What the President’s Google+ page tells us about the network

President Barack Obama’s team is very active on social media. The Facebook page that carries his name has new posts twice a day on average with a mix of hopeful messages, political statements, and personalized views into life at the White House. On Twitter, they post several times a day with links, pictures, and quotes from the President.

Google+ is a different story. It was only mildly active during the election campaign. After a peak of 19 posts in August, 2012, it started falling off quickly. In September, there were 11 posts followed by 5 in October. November, the month of the election, saw two posts.

December, the month after winning reelection, had only a single post. Then, they “ramped up” in January with 3. In February, they posted a picture of the President and his family at the inauguration.

That was the last post on the President’s Google+ page.

Those who use Google+ regularly know it isn’t hard to post. There are best practices out there telling organizations to simply duplicate their Facebook efforts. If an organization posts something to Facebook, it takes a few seconds to copy and paste the same post onto Google+.

Those who understand the tremendous effort and intellect that goes into the President’s communication team understand that everything that does or does not happen is intentional. They are extremely aware of Google+. They know that it’s not a hassle to post to it and that a single person could monitor the hundreds of responses compared to the resources necessary to monitor the thousands of responses to each Facebook post.

They also know something else and that’s the concern for Google+. For some reason, they’ve abandoned Google+. They weren’t ever extremely active on it in the first place, but it either isn’t worth the trouble or there’s something negative associated with it. Nobody knows for sure what motives them to stay off the network, but the fact that they have is telling.

Could it be consolidation? Perhaps between their Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr accounts they feel that there’s no need for another network. Could it be something more negative, an effect of Google+ posts that they don’t want to stir? Perhaps there’s something in the engagement itself – too many opposing views in the discussions. Did they just place it so low on the hierarchy of communication requirements that they forgot about it?

Whatever the reason, their lack of a recent presence on Google+ should dismay those in Mountain View. The most followed man in the world has dismissed their network. That’s not good.