"The biggest problem for Google+ (IMHO) is that people are tired of using social networking not that people are tired of using Facebook."
I think this is true to an extent. But I would refine it even further, because the distinction matters: People are tired of using social networking sites. Walled gardens. Neo-portals. Whatever you want to call sites like Facebook, of which Facebook is simply the most prominent and successful example. (Also, I would be careful to distinguish that, by "people," we really mean "some people." Clearly, not everyone is as sick of social networking and/or Facebook as we might like to think.)
Some elements of social networking will always be useful, and people will probably want to continue using them. But I question whether everyone will keep wanting to use a central destination/portal for all their social networking needs.
This could be a very good thing for Google+. But only if Google+ resists the temptation simply to build a new Facebook, and make the Google+ site the core of the Google+ experience. That's not the way to go. And Google doesn't need to go there, because it can monetize its user activity in so many other ways. Google+ still has room to evolve into a distributed, decentralized social networking experience -- wherein social networking is a feature, and not a destination.
Of course, that sort of experience might still be a ways off. And it still raises the thorny question of who owns the central pillars in the social platform, like user identity and the social graph. (Though, if the history of social networking -- and even of email services -- has anything to tell us, it's that users don't necessarily mind rebuilding identity/credentials and graphs all that much, up to a point).
I think this is true to an extent. But I would refine it even further, because the distinction matters: People are tired of using social networking sites. Walled gardens. Neo-portals. Whatever you want to call sites like Facebook, of which Facebook is simply the most prominent and successful example. (Also, I would be careful to distinguish that, by "people," we really mean "some people." Clearly, not everyone is as sick of social networking and/or Facebook as we might like to think.)
Some elements of social networking will always be useful, and people will probably want to continue using them. But I question whether everyone will keep wanting to use a central destination/portal for all their social networking needs.
This could be a very good thing for Google+. But only if Google+ resists the temptation simply to build a new Facebook, and make the Google+ site the core of the Google+ experience. That's not the way to go. And Google doesn't need to go there, because it can monetize its user activity in so many other ways. Google+ still has room to evolve into a distributed, decentralized social networking experience -- wherein social networking is a feature, and not a destination.
Of course, that sort of experience might still be a ways off. And it still raises the thorny question of who owns the central pillars in the social platform, like user identity and the social graph. (Though, if the history of social networking -- and even of email services -- has anything to tell us, it's that users don't necessarily mind rebuilding identity/credentials and graphs all that much, up to a point).