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Agree totally. However I think G+ did in fact differentiate itself at the start. They made a big play out of how circles were there so that you weren't sharing

by zmmmmm 15y ago

Agree totally. However I think G+ did in fact differentiate itself at the start. They made a big play out of how circles were there so that you weren't sharing things publicly all the time. But the nymwars hit and it went horribly wrong at that point. You can't sell a message that you're the champion of people's privacy and then kick them off your network for not revealing their identity to you. They basically lost all credibility as being differentiated from Facebook and became just "the same" as Facebook but worse because none of your friends were there.

davemel37 15y ago
Very valid point. Brands are built by third party validation, not by your own claims. If there is incongruity between your message and your product, you wont be able to get over the initial hump of credibility. Without credibility, it doesn't matter how well you try to position yourself, no one will believe you. Nobody believes what you claim about yourself, but they believe what others say about you. This is why PR is such an important element of building a strong brand.
- zmmmmm 15y ago
  > Brands are built by third party validation, not by your own claims. I actually think what a company claims about itself is tremendously important, but not because people believe it, rather because it influences how people frame their ideas. It's like the public are viewing you through a magnifying lens and what you can influence is where the lens points. What is actually seen through the lens is then what you really do. So claiming something about yourself that is authentically true and then behaving genuinely in accordance with that is quite powerful. But you can't fake it, you have to really do it. Claiming G+ is about privacy and then doing things like forcing real names and public profiles is extremely harmful (and not just to G+, but the whole Google brand). Google has to figure out the good things that are really true about themselves and then talk about those. If they can't think of anything then they have to really take a serious think about where the company is heading.

by zmmmmm 15y ago

davemel37 15y ago

Very valid point. Brands are built by third party validation, not by your own claims. If there is incongruity between your message and your product, you wont be able to get over the initial hump of credibility. Without credibility, it doesn't matter how well you try to position yourself, no one will believe you. Nobody believes what you claim about yourself, but they believe what others say about you. This is why PR is such an important element of building a strong brand.

zmmmmm 15y ago
> Brands are built by third party validation, not by your own claims. I actually think what a company claims about itself is tremendously important, but not because people believe it, rather because it influences how people frame their ideas. It's like the public are viewing you through a magnifying lens and what you can influence is where the lens points. What is actually seen through the lens is then what you really do. So claiming something about yourself that is authentically true and then behaving genuinely in accordance with that is quite powerful. But you can't fake it, you have to really do it. Claiming G+ is about privacy and then doing things like forcing real names and public profiles is extremely harmful (and not just to G+, but the whole Google brand). Google has to figure out the good things that are really true about themselves and then talk about those. If they can't think of anything then they have to really take a serious think about where the company is heading.