A Different Sort of "Buzz" Can Potentially Sink Google+ - Matt Koppelman - MSLGROUP

quotBuzzquot in the communications industry is usually something we doggedly pursue Marketing and PR departments exist to get their brands talked about Yet we could probably poke a few holes in this axiom in the context of the world39s newest social networkGoogle still in beta has already received more search queries and news references in its first two weeks than Facebook did for several years after it was introduced I39m not so sure all the hype is a good thingLet39s take a look at how search volume for Facebook and Google compares After no or little search volume for Facebook for about three years it started to grow incrementally in mid2008 But look at Google which opened in beta a couple weeks ago Search traffic has skyrocketedamp160The way people are reacting to Google could be a function of their age I basically group marketing professionals into two categoriesYou never thought you39d see nonsensically named Internetbased platforms like Facebook Twitter or Plus make up such a large part of your daytodayORYou can39t remember a time when they didn39tMy friends and I are in the latter category I am 25 and was a college freshman when Facebook launched publicly in 2004 My generation quotgrew upquot playing with Facebook when it was something cool and reserved for young people Seven years ago we didn39t care what advertisers thought of Facebook and they didn39t have it on their radar So Facebook grew silently stealthily into the powerhouse that it is today That39s why with Google Gen Y39ers are happy to just play around with itamp8212we39re just happy to experiment with a new tool like we did in Facebook39s infancyOlder colleaguesamp8212or maybe cynical journalistsamp8211 seem to have a different reaction This community is analyzing Google Plus39s every single move Even Mashable is putting doomsdaylike questions out there quotGoogle is reportedly approaching 18 million users but its growth is slowing down Should Google be worriedquot One man commenting on the Mashable story wrote quotAlready we are worrying about the death of Google My oh myamp8230quotThis is not great buzz for a quotknownquot entityKnowns and UnknownsAs Former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously saidThere are known knowns there are things we know we knowWe also know there are known unknowns that is to say we know there are some things we do not knowBut there are also unknown unknowns amp8212 the one we don39t know we don39t knowAs far as the business community is concerned Facebook was an quotunknown unknownquot for several years Again when I was in collegeamp8212call my friends and me the original Facebook Beta testersamp8212Facebook had nothing to do with marketing data mining or lead generation or heck with ANYTHING apart from finding out who that cute girl was in biology Since no one was sure how to treat quotThe Bookquot as a marketing tool no immediate success was required from it amp8211 and this absence of attention allowed Facebook to evolve at its own pace as a natural phenomenon As the idea of digital and conversational marketing was nascent at the time no one can blame marketers for casting a wary eye toward the platform back thenPut another way according to Facebook39s own timeline twoandahalf full years passed Feb 2004 amp8211 August 2006 between launch and the first mention of any sort of advertising revenue Even Steve Ballmer when announcing Microsoft39s 2006 investment was still referring to Facebook as a fadEven without referring to the timeline I think we all can remember what happened next amp8211 Facebook explodedFacebook is like the kid in baseball who was good enough to get drafted into the minors but didn39t exactly set the world on fire amp8211 and then all of a sudden he did No ifs ands or buts amp8211 Facebook gradually became a quotknown unknownquot and in 2011 it is very much a quotknown knownquotHyperawareness However the current success of this and other social networks has caused instant hyperawareness of anything described with the words quotsocialquot andor quotnetworkquotEnter GoogleIf anyone can handle being thrust into a glaringly bright spotlight it39s Google right The company has been operating in the limelight for more than a decade and its executives likely have painful memories of losing out to Microsoft in 2007 when it made a 16 stake in Facebook Google is hungryHowever despite that hunger and being well Google the team behind Plus is facing a significant disadvantage amp8211 partially of their own making With Google Plus commercial successamp8212the ability of marketers to reach people through the networkamp8212is top of mind for everybody Marketers are holding it to a higher standard than they ever did with Facebook in its early daysOf course I need to state the obvious We are not living in 2004 In the social world of 2011 it makes sense that people are primed to analyze the latest tool Nevertheless with the hyper attention thrust upon it Google Plus is like a kid who has millions of parents telling him what to do Just a few weeks of Beta testing including the wellpublicized invite system has caused Google Plus to jump straight to a quotknown knownquotThis is a bad thingBuzz Fatigue quotBuzz fatiguequot is already occurring in conversationsSerious conversations are occurring about user attritionerosion rates something that seems quite premature given the tool isn39t even out of beta testing yet Moreover parodies are already circulating around the web The Google Plus Trailer to the tune of quotCreepquot by Radiohead has irreverent quips such as quotIf you guys were the inventors of Facebook you would have invented FacebookquotAnd this video is titled The Google Minus ProjectThe cynics seem to be saying No users no marketing No marketing no revenue No revenue no development They seem to be killing the world39s latest known knownPersonally I hope Google Plus has the chance to grow upMatt can be reached on matt dot koppelman at mslgroupcom or wwwgplustomkoppelman or on Twitter mattkoppelman

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A Different Sort of "Buzz" Can Potentially Sink Google+ - Matt Koppelman - MSLGROUP

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