Google+ To Split Into Photos And Streams

This article originally appeared on 60 Second Social.

Google+ is soon to be split up into different components, photos and streams. The social network and photo management will now be headed by Google product vice-president Bradley Horowitz. The announcement is just days after Google’s senior VP of products Sundar Pichai said in an interview to Forbes:

“I think increasingly you’ll see us focus on communications, photos and the Google+ Stream as three important areas, rather than being thought of as one area.”

The announcement that Google is planning to split up its social network indicates that the company is recognising that they are not having as much success as they would have hoped for (which we all know as fact) and that they could be planning to massively rebrand the service. However Google have yet to confirm or deny this.

It is unclear what will become of the Hangouts feature, a feature which has in fact become pretty popular for live streaming. It is quite possible that Google will look to distance Hangouts into its own independent platform and Google could choose to develop all three independently.

Google clearly does not want its social media service to be abandoned just yet, it appears that the streams feature could be the Facebook style of posting and commenting. Google needs to attract more user engagement.

When Google+ launched as invite only it was all the rage to try and get it purely because it was exclusive. However when it went public interest soon died off and people returned to Facebook and Twitter. Google+ is not a bad community in fact, simply because there tends to be a lot less trolls and idiots than rival networks.

However in the same breath, this tends to be one of its problems too, it is simply like a ghost town at times. Is splitting the service the best route to take? Time will soon tell.

About The Author

Mark is the founder of 60 Second Social media where he provides social media news and digital marketing analysis, he is also a proud father of his bearded dragon, Lola. You can follow him on Twitter here. You can also follow 60 Second Social on Twitter here.