G+ As A Primary Social Network…Or Not?

Once more, Pete Smith offers a great post on the state of Google Plus, this time highlighting some of the perceived shortcomings of the young service.

In his latest article, Pete mentions something that has been bothering me for about a week now, since Google has been letting more and more people in to use the service:

…people seem a bit hesitant about posting on G+. They feel like they need to have something "valuable" to say as compared to Twitter where they feel free to just share any random thought. I don't see many 1-line updates on G+.

The one thing that is really bothering me about G+ is the reticence of people to seemingly consider adopting it. I’ve seen people professing this exact sentiment on G+ and via Twitter, in different forms.

To a degree, I can see where people are coming from, when comparing apples (G+) to oranges (Twitter). They're different platforms with different strengths and weaknesses. G+ can accommodate longer updates, so it makes logical sense that posting 140 character updates is really a waste of the horsepower that G+ provides. However, that's not G+'s fault; it's a perception choice of the users. If someone wants to post 140 characters or less in G+, that's perfectly all right. It’s not blasphemy, trite or abuse of the system, really.

My big concern is that this thinking leads to people looking at G+ as "another social network" and are asking "why do I need another platform?" if they're on FB and Twitter (and blogs and Tumbler or some other platforms). If people are weighing the possibility of using G+ based on it's DIFFERENCES from other systems, then I'm starting to believe that people aren't going to find G+'s features compelling enough to adopt it as a first tier experience if they've become used to the features that other networks provide. In essence, they shrug and say that the combination of their other, disparate systems add up to the sum of G+ already, and that they don't need to maintain another network for the sake of maintaining another network.

So my question is: why does G+ have to be the middle child? Assuming the questions people have about how G+ will shake out are taken care of to general satisfaction, why does G+ have to be the odd-man-out in people’s social networking decisions? Why would it be the “logical” sacrifice, and not one (or all) of the other networks? It’ll be difficult to move one’s social graph en masse to a new, unfamiliar platform which may offer far more (then Twitter) or far less (then FacebooK) then people are comfortable with, but not impossible with persuasion or tense negotiations. People had to adjust to limiting their status updates to 140 characters to work with Twitter, so what’s difficult about either continuing with that economy on G+, or in stretching one’s legs and really saying what’s on one’s mind?

The success of an online system lies squarely with how many people adopt it. Google Wave “failed” because no one could find a real-world use for it, and Google didn’t really work that hard (IMO) at convincing people why they should use it…for anything. Buzz seems half-baked when compared to G+, and again Google didn’t really push it out there to convince people of it’s value. If people can’t be bothered to adopt G+ as their “platform of choice” and simply wait passively to see who else is jumping into the pool before making a commitment, then the platform won’t succeed. We’ll be left with the constant crashing of Twitter, and the unmitigated spam (and eventual gloating) of FB because no one wanted to budge from their “established” networks and support an alternative.