Shiny And New But Seen By Who

Google announced a ton of new design upgrades for Google+ today. Among them: improved navigation, redesigned stream and dedicated hangouts page, essentially making Google+ look like a drastically different product.

Sarah Perez did a nice job summarizing the design changes, which appear to be a pretty impressive list.

But I’m concerned.

Says Perez:

In highlighting the new features, Google also mentions that Google+ now has over 170 million users. However, it’s still counting those who share via Search, Gmail, YouTube and other places across Google’s network – so, again, it’s not a real count of how many users are visiting Google+ as a destination of its own.

The design upgrade is nice, but just how many users will actually see it? Google seems to skirt around the question about Google+ active users, even Google+ unique users (i.e. users who create a Google account for the sole purpose of signing up for the social network).

I’m skeptical of the impact the updated design and functionality will have, given that a significant portion of Google+’s 170 million users probably won’t even click over to Google+ to share on the social network. Good design can re-engage users to start sharing more, but if the active users aren’t there, the ceiling (and subsequent overall impact) only gets so high.

Google+ Now Open to Teens

Teenagers can now sign up for Google+ according to Silicon Filter’s Fredric Lardinois. It’s a nice step for the rapidly growing social network, Previously only open to adults, an influx of teenage users should help it continue to grow.

Google also noted increased security measures, including popup reminders and automatic boots when strangers enter hangouts.

The real challenge Google will face is finding mass adoption amongst teenagers. Facebook is still the go-to social network for many students. Will students go out of their way to familiarize themselves with a new social network, much less convince their friends to join?

Even though the long-term success of Google+ may not necessarily correlate with teenage user signups, it appears that Google has quite a challenge on their hands. Time will tell if they can successfully transition over disgruntled or disengaged Facebook users.