Two seats left to attend the Digiday Media Buying Summit:

Join us Oct. 15-17 in Phoenix to connect with top media buyers

SECURE YOUR SEAT

Short Takes: Betaworks’ John Borthwick is Down on Google+

Can a social network be too refined? John Borthwick thinks so.

Borthwick, the founder and CEO of the technology investment firm Betaworks, believes that Google+ was launched with too many features, before the company was able to see how people would actually use the product.
“I’ve been fairly bearish on Google+,’” Borthwick said on Thursday (Sept. 22) at the Digiday Social conference in New York. “I don’t think its working. I thought it was over-architected. Usually you start small and design the experience with your users.”
Borthwick drew a contrast between Google+ and Twitter, which saw many of its more popular features, like the retweet button, come from users.
Google+ for the time being, seems overly designed to keep users on Google’s pages, rather than send them out across the Web (a very un-Google philosophy). And the participation numbers don’t look good at the moment.
But Borthwick is willing to be patient with Google+. “They are a startup in a sense,” he said.

More in Media

Publisher alliance Ozone makes a larger play for U.S. advertisers

Publisher alliance Ozone is on a growth tear in the US and plans to expand its local headcount to 50 people next year.

Media Briefing: From blocking to licensing, publishers inch toward leverage with AI

There are new levers for publishers to test in the AI era. While they’re still far from holding the upper hand, compared to a year ago, the outlook no longer looks quite so bleak.

Mitigating ‘Google risk’: The Independent maps four-pillar growth plan for the AI era

The Independent has built its growth strategy around the “blue links risk” and has stopped measuring its success by audience reach.