Are People Loving Google+ or Hating It?

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Are People Loving Google+ or Hating It?

Quick - who am I describing with these sentiments: great, awesome, interesting, cool, better than Facebook, annoying, boring, stupid...

You got it (and of course the title of the post probbbbably gave it away) - Google Plus (aka Google+ aka Google plus 1 aka the Facebook Killer aka that new Google social thing).

Those terms are just some of the emotions that people have around the product. In a nutshell, people are amped about Google+, as you can see from this sentiment chart that shows positive and negative sentiment for Google Plus over the past few weeks.

But 35% of people talking online about Google+ are doing it on Twitter, followed by 24% on blogs and 16% on social networks, so I have to wonder how many of us talking about it are talking about it because we're/*nerds*/ and #social #media #marketers who can't help but squeal like schoolgirls about good ol', sock-em-in-the-eye-with-the-next-big-thing Silicon Valley rivalry in the hottest online movement since the indoctrination of Web 2.0.

I also can't help but wonder if we GeekTechMarketerNerds are skewing the sentiment, since people I've talked to in the real world (like, not through a computer) have often said "yeah it's cool but now what do I do?"

So what's really behind all of this positive sentiment? Let's look under the hood. Of 5,332 sound bites (aka mentions) expressing positive emotions for Google+, 21% like it and 16% love it. On the negative side, 34% hate it and 19% don't like it (that's from a smaller segment of 736 sound bites).

People who expressed positive emotions other than "love" or "awesome" seem to like it rather lackadaisically with somewhat weak emotions like "interesting", "enjoy", and "cool". The smaller group of people who expressed negative emotions seem to be a bit more ferocious with "hate", "f*ck", "annoying", "boring", "evil" and "stupid".

We can also look at the intended behaviors people have expressed around Google Plus. With Google's need-to-know-someone-in-the-in-crowd invitation-only launch it's only natural that 17% of the positive behaviors were made up of "need" and "want".

Most people are talking about using it, and more people are talking about trying it than switching to it.

Negative behaviors are even more interesting: 21% don't get it, won’t get it or can’t get it, 5% think it's a waste, 8% don't want or need it, and 2% don't trust it. Ouch. But again, the negative sentiments overall were on a much smaller scale, so there are fewer of these than positives.

Lastly, inquiring minds want to know… Is Google+ a Facebook killer? Well, here's what the data tells us: 13% of the positive “likes” about the product are people saying they think it’s better than Facebook, 13% think Google+ makes it easier, and 9% think Google can do more things better than other competitive products. A sign of what's in store or just the sentiment of a bunch of us over-excited geeks? Tough to say.

What does Google still have to work on? An easy way to get an RSS feed seems to be top-of-mind, followed by other technical limitations, their terms of service, and maybe just being a little less scary to some people. Oh, and is it too late to do something about that name...(and their use-your-real-name profile policy)?