Comment by rajangdavis
10 years ago
I think this example adds truth to the author's argument in that there have been a few social media apps like Instagram and Snapchat that took off in ways the Google Plus never did. I do agree that there was little impetus to move to Google Plus from Facebook, but there could have been features that would have made it enough of a differentiator that people could have moved over to Google Plus. It's not like Google lacked the ability to scale out or provide such a service.
I would argue that Snapchat and Instagram occupy VERY different niches than Facebook. Most importantly, virtually everyone who uses Snapchat or Instagram also uses FB. Google thought they had enough clout to win the "general all purpose category" social network - they were trying to compete directly against FB.