What the Google+ reboot says about the company's 'social' future
When Google launched Google+ in 2011, the company had lofty goals for the nascent social network. Google+ was supposed to compete with Facebook by taking Google鈥檚 considerable store of user data and augmenting it with personal information such as birthdays, photos, likes, and dislikes.
The service was widely praised for its approach to photos and its nuanced privacy features (which came only after the company experienced a highly-visible privacy failure with Google Buzz, its predecessor social network). A that year even showed that Google staked its employees鈥� bonuses on the company鈥檚 success at creating a social network.
But Google+ never quite caught on the way the company predicted it would. As users failed to embrace the new social network, Google began spinning off features one by one. Photos got its own app; so did the Hangouts chat feature. Google that it would 鈥減ivot鈥� the central social concept behind Google+, to see if there might yet be a purpose for the network itself.
On Tuesday, Google that it鈥檚 relaunching that network. But rather than a catch-all Google+ designed to supplant Facebook as people鈥檚 primary social network, the redesigned Google+ is simpler and slimmer.
The new Google+ is designed around two features, Communities and Collections, which are meant to unite people around shared interests. The implementation is similar to that of social news platform Reddit, which divides its content into different subreddits with topics ranging from technology to minimalism to chess.
If you to the new Google+ (web only for now, though the company says new Android and iOS apps are coming soon) you鈥檒l be presented with a list of popular Communities and Collections that you might be interested in following. are groups of individuals sharing links, tips, and articles about a shared interest such as Javascript coding or crock pot cooking. are groups of posts by a single author on a topic of interest, such as an artist鈥檚 portrait photographs or an Android enthusiast鈥檚 app reviews. Those features have been present in Google+ for years, but since they鈥檙e the most popular services, they鈥檙e now being put front and center.
鈥淣ow focused around interests, the new Google+ is much simpler,鈥� Eddie Kessler, Google鈥檚 Director of Streams, wrote in a . 鈥淎nd it鈥檚 more mobile-friendly鈥攚e鈥檝e rebuilt it across web, Android and iOS so that you鈥檒l have a fast and consistent experience whether you are on a big screen or small one.鈥�
With the new network, Google seems more content to offer a simple product that 鈥渟olves real needs,鈥� in Mr. Kessler鈥檚 words, rather than a sprawling, ambitious piece of software that may or may not actually appeal to users.
