Google shut down its social media platform in 2018 after 7 years of its launch.

It was launched on a
grand scale with intentions to kill facebook and twitter who were going hit at that time gaining
thousands of new users every day. After looking over various media platforms on internet, many
reasons can be identified for why Google + failed but lets look over through the diffusion of Innovation
framework.

Diffusion of innovation is the process through which the innovation is communicated over time to the
unit/individual in a social system. In this case, Google + is the innovation. Comparing it up on the
Relative Advantage scale with facebook, I think it deserves the following rating:

Relative Economic Advantage 0 (Doesn’t cost anything to be on it)

Relative Social Prestige +1 (It was a new thing used by limited people, gave sense of exclusivity to the
audience)

Relative Convenience -1 (It was complex, difficult to understand and also not available on mobile app.
Takes faster time to load as well)

Relative Satisfaction -1 (At the end of the day, customers were not satisfied with what they were using,
since most of the friends were not present on the platform)

On the other hand, facebook ended up with a score of +5 on my list as compared to Google+ with a
score of -1 on the Relative Advantage Scale.

There was also compatibility issue, as facebook used very generic everyday terms like friend requests,
newsfeed, etc. Google+ introduced circles which were way more complex in understanding and also not
compatible with existing values of the social system. According to their developer, people spent only 3
minutes on average on their plateform. Above all, no mobile application was available in a time when
users were actively switching towards mobile phones made it more complex as well. Although
triablibility was introduced by Google by forcing users to have an account in Google+ by creating it
themselves, a lot of them did not know what it was about and how to use it, probably some video
tutorials or observable users could have made the diffusion process more effective.

Communication was on point, it was sort of viral marketing by google, by sending emails, notifications
etc. but the crucial point here is Innovation-Diffusion Process, people were passively rejecting it
because of over the top communication. If the message would have been twisted around the usability
rather than the same awareness and then the forced account communication, the story might be
different. Forcing user accounts was not just confusing for the new account holders as well but more to
those who were actually using the service. It added millions of accounts overnight of users who were
not actually using it and killed the whole experience for Google+ by creating a ghost-town.

Lets calculate where Google+ stood among the innovativeness categories when it ended,

It had 395 million users.

Total Social Media Users in 2018: 3.196 Billion

So, 395/3196 ends up to be 12.3%. So essentially, they were still in the Early Adopters category even
after 7 years!
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/et-explains/heres-why-google-failed-to-take-
off/articleshow/66136713.cms

https://www.quora.com/Can-we-say-Google+-is-failure-now-why

https://onezero.medium.com/why-google-failed-4b9db05b973b