much more interesting than usual discourse we hear from the Valley’s Technopreneurs.
This “game for girls” hypothesis suggests that Facebook will be in trouble when the next generation of pubescent girls decide they don’t want to be seen to be playing anywhere near where they parents may be looking.
Although I haven’t played with it yet I suspect Google+ has probably missed the mark by trying to build a better social network architecture for search as opposed to building a better (and safer?) game for teenage girls.
Certainly the descriptions and videos provided by TechCrunch, Mashable, The Next Web, Read Write Web and GigaOm suggest this to be the case. In a world fixated on Farmville, Angry Birds and sharing pictures and secrets with friends. Google appears to have delivered an enterprise solution to the problem of keeping the So.Me masses entertained.
Just like Microsoft’s Pivot and Google’s Wave it looking like being an interesting piece of software design.
As for being a compelling user experience for the young and the restless and ultimately a So.Me game changer?
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. But some how I suspect the next big game for girls (and the boys) will be more mobile than the old So.Me.
Posted on June 29, 2011
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