Google's latest fail

Google plus is a social networking and identity service operated by Google Inc. It was launched as 'invite only' in June 2011. Due to the high demand it was then made public in September 2011 to anyone aged 18 years or older. Goole+ in essence is an integration of social services such as Google Profiles and an introduction of newer services known as ‘Circles, Hangouts and Sparks’. Google+ aim was to make connection on the web more realistic as such that it would be the same as if connecting in the real world.

This is Google’s second attempt at trying to break into the social media market. The first was Google buzz which was a fail. If one were to look at sign up figures in the first month we would be saying goodbye to Facebook. Google+ managed to sign 25 million users in a month which makes Google+ one of the fastest growing websites in history. These figures are staggering and enticing at a first glance but when a closer look is given these figures a merely a smoke screen. In order to understand why Google+ didn’t take off we must understand why its main rival Facebook has stood the test of time and succeeded.

Facebook was developed firstly with college students in mind and when it was made available to users worldwide it was user friendly and exciting to use. But, for the most part the reason for Facebook’s success was the fact that it was innovative, new, and streamlined for users in comparison to its original rival MySpace. Google+ merely took Facebook’s idea and ironed out the flaws such as privacy settings and layout. These reasons do not make for a better or more competitive rival. Users are not concerned with such minute details. If an individual is ‘over’ Facebook it is not for a reason such a colour or layout it is because for the most part they are simply tired of social networking. This is turn would imply that they would not simply switch to Google+ to get the same thing but just have a different layout.

Although the figures are staggering, most people have just signed up for Google+ to see what the initial craze was. For the majority of profiles that have been created there are no profile pictures therefore illustrating that they have never logged on since they signed up.

Google+ became a failure because it was in the end a cheap copy of what was already in existence. For something to compete in a market it must be innovative and differential to what co-exists.

Are we looking at another bubble soon to burst!

You must be hiding under a stone if you haven’t heard Facebook’s latest and most elaborate spend to date. Facebook has decided to spend a whopping $1 billion on an app that makes no money! Instagram has 33 million users implying that Facebook paid $30 per user.

This extravagant spend was on the app ‘Instagram’. The app is made with the intention of allowing you to share your life ‘as instant and magical’ as the first Polaroid pictures had been when they came about.  Now don’t get me wrong it’s a brilliant idea but the only difference is the options to make your pictures more retro and there are 11 other options to change the picture one takes.

Facebook uploads an average 250 million pictures a day. Facebook’s main feature is photo sharing so of course they will be able to utilise the Instagram app but $1 billion is just too much money. . Instagram seems to have been bought so that other social networking sites won’t gain access any revenue that could be made. I would be of the belief that Facebook was trying to ensure that Twitter would not buy the app.

I can’t help but think back to when Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion. Or when eBay purchased Skype for an estimated price of approximately $3.1 billion and two years later was sold to Microsoft for $8.5 billion. This was Microsoft’s largest sever acquisition at the time (May 2011).

These elaborate spends by these very profitable companies have to bring to all our minds when the dot com bubble burst. If you are not familiar with the dot-com bubble it was basically an increase in the value from the growth in the internet sector. The bubble burst and only 50% of dot-com's survived.

So the acquisitions of YouTube by Google, Skype by Microsoft and now Instagram by Facebook has us all wondering is there another bubble on the horizon similar to that of the dot-com bubble.

Have we become to reliant on social media for information

Years ago people read newspapers and watched the daily news to keep up to date with whatever was going on in the world. Be it economic, gossip, or criminal news etc. Nowadays we have many outlets to find out any news we want whenever we want. It is constantly available 24/7, 365 days of the year. We have social media to thank for this, we have the likes of Facebook, twitter, YouTube etc

The initial craze was Bebo when it was launched onto the web in 2005 this was shortly taken over by Facebook and in the last few months Twitter seems to be a strong contender in replacing Facebook. The question I ask is 'can we trust these outlets to be factual and informative?'

Let’s look at the presidential election that was held here in Ireland in 2011. It was the talk of the nation and spread across every newspaper, radio station, Facebook and was the topic of 1000's of tweets. There was seven candidates; Michael D Higgins, Sean Gallagher, Martin McGuiness, Gay Mitchell, David Norris, Mary Davis. There was plenty of controversy throughout the campaign but the main controversy was the scandal that surrounded the front runner for the election; Sean Gallagher. 

Sean Gallagher took part during in a debate between the seven candidates on RTE's programme The Frontline on October 24th 2011. A tweet was posted on the twitter feed '#aras11', it read: "The man that Gallagher took the cheque from will be at a press conference tomorrow". The twitter account responsible was "@mcguinness4Pres". This tweet was in response to Martin McGuiness' (Sinn Fein candidate) allegation during the debate that Sean Gallagher took a cheque of €5,000 for Fianna Fáil from a business man 'Mr Morgan' and convicted fuel smuggler. In the end this tweet turned out to be false but it damaged Sean Gallagher's campaign for the election so much that he lost lots of votes and ended up losing his bid to become Ireland's President.

This is a travesty to think that one simple post made by an anonymous source on a social media site may have changed the outcome of the election.

References
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/presidential-election/sean-gallagher-tries-to-limit-damage-dodges-questions-2916000.html

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/gallagher-at-war-over-fake-tweet-ambush-2946941.html

http://www.irishelection2011.com/

Are shops becoming replaced by online sites?

Shopping has always been a major part of every person’s life. The question is have we become too advanced in the way that we shop. The traditional way of shopping consisting of driving into the nearest town/city or whatever it may be and physically walking into the shop and rummaging your way through countless articles of clothing in all shapes and sizes. Nowadays we have online shopping, in that as long as one has access to the internet they can virtually sit on their couch and search for what they are looking for at the time.

My question to you that read this is ‘Is online shopping the way forward and will shops with physical buildings become obsolete?’

The most advertised clothing website that I have come across is boohoo.com. This is one of the UK’s fastest growing e-business websites. The timeline consists of starting in 2006 and was then re-launched in 2010 after the company got help from kudos web solutions. They provided them with a full range of services ranging from hosting, design, project management, bespoke software development to consultancy and advisory roles. These in turn won boohoo.com awards and achieve treble digit growth each year. The COO of the company Chris Bale says that the main challenges they face is agility as the target audience (17-25 year old females) tastes and likes change day to day through various social media outlets. Boohoo.com is ranked second in the January Top Growers 2011 ChannelAdvisor Facebook Commerce Index.

Interestingly the top three growers of January are Topshop, boohoo.com and New Look. From these results it looks like although boohoo.com is a strong contender but consumers are still susceptible to shopping the traditional way.

My opinion is that while websites are good to get ideas for dresses I still prefer going into the shop and trying on the clothes. Although if the shop doesn’t have the size you can always use the shops website to order the product you want. I think Topshop and River Island have the right idea having both a shop and an online store.

I think we can sleep sound that shops won’t become obsolete just yet but boohoo.com are doing a very good job in keeping us in suspense.

References

boohoo.com

topshop.com

facebookcommercestrategies.com

kudoswebsolutions.com/featured-projects/boohoocom