Google+ vs Twitter | The Digital Clicks Blog
Google’s recent social network ‘Google+’ has reinvented Twitter’s one-way follow model with the introduction of ‘circles’. These circles focus on organisation and segmentation, allowing the user to categorise everyone that they want to share with or have shared with them. Twitter does offer the ability to separate users through lists that, if clicked, present a specialised stream of tweets for the selected group, but all tweets are public. Google’s circles offer a more integrated and accessible way of organising and filtering incoming content and targeting specialised segmented groups with outgoing content. There is very little to learn in terms of etiquette when using Google+. If you wish to enter a conversation, then you can simply post a comment underneath the update. Twitter makes heavy use of symbols (@, RT, and #) to determine the recipient and content, which requires a learning curve. At this point, Google+ is simple by comparison and as accessible as can be expected given the segmentation of followers. Twitter is still unique in offering ‘keyword streams’ via search terms and hashtags. The implementation of hashtags might be off-putting to those unfamiliar with their use, but they offer an anchor for content, functioning as meta tags. Users can access specialised streams depending on search terms and can keep their posts concise as they are anchored by a specific subject. Google doesn’t share Twitter’s 140-character post limits, but they are yet to integrate this form of searching and community-transcending access to points of interest. This hesitance is understandable, as hashtags or an equivalent would be a feature that would require a learning curve, but in neglecting to introduce a 'meta field’ for posts, it will be difficult to engage in large-scale trending topics of conversation and to target audiences based on topic as well as social circle. The online marketing potential of Google+ is more vast than that of Twitter. Twitter’s income comes from featuring promoted tweets and trends as well as selling the streaming rights of topical tweets to search engines. Google offers many online services (Google search, the display network, and YouTube as examples) that are ideal hosts for their PPC advertising. The integration of their services means that Google+ may become another host for these ads, with the advantage of having masses of user-specific, organised information with which to further target the ads.