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.
Trending in
Most Read
More in Media
Digiday+ Research: Publishers look to cash in on growing events revenue
May 14, 2025
Publishers are getting significantly more revenue from events in 2025, and they’re going to focus on growing that even further.
In Graphic Detail: How creators are using generative AI to shape video and design
May 14, 2025
80 percent of content creators are using AI in their workflow, according to a study by Wondercraft. This is a deep dive into those numbers.
WTF are GEO and AEO? (and how they differ from SEO)
May 14, 2025
Future success no longer looks like being top of the blue links on Google’s index or any other search engine’s – it will center on how to ensure your content gets surfaced in AI answer engines too.