In terms of sheer adoption, Google Plus has been a smashing success. With over 90 million users it’s the second fastest growing service in all of human history. Still, Google Plus is generally and increasingly viewed as a boring second-tier alternative to Facebook, which is now quite probably diffusing at the fastest rate of any technology to date. Why? Because Facebook has the people, the conversations and massive data inertia & gravity. Its interface is boring, but Facebook isn’t. Many claim to be annoyed by it, but with 950 million+ highly engaged users Facebook has won social on planet Earth, thus far. How might Google Plus compete against Facebook’s massive social inertia? For starters, Google could simply use its massive warchest to buy users. But that’s a mighty expensive proposition for users that could simply flee the service if it doesn’t prove sticky enough. Far more likely, Google Plus will learn to win over users on the fringes, in currently non-mainstream use areas
on the social consequences of emerging tech