Since it launched last summer Google Plus has been somewhat of a mystery to many people.  What confuses them the most is not Google Plus as a whole or how it works, but finding out that the game of social networking has changed.  I take it from the many people placing me in their G+ circle that most of them did not get that memo about the change.  There are still millions out there who still feel developing fake popularity is part of social networking.  Boy, are they in for a rude awakening.

As little as a few months ago achieving fakedom was the drive for most people in the social spaces.  It was the primary part of the game many played to develop a large community of anything that generates a social profile.  The feeling most people had was the need to be popular.  This feeling was also mixed by their need, or in some cases their requirement, to have a large base of Things to broadcast to their promotions.  Their feeling of worthiness in the social space was based on the number of people they had in their Following.  If someone had few followers they were marked as a loser, millions of followers they were a Rock Star.

At the beginning of last year this act in futility was starting to fall a part as people started finally seeing that nobody in their very large community was listening.  Report after report was coming in from everywhere that people were just fed up with the constant pounding of self promoters and spam and just walked off leaving millions of inactive profiles.  Even the celebrities of the social spaces who were getting hundreds of comments to each of their posts were seeing it not accomplishing their goal or being fulfilling to their personal or professional needs.  A dark shadow was falling over the entire social networking arena all because the lack of trust was building in the core base of people using the social spaces.  Most had given up that there were actually any real people left to interact with.

Google Antis Up

So in walks Google, the master of the internet, the lord of supreme knowledge and senior of all internet icons, to pull up a chair to the table where the high stakes game of Social Platforms and anteed up to play by laying on the table their crown jewel..Google Plus.  Pokerface is not how I would describe Facebook’s and Twitter’s reaction to Google stepping into their little high stakes money game.  I envision the expression would be more of a look of them feeling nauseated knowing the big dog finally has entered the playground.  This move Google made less than a year ago the game of social networking changed.

The game of gathering up thousands of people to fulfill whatever need also stopped.  The rules of quantity over quality changed and all of this came at the perfect time.

G+ started off a little rocky and made changes to allow people use fake names that will probably bite them in the butt, but over all the game of social networking on G+ is much more real.  Yes, you can still go into G+ and start accumulating hundreds of people to put in your circle.  What that will get you is nowhere because those people in the circle can’t see anything you do until they put you in their circle.  Are they going to put someone who has thousands of followers in their circle?  Well that is where the game has changed.

Lesser is Cooler

More than likely a person with any intelligence is going to see quickly someone who all of the sudden entered G+ with several thousands people is probably up to something..mostly no good.  The game now is who to put in your circle since who you put in your circle is who you want to see what they offer.  What you have to offer is what is going to get people to want to put you into their circle.  If you have nothing to offer, look like you have nothing to offer or giving off any smell that you having nothing to offer you are not going to be put into anyone circle other than those who also having nothing of value to offer.

Google Plus offers up a real simple game now and it being accepted by more and more professionals, businesses as well as the regular social butterflies.  Yes, G+ has a way to go to get things ironed out so it is more visually appealing and easier to use, but the concept is outstanding.  The game is not really a game anymore.  It is the direction Social Networking is heading which will at the same time change how social media will be used.

It’s all about social now people.  Google holds a solid hand and is set to be a spoiler for the social spaces who are still playing the numbers game.  When you get social, you get real.

Let me know how I can help.