Facebook wants me to pay to engage people. It's a smart business model at the end of the day for Facebook. But when you are someone like me, who basically runs the operations solo, it can be a little tough to continually spend money for 'likes' and engagement. There is no real guarantee that my funds committed will in turn see a profit in either the short or long term.
That's why I am much more committed to Google+ who already advertises me for free; the numbers do show at the end of the day. My Facebook page usually can reach a few hundred people on any given day. Maybe a few thousand if I happen to engage people at the right time with the right article. Google+ can show a lot more bang for your buck, as I average a minimum of a thousand people per day. So according to an article put forth by Mashable, this is one part that caught my attention:
"Google+ launched with big aspirations but no well-defined purpose for users; now, very belatedly, Google is trying find some purpose for the social network as those aspirations shrink."
In theory, unless you are an avid Google user such as myself, it may or may not work for you in the long run; and thus the reason for being considered a "favorite punchline in the technology industry". I like to think that Google+ could capitalize on the paid promotion aspect. If there are users out there such as myself that are not willing to trade dollars for likes (especially in start up business), then Google should be capitalizing on this. Find someway to incentivize users to ditch the paid promotion aspect in turn for more exposure with other Google users.
As of October, 2013, there were 540 million registered users for Google+. Keep in mind that Google has also used their all-in-one design to their advantage. You have a Google account, that can take care of your phone, your blog, your calendar, YouTube, Gmail, and of course Google+. So you basically sign on for the whole package, versus Facebook or Twitter who merely offers the website they have created (with all the apps inside mind you). But music is where I pay attention on this. Google+ has the ability to compete for specific interests rather than pages as a whole. To this day, I think Facebook and Google can still work on something better for musicians alike.
What about a job section for musicians? What about embedded players for each band page to stream music right from the moment you enter their page? What about direct messages that tell you when this band is scheduled to play in your area next? What about more integration with music theory and education? These are all viable areas for Google+ to discover and promote. While I think that engaging people in social media is a great thing regardless of medium, there are millions of music lovers and writers all looking to get their name out there beyond the 10,000 competitors. Make them all feel important...make them all feel like they are the best of the best.
Both Facebook and Google+ offer business pages, so you'll really just have to decide for your own business what will work and what will not. As for Mashable's article, I think the focus of the future is what was the full-circle moment.
"Google+ is shifting from a Facebook clone to more of a Pinterest lookalike to see if it can build momentum. At the same time, Google is investing resources to build more standalone social products like the Photos app, which has generated plenty of positive press."
Re-designing the wheel is what it basically looks like from an outside POV. Maybe finding that fine balance between connections and doing business is what Google needs to generate in order for this to be considered more of a stand alone success, rather than simply being a tag along for having a Google account (for email or phone purposes). For now, I will continue to use it to my advantage, same as I did when Google Reader was still active. For those interested, here are a couple more articles hyperlinked for more in depth about Google+.
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