From Orkut to Google Plus: Google?s Social Networking

Google Plus is out and has been able to acquire more than 15 million members in its 1 month of existence. But did you know that Orkut (the only previous social network worth remembering from the collection of social networking that came from Google) hardly had 10000 members in its starting month. As a matter of fact till date Orkut counts its total active members to be only 66 million, a mark which Google plus is comfortably predicted to cross.

The huge popularity of Google plus has to be attributed to the smart marketing strategies incorporated by the search engine giants before the launch of the beta version of the product. The Google plus project was kept under wraps for almost a year before its launch in June, 2011. This step by the search giants assisted in building the premonition of the launch of the product. Since then Google plus has gone viral.

Anterior to the Google Plus project, Google had come up with Google Buzz. Initially when the product was launched many people felt that Google had succeed with this attempt, however after a certain period of time the interest in the product decreased. With failure of both Buzz and Wave (a attempt before Buzz), Google were almost desperate to do well in the social networking scene and with Facebook only improving everyday, the task in hand was getting tougher. The Google plus project was kept a secret for more than a year to avoid any media glare or distraction to the project. After the launch of Google Plus, it has been described as Googles biggest attempt to rival the social network Facebook.

From the launch of Orkut in 2004, Google has come a long way since then. With several of its products like Youtube, Google Maps, Google Docs becoming ubiquitous in our lives, Google now occupies a large part of our online attention. Google Plus today provides options of group chats (huddles), group video chats (hangouts) where Orkut didnt even have a normal chat at that time (Gtalk was later incorporated into Orkut).

From 2004 to 2011 a lot has changed in the computing and technology world. With technology improving everyday and new products being launched everyday we still have to wait and see how the Google Plus fairs after the honeymoon period. Weather it take over Facebook, who currently boast a humongous 750 million of user base is yet to be seen.

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