Twitter Wins & Google+ Loses on Libya & Major News

As the rebels in Libya pushed into Tripoli and the endgame was in play, the news and commentary went full throttle. On Twitter. Not so much on Google+, the new social network from Google that many pundits have said threatened Twitter, and I was one of them. Until a major story like Libya’s rebels succeeding broke and within a few hours it was clear that Google+ had missed the mark. We provide insights to clients in the international aid, peace operations and development world when crises like these happen, a number asked us through long day yesterday if they’d be better off using Google+, sadly we had to say “stick with Twitter for now.”

As we ran an analysis on the mentions between Twitter and Google+ we found there was one mention on Google+ for every 20 “tweets” on Twitter over a three hour period. There was little debate or discussion on the issue to be found on Google+ while there was significant re-tweeting and snippet discussions on Twitter. It’s much easier to assess a stream on Twitter to determine whats happening and whats hot. But lets also be practical about this – Twitter has been in the market for far longer than Google+, by years. There is also an entire eco-system of apps and services behind Twitter that cover sentiment analysis, influence scores, trending topics, heat mapping and geolocation and so on. Such apps are still very nascent for Google+ as it is still in its infancy.

But what became apparent is that Google+ is extremely good at enabling tight controls of social groups and information within those groups. But unless you have a slew of journalists or media types in your circles and your paying very close attention to your full stream, you’ll likely miss major news stories unless someone in your circle brings it up, and given the “noise” we note in the stream (as have others.) The other problem is the ability to search. Twitter doesn’t do search well either, but it’s still better than Google+.

Our conclusion from comparing the two services is that if Twitter does one thing very well, it is provide a good flow of information on what is happening around the world and down to local news (keep in mind you should be following at least 100 people, news services among them, to gain this benefit). Something Google+ is weak at, but as Google works on it, I suspect they’ll figure something out. We like where Google+ is going in our company, but when it comes to keeping your finger on the pulse of the Web and the world…well, Twitter is the warp and woof of the Internet still.