My POV on Google+

This post is my formal POV on Google+.  I encourage feedback, suggestions and comments. This isn't meant to be all of the reasons you should actually like and use Google+ (that's coming soon), or tips / tricks. It's purely a run-down and analysis for agency purposes.

Overview
After months of speculation, Google finally unveiled its secret “social” weapon in the form of Google+, a full fledged, feature-rich social network. The reveal has been anxiously anticipated, mostly due to Google’s prior failures in the social space (e.g. Google Wave, Google Buzz and Google Hotpot) and Facebook’s fearsome globe-dominating success. In just a week of beta-testing it’s become clear not only that Google+ is a serious challenge to the current kings of social media, but also that consumers are starved for a real alternative to the current offerings. Experts have been lauding it, early users have been spending hours engaging and people who weren’t invited are clamoring to get in. What follows is an overview and early analysis of Google+’s most significant features & functionality:

Unique Features
Google+ was designed to answer specific concerns about existing social products, and also to break ground on new forms of interaction. Google has extracted the best of Twitter, Facebook and smaller successes like FriendFeed, but at the same time mixed in a healthy dose of innovation. While there are many significant features included in Google+, these four may be the most significant:

Circles
This is Google’s slick method of creating lists of people to follow and/or share with. Circles allow you to publish content to specific people, and filter your view of the social stream to reduce noise. Like with Twitter, following on Google+ is asynchronous; users can allow anyone to follow them without having to follow someone back or give up control of which content they share to whom. By taking this approach, Google is allowing granular control while also aggressively going after Twitter’s domain of public broadcast and celebrity voyeurism, rather than Facebook’s private relationships. Google+’s asynchronous follow, as well as lesser features like its Spark news integration, ensure that new users can enjoy Google+ and participate regardless of whether they have any friends in the service or plan on sharing any content of their own.

RealTime
Almost everything in Google+ happens in real-time, giving users a continuous feeling of community activity. Replies on content appear immediately without screen refresh. When posts start to receive new comments they pop back to the top of the feed. Also, a persistent top-bar alert notification now sits above Gmail, Google Reader and Google Docs, immediately alerting Google users when someone interacts with their content or a discussion in which they’re involved in. These three features help produce unparalleled levels of engagement by repeatedly drawing users back into the network to participate in threads, rather than allowing content to disappear into the stream. The robust conversation being generated on posts is already leading several technology influencers to announce that they’re transitioning their blogs to a Google+ stream.

Hangouts
Hangouts is essentially a group video chat product that makes Skype look non-social by comparison. Hangouts can be opened to the public and support up to 10 people in a room at once. The screen dynamically focuses on whoever is speaking, and as soon as someone leaves a room a new person can join. In this way Hangouts becomes a killer group social feature and has a lot of potential to be utilized creatively. Also, by launching Hangouts days before Facebook announced a Skype partnership, Google made Facebook look outdated and unimaginative for the first time.

Takeout
Right from the start Google is providing tools for any Google+ users to export all of their personal data. Though a minor functionality, this commitment to personal data ownership sets a stake in the ground for Google’s philosophy as it pertains to a critical aspect of social media as compared to competing social properties. Ideally, Takeout will pressure other social networks to match Google+’s offering by giving their users more control and ownership of their own information.

In contrast to all of Google+’s innovative features, something that’s missing may be its most significant asset of all as it builds its userbase: no syndication tools to and from other services. Whereas many people connect Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin together so one status message can be shared to all networks, Google+ is designed for everyone to only contribute fresh purposeful content to the community. While this might limit some people’s usage, it also ensures that people are not just seeing a duplicate experience to their Facebook or Twitter feed, and thus have more reason to stay and engage with everything that is shared. This is one feature of Google+ that very well may change soon when Google+ gets a public API, but for now it’s having a huge impact on how people use the service.

