This is a frequently-repeated view, but I find it completely implausible.
A social network's initial frowth phase is completely predicated on it being a space people want to join, and that is accomplished by its delivering value and appeal.
That might be compelling content, compelling connections, or a mix of the two. A cultivated and exclusive club, as with the Haevard Facebook, or early Usenet, has appeal. It's the opening up to the world which kills that initial growth appeal.
Google+ would have done far better to extend the beta period, possibly by years, and shake out its fundamental architectural flaws.
I disagree and think it's 100% the reason it failed.
> A social network's initial frowth phase is completely predicated on it being a space people want to join, and that is accomplished by its delivering value and appeal.
But people did want to join Google+, but they couldn't. And since a social network is only useful if all your friends are on it, people never got into the habit of using it. Why use a social network without your friends? It's not like GMail where it's still useful even if your friends aren't on it.
I can tell you personally that I was excited to get the invite to Google+, only to lose the excitement when only 3 of my friends were on it. By the time Google+ became available to everyone, it was too late. The excitement was gone.
> A cultivated and exclusive club, as with the Haevard Facebook, or early Usenet, has appeal.
The exclusivity of Harvard Facebook succeeded because social media was still in its infancy at the time. Most people didn't have access to the WWW in their pocket yet. Early Usenet had appeal because the Internet itself was still only being used by techies and college students.
Most people didn't hear about it. You can ask people on the street. They sure know facebook. Excitement is not a good way to motivate people to move platforms, in general (despite the niche cases like Fyre Festival which are relatively small). Maybe they should have gotten some celebrity support? Otherwise the excitement wasn't mainstream. G+ needed mainstream users.
> But people did want to join Google+, but they couldn't
That doesnt explain the lack of participation a year later. Nobody wanted G+ because they didn't need it. Even if it gave some benefit (which it couldn't) it didn't join with their existing Social Media data making a higher barrier.
I'd argue the problem was more one of the marketing / promotion than the closed beta.
The second spike in the trends graph corresponds with the open access public announcement. Interest spiked, but did not sustain.
It's the lack of sustain that hurt G+ in the end. And much of that was due to a very raw early release -- no search, little content, and very muddled concepts, many never really fixed.
The thing with Harvard Facebook is that it's a predefined social circle that came online as a unit. If you go to Harvard, most of your friends and people you regularly interact with are also going to Harvard, so you have a cohesive group altogether.
With Google+, invites were more or less random, so in a group of 5 friends maybe 3 got one and 2 didn't. Were the 3 people who got invites supposed to just drop their other 2 friends? Obviously people aren't going to do that.
People do like things that are exclusive, but they want to exclude outsiders, not their friends.
A social network's initial frowth phase is completely predicated on it being a space people want to join, and that is accomplished by its delivering value and appeal.
That might be compelling content, compelling connections, or a mix of the two. A cultivated and exclusive club, as with the Haevard Facebook, or early Usenet, has appeal. It's the opening up to the world which kills that initial growth appeal.
Google+ would have done far better to extend the beta period, possibly by years, and shake out its fundamental architectural flaws.