Credit: Andrew Kelly / REUTERS

In a piece entitled, “Google Is Far From Losing the War Over Social,” Time’s Verne Kopytoff examined the state and future of Google+. At 390 million users, Google’s social network is 60% larger and much younger than Twitter. But two years after its launch, many still question its progress.

Koptoff interviewed Brian Solis where the two spent an hour discussing every aspect Google’s rise, strategies, and the meaning of Google+ within the company’s greater ecosystem of search, mobile, and the Web.

As Koptoff notes in the article, “The search giant’s initial hopes that it would blossom into a major business have yet to pan out. The reasons are many, according to analysts, who inevitably point to Google’s late start in social networking. Some also cite a muddled purpose. Is Google+ a rival to Facebook, the social networking Goliath? Or is its mission to stitch together Google’s disparate services and make them more useful?”

Solis believes that Google+ is part of a greater vision to integrate Google’s services where human and data algorithms help people bring the digital and real worlds together more productively and intuitively. But as he told Koptoff, it begins with vision and more importantly, the ability to convey it to rally support and adoption. Solis simply said, “If I had Google in the room with me I would advise them to better communicate their vision,” says Brian Solis, a principal analyst at Altimeter Group.

To wrap up the article, Solis also believes that Google still has work to do on the Google+ design. In particular, he said Google should focus on making the service more human, or easier to use. Superb engineering and data-driven design is, of course, the company’s strong point.