Importance
Even with its early success, Google+ has a major uphill battle. Facebook recently reached 750 million users and is the number one social platform in most countries world-wide. Twitter has slowly become a communication channel for the masses, playing important roles in national revolutions and government elections alike. Some people are skeptical the world needs another social network, especially considering that much of Facebook’s benefit derives from the network effect of everyone having joined it. However, there are many reasons why Google+’s success is incredibly important for both users and Google alike:

Identity
Though Facebook’s focus on real identities instead of anonymous handles changed the course of Internet history for the better, the way it’s handled identity rights has been questionable. Facebook is trying to aggregate as much user information as possible, but is shaky on what users can do with their data. As Facebook Connect becomes the log-in system for sites across the web, more personal information is consolidated under one roof. There needs to be another major competitor in the personal identity space, if only to keep Facebook honest and push them to think about users.

Search
Prior to Facebook’s ascent, all search engines had access to the public data. Point of differentiation was left to quality of ranking algorithm and ease of use. Facebook’s exclusive deal with Bing for access to much of its data has set off a distressing trend of companies choosing which search engines will have access to their users public data. Now the best search engine might not have access to the most important data, and in the end only consumers lose out. Google+, and the corresponding ‘+1’ buttons, are Google’s chance to secure its own fate as social data and social content becomes more integral to search. But more importantly, Google+ could put pressure on the social players to make their data publicly indexable for the benefit of all.

Product
While Google+ is a product on its own, it will also become a layer on-top of Google’s other offerings. This new social layer will help many of Google+’s legacy products, which have sometimes remained runner-ups despite competitive technology, achieve new standards of success. First up is Picasa, which now has powerful social sharing and people-tagging features that make Facebook’s inferior photo product so addictive to users. Picasa’s superior photo storage and organization will likely force Facebook to improve its own offering, and also could take market share from sites like Flickr. Google+ is likely to drive similar game-changing improvements in products like Google Places (it’s Yelp competitor) and more.

Businesses
Though the first iteration of Google+ is only a consumer offering, it’s likely to create or impact many brand marketing opportunities. Right from the start, clever brands have launched personal profiles and started exploring Google+ with consumers through realtime feeds and Hangout conversations. However, Google is actively deleting personal profiles created by brands, and promises significant business-centric offerings soon.

Google is expected to provide businesses unique profiles that links to other Google business offerings, including robust analytics and advertising opportunities. Limited testing of these offerings will be opened to a few select partners, including MTV and Ford. If early Google+ consumer usage is a sign, brands will need to think hard about how they provide a unique experience in Google+ that will be more conversational and community focused than any other social network before it. Google+’s newsfeed and group video chat capabilities are intentionally optimized for engagement more-so than syndication, and lack of integration with Twitter and Facebook status helps reinforce that brands will want to create original content, rather than just replicate their other hubs.

In addition to presence within Google+, the Google+ social data is likely to improve targeting options for Google’s other ad products, such as Adwords or display media. Google will soon have more information about their users, more registered profiles and more social data to enhance behavior and contextual targeting. It will also give advertisers more opportunities to connect with brands through advertising and content across multiple platforms.

Conclusion
While there’s a lot to be excited about with Google+, it’s important to remember the beta has only been open a few weeks. As more people are let into the service, and as Google makes optimizations and additions to the network, all of this is likely to change. However, Google+ is already proving to be a significant new offering for Google as well as social media users, consumers and brands alike. Whether or not it dethrones the current kings of social, it will absolutely improve many of Google’s products and force competitors like Facebook and Twitter to innovate quickly to bring more value to the consumer. Google+ is ultimately a major win for users of all services, and reminds us that social media as a whole is still in its infantcy. It will be very important for businesses to pay attention to and explore in the coming months.

Without an Obvious Vanity Layer, is Google +1 Doomed?

A few months ago Google kicked off an ambitious project to build a social authority graph that competes with Facebook's powerful web of 'likes'.  The project, called '+1', is essentially a button that would sit next to any web link and allow people to plus-up the value of that content.  That endorsement will appear for your friends in Google search results, and ultimately could help influence Google's search ranking overall.  The project began with +1 buttons appearing next to links on Google's search results, and starting this week the +1 buttons are now rolling out to websites to sit next to the usual collection social sharing buttons.

Google +1 is an enticing offer- your endorsement of websites could directly impact on one of the largest and most influential sites on the web.  Clearly with this potential website owners will desperately want their readers and fans to take action (anything to improve search ranking).  However, as it currently stands I'm actually fairly skeptical that Google +1 will be very popular at all.  It seems to be missing the main driving force for social endorsement- the potential for immediate return satisfaction.

