Google+ hit the scene over a half year ago and people went absolutely banana sandwiches for it. Much of the hype died down and It’s still experiencing growth but let’s face it - it’s a nerdy sausage party over there. Half of all Google+ posts are from Tom the Myspace guy or Robert Scoble who are two very big technology celebrities but not the throw-a-tantrum-because-you-didn’t-have-Fiji-brand-water-hand-delivered-by-a-clown kind of celebrity.

Google has made numerous strides to be accommodating to celebrities it. They’ve added a “pages” feature, their own version of verified accounts and are in the processes of enabling “screen names” but but much like Facebook being better than Google+ for for friends, Twitter is much better than Google+ for celebrities.

Less is More

Google+ has more options, but it’s kinda bad. There are circles, a new concept for organizing friends, which is interesting if you want to share with co-workers, family, or a certain group of friends but doesn’t really work for celebrities who share everything with everyone by default. The extra features just add a level of complexity that doesn’t need to be there.

Twitter is limited, but it works. You’re allowed one profile pic, a 160 character bio and each tweet has to be 140 characters or less - try fucking that up. Have you ever read a Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, or Britney Spears blog post? Some things are just better in small doses.

Prominent Follower Count

Google+ lists people they have circles, and people who have them in circles. You can kind of get a feel for how many people follow a celebrity but it’s tucked away a little bit. Again It’s needlessly complex.

Twitter flat-out shows how many people are following you and how many people you follow. It’s nice and big, and it makes sense. It’s an ego boost but it also an easy way of shows who’s worthwhile to follow. Keep it simple, stupid.

Simple URLs

Google+’s URLs are fugly. They are huge funky number based URLs and they’re kind of stuck with them. I think Google unavoidably shot itself in the foot integrating tightly with Gmail & Google Accounts. If they use the first part of your Gmail account for your URL then people can automatically harvest a bunch of active Gmails. There are workarounds, like gplus.to, but they’re not “official” solutions and they’ll never get a substantial percentage of adoption.

Twitter’s setup is simple as hell. Not only do they have very clean URLs (twitter.com/threeboy) they’ve got the whole “@” thing going for them. Wanna follow me on twitter? hit me up @threeboy - simple. Wanna follow me on Google Plus I’m “101989300680726516401” - not as catchy.

Moderation

On Google+ (and Facebook), with the default permissions, people can post a negative comment to your profile and it could sit there for days if you don’t catch it. Furthermore, if you take a couple weeks off (too shoot a sextape or whatever) idiots can post all sorts of negative comments that may not get moderated and your profile ends up looking like shit. Yes, you can lock your profile down with permissions but then you’ll miss out on fan interaction and isn’t that the point of social media in the first place?

Twitter is very easy to moderate because you don’t need to. Comments (replies) aren’t displayed anywhere and if there are problems unrulies can be blocked. In the event of a positive comment the celebrity may choose to reply directly, or retweet for others to see. You can leave your profile alone for a few week or months and it won’t look like someone threw shit all over it.

What Now?

In a few years Google+ could become the best socal networking site with the best features but I don’t think that will be enough to win over users. Look at webmail, Yahoo & Hotmail are still juggernauts while Gmail is in third place even though it’s the best out of the three (clean interface, best features, most space). Google has proved they can build a social network better than Buzz (which sucked) but they’re fighting a two front war. Twitter is the simple social network solution that’s great for celebrities and brands and Facebook’s the full-featured social networking platform that’s great for us regular people. Google+ has a few great ideas but not ideal for hugely influential people who play pretend for a living.

KISSBWYATMTICBCPATWBS (Keep It Simple Stupid Because When You Add Too Many Things It Can Become Counter Productive And That Would Be Silly).

 Arrested images from stock.xchng