Why yo momma won’t use Google+ (and why that thrills me to no end)

I read an interview with a record executive a long time ago and he answered the question, "How do you find the next big thing?"

"That's pretty easy," he said, "I just look for something that parents will hate."

That this is a successful strategy is self-evident. (American) kids want to differentiate themselves from their parents and will pay money to do so. They'll probably latch on in some form to anything as long as it fits the criteria that their parents don't like it.

I think it's a safe bet that the social networking site that replaces Facebook will have fewer features, be ugly, be more difficult to use, and have no redeeming qualities other than nobody's parents are going to participate in it, and kids will identify with it as the cool thing for that reason.

> Since most of the people who are on Google+ so far are geeks, insiders, social media stars, journalists, and other people

This is what I fear the most with +. I'm just as nerdy as the next guy, but I like to have some good un-clean fun with my friends, and Google+ comes off as conservative and parental. If Google stays too clean it won't draw the non-technical users I converse with on Facebook, and enjoy conversing with. Part of the fun of Facebook is the college atmosphere where few things are off-limits.

It is a pretty big jump to say that since Google+ is geeky, therefore the masses won't adopt it. We are talking about an online social networking site. No matter how slick and friendly it looks, the early days of any website are bound to be geeky. Sure, Facebook was never really that geeky (you know, as ungeeky as a Harvard social network can be), but Twitter sure as hell was. That is the lifecycle of these sites. More importantly, yo momma may not have much of a choice. Google is making it pretty clear with all of the redesigns that the Google+ tail will be wagging the Google services dog. Once yo momma starts googling her friends and seeing their profile pop up in search results, looks up directions and see recommendations in the area from her friends, and so on, I'll bet she'll start using it.

Now whether that is good or bad is another question, but Google does seem to have it set up so your mom being on there won't hold you back much.

I don't believe he has the required evidence to make this claim.

(1) I have a lot of non-techie friends that are interested in using this just to try it out -- they are early adopters but consumers instead of creators; they do not have technical ability.

(2) Whether or not Plus gains market traction is dependent on how it fits into the current social application space. 'Hangouts' and 'Circles' will help differentiate them but to gain a foothold the network effect is of greater importance. Google are making a very calculated move by inviting people with higher quality social graphs as this will help them here!

Plus' success will depend on:

(a) whether they can keep non-techie early-adopters interested in the new features they are providing.

(b) how well they manage to cross-pollinate between each of the services in their eco-system: the changes in Gmail, the navigation bar, and UI across their services point towards them realising this.

(c) easing the move in-between other social applications by providing APIs that could be accessed by more generic desktop and mobile applications that users often use to interact with networks: Tweetdeck, etc... As I said, it's all about harnessing network effects and getting the right people on the service. At this point, I don't see any reason to doubt they have momentum and if they're smart they will continue to connect their eco-system together in a way that creates long-term growth long after the buzz dies.

(3) It's quite presumptuous to assume that since many early-adopters are techies that this is how it will remain: does anybody remember when Twitter was only used by techies?

Let's just see how it plays out and avoid creating mindless tech gossip...?

Please explain how G+ is more geeky than Facebook. It's a much more intuitive product. It enables features in such an easy way that Facebook can't even dream about.