Does this mark the end of Google+ or..?

A Google+ account will no longer be required to use other Google services, as Google announces a shift to focus ‘SPS’ products [#SmartInsights alert]

Importance: ★★

Recommended source: Official Google blog

Bradley Horowitz, Google’s VP of Streams, Photos and Sharing announced via a Google+ update yesterday, that Google has essentially decided to reverse the policy that it embarked on in 2013.

Back then Google was trying to use Google+ to tie together all of its services, and thus forced users of Google services like YouTube to have Google+ accounts to be able to use the service - you'll remember how popular that was . Horowitz is quite open that Google now considers this a mistake. In his post he admits ‘we made a few choices that, in hindsight, we’ve needed to rethink. So over the next few months, we’re going to be making some important changes.’

What is changing?

Google says that rather than requiring a Google+ account, now only a Google account will be needed to share content, commutate with contacts and create a YouTube channel. Google has already broken out hangouts and photos from the Google+ system so they can be used with only a Google account.

Some have suggested this is Google ‘giving up’ on Google+ as a rival to other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, but Google itself sees this repositioning as helping Google+ to behave more as a social network, rather than being a dashboard for Google services.

The Implications for Google+

Whether this unbundling of Google services will allow Google+ to shine as a social platform, or will leave it as an anachronism with a shrinking, but enthusiast user base remains to be seen. Google themselves want people to believe it will be the former. This is what Google themselves say regarding the future of Google+:

What does this mean for Google+ the product? Relieved of the notion of integrating with every other product at Google, Google+ can now focus on doing what it’s already doing quite well: helping millions of users around the world connect around the interest they love. Aspects of the product that don’t serve this agenda have been, or will be, retired. But you’ll also see a slew of improvements that make this use case shine (like the recent launch of Collections -‪http://ift.tt/1cdED9d).

Horowitz explained in a post on Google+ that Google isn’t giving up on Google+, and are planning on focusing on its social nature rather than using it as the way people engage with other Google products.

Implications for marketers

For brands currently using Google+, I'd advise keeping a close eye on engagement and follower growth over the next few months. Google have said they will be making it easy for people who have created Google+ accounts that they didn't want (in order to access services like YouTube) to delete them. This could potentially affect the size of your communities. Although given that the people deleting their accounts will probably never really have been active on Google+ this probably won't affect your engagement rates. Google+ has never been a great platform for engagement, but does have advantages for SEO and appearing in blended search results and local carousel results. These won't be changing, so this update won't instantly impact your business case for using Google+. However if Google is successful in turning Google+ into a vibrant social network via these changes, you will benefit from them should you already have a Google+ strategy.

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