2012: The Year of Google+?

Image: Google

While Facebook and Twitter continued to grow in 2011, Google made another attempt at a social network of its very own. But will it be third-time lucky for the world's biggest Internet company?

Google+ launched in June to great fanfare, but also some criticism. One of our own writers fell in and then out of love with the social network very quickly. Others questioned whether it would be able to break Facebook’s iron grip on the social world. In September, it went public and now has somewhere in the region of 50 million users.

But with the dawn of 2012, the future for the network remains unclear. Will it flourish or go the way of Google Buzz, which met its official end last year? Bryan Del Monte, president of the Del Monte advertising agency doesn't think so, and business users have a lot to do with that.

“It’s tough to say Google+ was a formidable player this year, but I think Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn would be grossly underestimating them as a competitor,” he says over the phone from his offices in Minnetonka, Minnesota. Part of this is the Google+ business-friendly approach, he says.

It might have taken a while for brand pages to get up and running, but it provides more flexibility than its competitors, with the speed of Twitter, the user interface of Facebook, and the peer curation of Wikipedia, he says. “For business, that’s an interesting mix of potential talents.” The functionality of hangouts and circles have yet to be fully exploited by businesses, he says, but experimentation will continue.

But what Google+'s success will come down to, he says, is the ranking and traffic advantages of having an active presence on the network. “If you’re being very active with your community and they’re posting relevant content about you, then you’re more likely than anybody else to appear at the top of the engine.”

“Businesses need to understand that they would be well served in having a Google+ page and treating it as a channel for engagement and leveraging the cool aspects.”

Beyond that, Del Monte says, Google has the resources to fight the long game with its social-media offering. “It’s clear that they’ve made their decision,” he says, “and they’ve put their stake in the ground.” But comparing the network’s numbers to Facebook’s is like comparing it to a race car that has already had the opportunity to go around the track a couple of times, he says.

“If at the end of the 2012 Google+ is talking about how they have 150 or 200 million-plus users, that would be an indication that their network continues to grow in strength.”

With millions of users already signed up to other services like Gmail and Google Docs, there’s plenty of room for growth within Google's user base. There’s also the opportunity for it to go after LinkedIn as a more professional network, particularly in an international market where LinkedIn has not yet gained a foothold, he says.

“Hold on to your hat for 2012,” Del Monte says.