Google+ a failure? No, but it isn’t ready for business.

A client of mine asked me about Google+ yesterday.  He wanted to know if he needed to be there.  He is just starting out and creating his presence so he doesn’t have much following. I found myself torn.  People that I respect a lot really love Google+.  I am an avid Chris Brogan reader and he is a huge proponent, even writing a book about Google+ for business.  On the other, for someone like my client, I can’t see how it provides value.  Since there is no effective search mechanism on the service (seriously Google, you launched a product with no effective search?) there is no way for him to “get the word out” about himself.  [Ok, to be technical, there is a search… it searches the names of users and their profiles.  It does not search posts.  So, if you want to find people who are actually talking about what you want to talk about… no dice.]

The ability to actually interact that Google+ provides is far superior than that of either Facebook or Twitter. With open, threaded communication, you can really get a depth of interaction that the other vehicles don’t provide.  This means that people like Chris Brogan or Robert Scoble who come to the table with a huge following and those that want to interact with them love the platform.  For the rest of us?  It is yelling into an abyss.

There is a recent move amongst some digerati (obviously not Scoble or Brogan) to declare Google+ a failure.  I will stop well of that in this posting.  I think it really could be something someday. I just think that day isn’t today, at least if you don’t have an existing following.  So for my client, I told him to focus for now on good old Facebook and Twitter.

~e