Thursday, July 19, 2012

Is Google+ The Best Social Network For Marketers After All?


Considering these numbers released from the American Customer Satisfaction Index today:
facebook users not as satisfied as google plus users
The ranking, released in partnership with the analytics company Foresee, has Google+ edging out all other social networks (and trouncing Facebook) in the battle for the hearts of social users.
Now back to Google+...
Simplicity: Google+ provides a “cleaner” social media user experience. But Facebook, with its news feeds, sponsored stories, timelines, etc, is way too visually busy. Google+, on the other hand, feels less cluttered.
Convenience: Google+ is highly integrated with most Google services, including its search engine. Earlier this year, when Google rolled a bevy of services into its Gmail account sign-up, I was waiving the red flag along with many others.
Essentially forcing users sign up for multiple services (many of which they did necessarily realize they were signing up for) with one (key)stroke seemed a bit shady to me.
Admittedly, so is Facebook’s practice of selling user data to the highest bidder.