Social Media Floundering

Business marketing is in a state of unrest. As Wall Street experiences a "tech bubble" in 2011 (i.e. fantastic valuations of unprofitable .coms), there is a parallel movement afoot in the field of social media and online business marketing. To top off the chaos, nobody seems to be able to predict what's coming next.

To imagine how different the internet world could be in 5 years, consider Google's latest effort to create a social networking platform. Google+ has the insurmountable task of dethroning Facebook (which boasts 520 million entrenched users). All the analysts proclaim a single, resounding question: "Why would anybody switch"?

The short answer is that Google+ will attempt to create a better user experience in terms of content control. Of course, Facebook has publicly acknowledged they will be making significant changes to their own platform in the years to come. Could it be that any successful elements created by Google+ will be quickly duplicated by Facebook? Or maybe at some point in the future the two networking platforms will peacefully co-exist with two separate user groups (e.g. tech and business users on Google+ with family& personal friends on Facebook).

Maybe you simply think that Google is stupid. That they're wasting time and money. I doubt it. I think they see that the game is far from over, which extends to the rest of the technology application and internet universe. We're just getting started. So, when you as a business owner hear the wild, raving claims of "social media consultants", don't be alarmed. Much like you, Google execs and many other ostensibly well-informed people... they're trying to figure it too.