Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column. We’ve gathered a group of visionaries and veterans in the mobile industry to give their insights into the marketplace.
Hello from the nation’s heartland and home of Google Broadband – Kansas City. The last week of June was not without fireworks from the search giant, who announced their new social media site called Google+. Invitation only and beta status aside, it piqued a lot of interest, and garnered some favorable reviews (except from The Washington Post, which is expected as publisher Don Graham sits on Facebook’s board of directors. This disclosure is conspicuously missing from all of the Post’s reviews).
Reviews aside, Google Inc. (GOOG) is missing the point – as hard as they try to un-root Facebook from hundreds of millions of daily/hourly habits, they will not be successful until they treat this like what it is – a social election.
Yes, this is a beauty contest with billions at stake. In fact, this election’s outcome is the future of social media itself. Will our culture adopt “everything should be known about everyone to everyone” as its societal default (which, ironically, leads to each of us learning less about each other in the process) as opposed to “discretion is the better part of valor” made famous several hundred years ago by Falstaff in William Shakespeare’s “Henry the Fourth.” Google+ (known as G+) is clearly betting on the latter.
It can’t pull it off without treating this like a campaign, and you do not need to look much further than California politics to imagine this scenario: An enormously successful self-made billionaire candidate looking to dethrone a three-term popular incumbent. That’s our situation. Google, the well-heeled challenger, taking on Facebook, the incumbent institution of social networking.
To win (and it’s a long shot for sure), Google need to realize several things:
1. Facebook has low negative ratings. Knock them down. Yes, we complain about what we have to wade through on Facebook, but it’s the default source for social networks. It’s remarkably easy to use, and while their privacy ratings aren’t perfect yet, they are good enough for the under-30 crowd. And Facebook is a good value – after all, it’s free communication.
In a political campaign, when a challenger faces a popular incumbent, they begin by “creating negatives.” Google needs some examples of Facebook’s lackadaisical design flaws (there are a few, especially around its “age baiting” policy that shows exactly 18 years in its birth year. A coincidence? I think not). They could attack the CEO’s bizarre culinary habits (Mark Zuckerberg only eats meat that he kills himself). Or choose a completely different angle highlighting the value of privacy, security and true friendship. G+ gets sentimental and nostalgic (think about the swing vote), like those recent commercials about my dog and Chevy trucks.
Google needs to realize that they need to go negative to knock down the largely positive brand image of Facebook. Interestingly, Facebook was already readying a clandestine negative campaign against Google, going so far as to hire former campaign manager Mark Penn to manage it. If they aren’t treating this like a campaign, then why hire Hillary Clinton’s former campaign manager?
2. Promise a “middle-class tax cut” for the social masses that Facebook cannot deliver without going back on a campaign promise. This is where Google brings in their full portfolio to drive maximum participation. How about a 1,000 free unlocked Nexus S devices per day, each with a $25 Android Market credit, as a random giveaway for all new G+ customers (or groups formed) through the end of 2011 (cost of about $120 million)? Or an advertising credit to small businesses who actively promote G+ to their customers? Or a $10 million grand prize contest to build the next suite of applications atop G+ to grab developer mindshare?
Google needs to leverage their complete portfolio and answer the question “Why try G+?” In economically challenging times, a smartphone offer is great and free applications even better. Show the results of using G+, which need to include stronger families, better paying jobs and a stronger America.
Google+ cures America’s economic malaise by __________. (The preceding sentence is not a MySpace ad). Provide the right incentive, and America might actually respond. We’re suckers for the offer – just ask Living Social and Groupon.
3. Google+ needs supporters. Enter business. Thankfully, there is no McCain/Feingold in the social election. If Facebook has The Washington Post’s megaphone and Microsoft Corp.’s investment, why not enlist some business and community supporters to describe the benefits of Google+? This might be a perfect customer relationship management tool for the local florist, supermarket, bank branch, police department, university, hospital or church.
Expand the use cases with a balanced approach between the housewife and the emergency room nurse, the struggling small business owner and the professor. Show how the same profile can be used in different ways with different groups. Highlight the benefits of small group communication and the intimate conversations that are spawned. Most importantly, emphasize the difference between position and personality: the former demands respect and carries some degree of responsibility and accountability. Google+, with the support of tens of thousands of small businesses, is building tomorrow’s responsible social network. Your doctor, accountant, priest, policeman and banker all use it – why not you?
Enlist these businesses to advertise G+ for you. Make it local. Differentiate on responsibility. Rate it “G+” which means “safe for everyone.”
The social election is a hard one for Google to win. Frankly, the odds of overthrowing the incumbent are pretty low, and can only be accomplished with a billion-dollar bankroll. Google can do it if they treat it as a social election and create the grassroots support that has thus far been very satisfied with the status quo.
Jim Patterson is CEO and co-founder of Mobile Symmetry, a start-up created for carriers to solve the problems of an increasingly mobile-only society. Patterson was most recently President – Wholesale Services for Sprint and has a career that spans over eighteen years in telecom and technology. Patterson welcomes your comments at:jim@mobilesymmetry.com.
