The Ghost of Google+

Back in 2013 I had about 10K followers on Google+. My former boss Andrew said at the time that "I was a Google+ sensation". I guess you could say that I was a Google+ micro-influencer in today's parlance.

The reason I have been thinking about Google+ lately is that, this week, Twitter announced they are testing "circles" as a way to share with up to 150 select people. The name itself is the exact name that Google+ called their version of grouping different audiences that you wanted to share to. And of course, Instagram is already doing this with "Close Friends". And not to be forgotten that Facebook has been doing this with Lists for some time. The interesting thing is the brain behind Google+ at the time is a guy by the name of Paul Adams. If you don't know Paul Adams, he wrote an amazing book that is still relevant today called "Grouped". In it, Adams, discusses the fact that we actually only talk to between 7-15 people consistently and even then, most of our conversations are with our 5 strongest ties. So when he was at Google, he and the team there purposefully designed Google+ to have circles so when you added a new person, you had to add them to a circle and decide how you would share to them. For instance, you may want your work connections to see different content from let's say your close friends, and so on. That exists in reality if you think about it. We share differently with our different real-life network connections.

Now that Twitter has decided to test this, following Meta's Facebook and Instagram, I think we can say we have come full circle, pun intended. So while Google+ may not have survived the core proposition as a social platform has finally gotten it's due. Social platforms have realized, maybe sharing to everyone as a default all the time isn't such a good idea. To my former Google+ lovers, we knew were ahead of the game long ago!