How Google+ turns the follower wars upside down

I found this quite interesting, and so will you! -Courtesy Mike Elgin, I encourage you to Circle +Mike Elgan

Twitter is like high school. The equivalent of being the popular captain of the football team or head cheerleader is to have a massive number of followers, but to be following very few. Some of the mega-celebrities, for example, have more than a million followers, but themselves are following like 12 people. Google+, however, which was built by math and computer nerds, turns that scenario upside down. If you think about it: Your potential reach on G+ is affected more by who you follow than by who's following you. Let me explain. The Extended circles button sends your post to all the people in your circles, plus all the people in their circles who have public follower counts on their profiles.

So if a mega-celebrity has been circled on Google+ by a million people, but themselves has circled only 12, then their posts will go to a million people, plus the 12, plus the people in the circles of those 12. But the theoretical maximum number of people who can be reached by the Extended circles button is 25 million. That's achievable if you follow 5,000 who each are following 5,000 people, assuming everyone is public with their follower lists. I can theoretically reach 25 million people, even if nobody is following me . If nobody is following me on Twitter, my tweets will reach zero people. So the show-off celebrities who want to demonstrate effortless aloofness by following few, but attracting many, can still do that on Google+. But they'll have a much smaller reach than the person who follows a lot of people who also follow a lot of people. Interesting.

Google+ see fastest growth in History with 20 Million users in 3 Weeks

I have seen my Stream and Circles of friends steadily grow on Google+ during the two weeks I've been using Google's new social networking platform. Today the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google Plus has reached 20 Million users in just 3 short weeks. Usage is also widespread across the globe where we see early adopters in large numbers in India, the United kingdom, Canada, Germany, Brazil, Taiwan and France among other countries. Another thing I noticed is that I spend much more time on Google+ than Facebook, and maybe the newness factor is driving this usage, but I can honestly say that it is so much easier to use when compared with Facebook. For instance, like Facebook, Google+ has notifications (also RED) so you can see all new updates to friends, comments, messages and posts, but unlike Facebook, Google+ allows you to expand the specific thread right within the notifications panel (UI), that is pretty revolutionary! This is better. It allows you to continue whatever you were doing without the hassle of toggling between a bunch of pages.

Crossing the Chasm for Google+, what's the magic number?

Whilst it is still too early to predict much regarding Google+, I anticipate that Live Hangouts and Huddles will drive sustained participation. right now early adopters are driving growth, but until Google+ crosses the chasm we won't be able to predict anything. That however poses a huge question, what number would constitute crossing the chasm? Facebook and twitter has set the bar extremely high, Facebook was not first to market but Twitter was first. Google is the market leader in search, digital advertising and many online productivity apps.

These and many other factors will determine that number, it could be 150 Million users, or 189 million or 220 Million, many will say 100 Million worldwide users. Determining that number has become a science for consumer electronics, so marketers know exactly what they need to do to reach that number, not so much in an unpredictable world of social networking platforms where there are many more failures than successes. To be sure, whatever the number, getting there will take a very flexible and highly responsive strategy from the Google+ team. In my opinion, beating Facebook, or killing fb as some have suggested, is not part of Google's objective, but building Google+ to function similarly as fb functions (and thus capitalizing on established habits), is a clear indication that they want to encourage significant G+ adoption. This, I think, is the main factor that will help Google+ to cross the chasm.