A strategy for Google for a better Plus.

It has been a while since Facebook grabbed the social networking sovereignty from Google owned Orkut. Thenceforth google is persevering to recapture the realm. They withdrew Orkut and introduced a new platform there - the Google Plus. Unfortunately plus too did not work well.

So what is the problem?
Somebody famously quoted once - "The only way to be successful is to solve the pain or deliver a delight. Even solving a pain is the flip side of delivering a delight." Facebook already delivered that delight. Now what remains there for Google is to solve a problem ( if any ). Google Plus is a replica of Facebook in many ways - particularly how it works. Users has to have a better reason to switch to Plus when all their friends and family is in Facebook.

Again, start from the beginning.
As of now google is the most popular search engine. It has evolved at a time when there was a demand for an optimized as well as impartial search engine. Google literally vanquished other search engines of that epoch. All of that happened because google was solving a pain. Facebook is such a brilliantly designed application that it is difficult to find out a problem with it. It is a platform evolved gradually.

So how to conquer the platform back. The solution is to start from Google hangout - but one step at a time. Recently google made its hangout a separate unique web app google.com/hangouts which is a best place to kick off. Google has a user base which is much bigger than Facebook. 

• Hangout is not a popular word in some countries like India. It would be better to change it to a simple name. (How about the classic old name GTalk ?)
• Remove the hangout from Gmail and Plus and make it available only on GTalk app.
• Release clients for web, Chrome ext, Mozilla, android, iPhone and blackberry. 
• Let the users create a contact card in GTalk and let them set permissions to each field ( such as Public, Only me, Friends, Selected groups, Specific persons, Don't share with etc.), so that they can share their contact card to others who has GTalk installed.
• Let users create their public profile like http://gtalk.com/username for self branding. ( Like about.me ).
• Do not list strangers in GTalk search and no options in settings to enable it. This is very important.
• Searching strangers can be added in the timeline search.
• Never sync their personal contact with this app. Fetch user's contacts who has Gmail and suggest the user to add as friend in GTalk.
• List out GTalk contact details in a new address book.(Not google contacts) 
• Let the users create groups (open and closed).

Give time and let it flourish to a sophisticated chat application. 

Now comes the most important part of the social networking - the timeline. On almost all chat applications there is a provision to forward updates to another friend or group. Extend it to send it to your own time line. This is the idea. Share from chat to timeline. 

The timeline will have updates from our friends and family.

Now the application has three tabs namely chats, timeline and profile. While releasing make it available on all the platforms.

• Let users create pages and add authors - This will be useful for media. Only authors can post but any body can see it.
• Collaborate with mobile internet service providers to have a chat plan for a small amount ( something like Rs: 50 per month for 200MB ).