Fixing the Google+ Engagement Problem

Many of us have found wonderful community on Google+.

“3 minutes”

We can’t understand why others aren’t having a similar experience.

(average time spent per month on Google+, according to ComScore)

But the truth is that there is a barrier on Google+.

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Google+ is different than Facebook.

=/While Facebook connects us with existing friends, Google+ connects us to new friends via shared interests.

It’s easy to find existing friends on Facebook, and begin engaging with them right away... After all, we already

know these people.

But Google+ is more like a party where you don’t know everyone, and need to reach out via shared interests.

That’s a nice hat.

The problem is, it’s still too hard for new users to find people who share their interests on Google+.

Helping us connect to a bunch of famous people isn’t the solution...

...They don’t engage back.

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Humans have a problem with paying too much attention to famous people as it is. We don’t need any more help there.

We’re already wired that way.

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On social networks, people with lots of links tend to get even more links. When it’s easy to get “famousfor being famous,” and when the “rich just get richer,” it actually weakens a social network...

The Famous.

You and Me.

star

power!

Conversations become broadcasts and less actual information gets exchanged on the network.

This isn’t TV.It’s not about sitting back and watching famous people broadcast to us.

That’s old-school.

This is about getting into it... you know, engaging with other people.

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Think of it this way...

Broadcasters do share interesting content.

But way more interesting content is exchanged

over a phone network.

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Google now needs lots of social content sharing to improve its search results.

But right now, new users just aren’t engaging enough on Google+ to generate a really broad base of “social signals.”

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Facebook users have 234 friends on average. That’s a lot of dense, decentralized connecting - seven hours per person, per month, in fact.

Facebook gets lots of social signals by connecting existing friends.

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Facebook already has the network for existing friends, and most people don’t really want another one. To build a new network with lots of engagement, Google needs a different approach.

And that approach is helping people build new ties via shared interests.

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Here’s the thing about meeting new people: sometimes we need a little help.

Think of it as helping us break the ice.

...and Google already knows a lot about our interests...

Knowing people’s interests can help with breaking the ice...

What if...

Google made better use of what it knows about our interests to help us better connect with others?

Here are a few rough ideas...

Explore your interests. These are some topics and people we think you might like, based on your search history and Google+ engagement.

☐ Travel to exotic places. Tips and ideas from people like you.

☑ Social enterprise mixes business and mission. Insights from people in the field.

☑ Clean energy is our future. Stay up with the latest trends and breakthroughs from people who know.

How about an Explore page for tuning what Google knows about our shared interests?

Google is starting to play with Search as a kind of interest-sharing icebreaker...

(See how the Explore page is now highlighting search topics?)

But what if our “saved searches” became a much more important way to consume content and connect with people?

How about more structured, standardized ways to tell others about our interests on our Google+ profiles?

Topic clean energy

And what if we could use that info to more easily find people, based on what they tell us they care about?

What if we could tag our posts with these same categories...

...and then filter people based on how heavily they engage with our posts in those categories?

Shared circles are great for getting people to circle you.

But they can also perpetuate the “rich get richer” problem...

We need better tools for following people back - like improvements to circle notifications to make it easier to discover shared interests.

And how about integrating a little of Google Groups, to help groups of us better engage around shared interests?

Marvel Fan Club

Fan Club

These are just rough ideas, but make no mistake:

“Icebreaker technology” is absolutely critical to Google right now.

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It will help Google build the “interest graph” - which improves search and ad targeting.

And that means more revenues.

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More importantly though....

Google has a real problem with Google+ engagement, especially relative to Facebook.

7 hours = 3 minutes /

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Facebook will use its deeper, more distributed engagement to better understand people’s interests... and threaten Google’s core business.

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The world doesn’t need another network to engage existing friends, or another network to hear more from famous people.

What it does need is a better network to share interests with those who share our interests.

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At the simplest level, that means Google needs to invest like crazy in helping us build new relationships

around shared interests.

And that, in the end, comes down to giving us better tools to

break the ice.

• Sea Ice: http://www.flickr.com/photos/windsordi/5446835336/ •Wall: http://www.flickr.com/photos/79286287@N00/215951891/• Party talk: http://www.flickr.com/photos/def6nyc/6312502880/• Alone: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jb-london/3594171841/• Chimps: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidbygott/5091918303/• Bieber: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cukuskumir/5689500961/• TV: http://www.flickr.com/photos/roadsidepictures/276395210/• Talking: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ameotoko/4334357860/• Radio: http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnmcnab/5169133473/• Operators: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ironrodart/4154904299/• Couch: http://www.flickr.com/photos/flamsmark/282514569/• Handshake: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwworks/5907692738/• Limbo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jdhancock/3605011903//• Twister: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jdhancock/3842546304/• Badges: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bbaltimore/5431709358/• Ice: http://www.flickr.com/photos/paul_cullen/405112678/

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