You got to give Google credit for sparking an intense debate about the state of social networks, and boy is it interesting! If you haven’t followed the discussion, please check at the end of this post a quick summary of the most interesting opinions with links to the original posts.

I’m not going to get into every single aspect of this discussion but I’ll tell you why I think Google+ can’t succeed in its current form, despite the fact that I’ll be posting this on G+ (and FB and TW) and the 10+ million users they've already pilled up.

1. G+ is not disruptive. True, the circles is a cool feature that generated a lot of buzz but it gets old quickly (for me it was after 3 days) and it’s not a real innovation. The problem is that G+ hasn’t disrupted the social network space, therefore giving me zero incentive to switch my entire network over to their platform. I already have 2 windows opened for facebook and twitter (or tweetdeck for that purpose) so why would I want a third one with nothing new to offer? I still think Google is in an enviable position to disrupt this space. They have access to all my email, contacts, photos, blog content, and a lot can be done with that (like automatic circles?). But it hasn’t and as a result I’ll keep using Twitter and Facebook and will keep G+ on the background just in case.

2. G+ feed is not efficient. The problem is that G+ is trying to be Twitter and Facebook at the same time and ends up being less efficient than either one. You can’t beat Twitter’s lean feed without becoming Twitter, and Facebook feed reads better. Plus I don’t follow people I don’t know on Facebook so that limits the size of my feed. Sure, I do have circles to limit the size of my feed but will I ever use those? I already feel I created too many circles and it’s impossible to keep track of who’s where after just 2 weeks. Plus I haven’t gone back to moving squares into circles since the first few days. I think there’s a UI problem that needs to be addressed (this is Google after all) but the problem is more fundamental than that. I use Twitter for broadcast content (to and from people that I may or may not know) and Facebook to connect with people that I know. I have that very clear and I know exactly when to use one or the other. By mixing both G+ blurs its use case and makes it harder for me to know when/how to use it. I don’t think the social network space is a zero-sum game (I use both FB and TW daily) but I don’t think that combining all in one is the solution.

3. Circles are not about privacy as they are about spam. G+ tells us that privacy matters, and that’s why we have circles. But does it really matter? And do circles really help me with that? We had this discussion when we first started Piictu – should the content be public or private? Will people care? It’s obvious that people are increasingly comfortable with exposing their life in public, especially the <25-year-old segment. To me the problem of friends groups is more about spam than it is about content privacy. I definitely don’t want to spam all my followers with something that’s directed at a group and I use email for that. I can see how G+ might want to be the replacement for email but that’s not clear and, by the way, Katango does a much better job at joining my friends in logical message groups. I’m skeptical that in the social network age we can control the privacy of the content we share and I think G+ is transmitting its users a false sense of control over who sees what, which can backfire. It’s me being skeptical but I’ve seen too many backdoors on Facebook to believe G+ will do any better. I think circles should be more attached to my email groups and less to privacy.

My point is, I think G+ has great features but its use case is unclear right now. I’m sure a lot of people will just switch from Facebook and/or Twitter (this one less likely, I believe) but in my opinion that won’t make G+ a winner. In any case, what G+ accomplished is already a win for the end user as I think this will drive innovation across all platforms.

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This is a quick summary of the recent discussion with links to some of the most interesting posts:

- Circles, Lists and Organization. Can we, should we, and will we organize our friends online? G+ circles is its most distinct feature and the most debated one. You can start with Paul Adams, who’s been arguing in favor of digitally grouping friends for a long time. Then read Kevin Cheng’s brilliant analysis of Google circles, which I subscribe entirely, and Fred Wilson’s follow up about implicit and explicit groups.

- Plain feed, curated feed, edited feed. Should the feed reflect exactly your social graph (a la G+), should it be curated (Twitter) or should it be edited based on some algorithm (Facebook top news). Few people are siding with Facebook. Mike Elgan has a great post on Facebook’s approach and why he thinks it’s ultimately wrong, and Tom Anderson (MySpace Tom) wrote another great post on algorithm-based feeds.

- Feed density and content. Twitter’s revolution came in the form of 140 characters. Sure it’s limiting but you can’t argue it’s super efficient. For me it meant the death of RSS and online news altogether. I now get it all on Twitter because it’s fast and I can quickly scan through the most recent posts. Facebook allows richer content but naturally less content for the same space. G+ offers even less content for the same amount of screen. Plus Facebook and G+ have likes, +1, comments. Twitter has none of those. Opinions vary. Robert Scoble is a big fan of Google+ and its feed, Mike Monteiro not as much, and MG Siegler thinks Scoble is wrong.