The Revolution: Google+

Google+ will revolutionize the web, but not for the reason you might think.

I have read a lot about the new stats that show Google+ will be at 400 million users by the end of the year. The most common argument I hear is “So what, it’s 400 million inactive accounts!” One author said, “the number is only that high because every Android device is forced to get one, it will never be a viable network.” Why yes; that is exactly the point.

Google+ is not about being the best social network.

Even if that was the plan originally it might not be the plan now. Now this being said I am sure Google would not be mad if they became the go to spot for all of your vague dramatic posts about someone or something, but that isn’t the point. One of the things that made Facebook soooooo attractive to investors was that it had mountains of data about you, your friends and family. Your likes, wants, needs, are all in a neat little package called a social network that could be sold to advertisers. The problem came when people realized there was not a monetization plan for mobile, which depending on who you talked to is either half of all users or 75% of all Facebook users. Ouch.

Imagine that same situation with Google+. Google already has monetization down pat. There are a zillion ways to monetize search with the mountains of data that could be collected from your mobile device. Since Android has the largest market share in the mobile market (54% at the moment) it is safe to say they will know where you are going, what you like, and can market back to you in Google Local, Google Search, Google Play or even Google+.

Google+ takes advantages of mobile that other outlets cannot.

Google recently retired a ton of products that no one cared about possibly to focus those teams on building mobile and tablet divisions. These are the future veins of marketing for small businesses. Google local optimization using social data collected from networks and mobile devices will allow small to medium sized businesses to compete in ways they thought they were with Google Adwords years ago.

The future is here, Google has seen it, and it is mobile. Four hundred million mobile users are predicted by Jan 1 2013. Is your business ready?