Guy Kawasaki – Silicon Valley entrepreneur, former Apple evangelist and investor – just published an e-book about Google+ called What the Plus: Google+ for the Rest of Us. In it he talks about why Google+ is better than Facebook, technically speaking, but lacks warmth that could “inspire true devotion,” and introduces the concept of “WYKC-WYG” or “who you know changes what you get.” Here are the highlights:
Google+ fills a new niche in social networking. If Twitter is about sharing perspectives, and Facebook is about following people, then Google+ is great for sharing your passions, even if it’s with people you don’t know.
Google+ has features that Facebook just doesn’t. Among other things, it lets you share longer posts; edit your posts after you’ve published them; show more pictures on your profile page; hang out in video conferences with up to nine other people; exert more control over who sees your posts and whose posts you see; and visualize how your posts are spreading through the network.
Conversations on Google+ tend to be longer, more thoughtful, and less vituperative than those on other networks. “The quality, breadth, and depth of Google+ comments compared to Twitter and Facebook blow me away,” Kawasaki writes. “This level of interaction separates Google+ from those other services, and it’s the reason Robert Scoble and thousands of other early adopters love Google+.”
Google+ is great for marketers. Because Google now integrates social connections into the results people get in traditional searches, being active on Google+ is one way to influence people and steer them toward your blog, your company site, or other content. Kawasaki says we’re now in the era of “WYKC-WYG” or “who you know changes what you get”—a reality that should “bring a smile to the face of every marketer.”
Google+ will only get better, since Google is big, powerful, and serious about social media. With “infinite money and talent” (Kawasaki’s words) and a lot to lose if Facebook were to displace it as the main way people discover new things on the Web, the company is going to keep working at social networking until it wins.
