Is Forbes right? Will Google Plus remain a niche community?

‘Simply put, Google Plus is a niche community, and it feels like it’s always going to remain that way.” ~ Paul Tassi, Forbes Magazine.


Well, the knives are out for the Google Plus as it plugs away at Facebook’s social networking lead. In recent weeks the tech behemoth has revamped it’s fledgling “+”, quite unexpectedly, and perhaps in lieu of Facebook’s purchase of Instragram.

Said Business Insider: “Google Plus’s new interface both overwhelmed and frightened me at first. However, when I adjusted to it, I realized that I kind of like where the list of trending topics ends up. I also like how simple this new navigation is, and I kind of love the whole simple design. But I don’t love that it is the first thing I see when I sign in. When I’m just quickly trying to check my email, this is distracting!”

Now approaching 170 million users many are starting to doubt whether it can in fact catch up to Facebook. And, Forbes Magazine is one of them. Paul Tassi, a writer for Forbes, bases this negative viewpoint on the fact that none of his friends from Facebook have joined him on Google Plus.

“I speculated that perhaps they’d come around as it evolved, but as it stands today, I can’t think of a single one of them who is now active on the site who wasn’t before,” said Tassi.
“But do you know what sites they have joined these past few months? There’s a whole stable of them that are now Pinterest and Instagram fiends, as they found a new sort of social site they enjoyed that was easy to use and understand, and different than their usual Facebook experience.”
And perhaps the key takeaway here relates to the astronomical sum of money Facebook paid for Instragram, $1 billion, which has a minute programming team and basically uses remote web hosting services and applications to power its infrastructure.
Yet the key to Instagram’s success appears to be its simplicity. It simply applies a bunch of retro Photoshop filters to your uploaded photos to give them a new, exciting dimension. The mobile site is easy to use and looks great. That’s it!
Yet Google Plus despite all its great features and intentions may smack a bit of confusion and complexity. Its genesis was in response to Facebook — not purely for the sake of innovation or to open up new doors into social media.
Thus, argues Tassi, it may be destined to remain a niche community site that will not die a quick death like Wave, but will never reach the heights that Facebook is approaching. The irony his article is that he ends off by asking readers to Follow Him on Google Plus.
Hence, one must ask: Is the article simply a clever SEO ploy to lure new followers to his plus-sized nest or does he really believe the experts are wrong when they say Google Plus may overtake Facebook within the year?
You decide!