Part of what makes content sharing on Facebook and Twitter so popular is because it can deliver immediate ego gratification.  On Twitter you can get @replies, ReTweets and even click counts (if you use bit.ly).  On Facebook you can get 'likes' and comments.  These all add up to an ego boost that fuels people's interest in sharing better and better content.  Not to say that it's the only reason people share- but it certainly helps fuel it.

If this is immediate gratification is so important, where is the ego boost, or vanity layer for Google +1?  The likelihood that my friends do a Google search that I might have impacted doesn't seem all that common, and even if they do, there isn't an easy way for them to thank me for the help.  And there isn't an easy way for them to see a list of sites I'm endorsing to respond to without visiting my Google Profile (which virtually no one looks at yet).  Without these critical aspects of return value from sharing, Google +1 seems like something content owners will want but content consumers won't care about.  And without that alignment on interests it doesn't seem like to succeed.

So Google, what will you do to improve the fortunes of Google +1?

50 iPhone App Recommendations for Newbies

Now that Verizon is selling iPhones, a whole bunch of my friends + coworkers have recently made the switch to iOS for the first time.  That means a lot of "what are the best apps I should download first?" questions coming in!  Now that Blippy is on the verge of getting shut down, I thought it might be helpful to write out a quick list of iPhone apps that I recommend.  For the most part I've left a quick note about each app's purpose.  Some of these might be a bit unusual, but I'm recommending them because I really like them at the moment or I think they have real potential.  Some of them also require subscriptions to other services, though I've tried to minimize that.  I've also left games off this list because they're fairly subjective and the best ones are usually reviewed heavily in the app store.  Last but not least, a lot of these have very comparable alternative options, but these are the ones I've been drawn to for one reason or another.  With that said, here's my list- what do you think? Which do you agree or disagree with?  What would you change?  What are your questions? [view the full list on the post page]

Square Hits New York City

One reason I've been jealous of San Francisco lately is because for the last year they've been able to make purchases in many business with new mobile payment startup Square.  Square is a simple credit card payment system powered by a dongle that anyone can plug in to their smart phone or iPad.  Square will send you a dongle for completely free, in exchange for taking a 2.75% cut from purchase made by the Square unit.  This is a relatively low transaction fee for the seller, and for the shopper it's a more helpful purchase experience.  After your first purchase from a Square register, the system remembers you credit card and pulls up your information automatically- including your email and cell phone, where you can receive digital receipts that include a list of the items you purchased and a map showing exactly where you bought from.  Square is so simple to set up and use that I've even got one for the rare time someone wants to pay me back for something by credit card.



Up until now I haven't seen any stores in New York City using Square (though nothing was stopping them).  But this week Square announced a brand new product and Manhattan was one of its launch markets.  The new program is called Card Case, and it's a very cool.  Now sellers can set up a product menu via Square, and shoppers can register digital credit cards  with vendors.  After a shopper has paid via the Square system once at a particular merchant with their credit card, they can link to that merchant permanently.  Then in the future you can see what the merchant is selling that day, and pay at that the store without ever pulling your credit card.  The virtual cards are kept in the new Square iPhone app in a wallet-like screen.  With this a physical store merchant can now feature sale items, manage customer loyalty and more in a completely connected relationship powered by Square.  You can see what the Card Case looks like in my pictures above.

I love the idea of Square.  I love that it shows me all of the transactions I've made at a vendor over time, and easily lets me see what they were.  I love that I get digital receipts instead of wasted paper.  Now I love that I don't even have to take my credit card out of my wallet to pay at places I go often.  And I'm really excited that my favorite coffee shop in New York City, Everyman Espresso, is one of the launch partners for Square Card Case.  Before this, Everyman didn't even take credit cards- so clearly they see value in the system for themselves, as well as customers.

Keep your eye out for Square payment options soon, and let me know what you think.

Using Storify to Capture my Social Media Community's Reaction to the News about Osama Bin Laden's Death

As is the trend with breaking news stories in the last three-to-four years, each one seems to top the next in how social media was used to cover, spread and react to the event.  Last night's news about Osama Bin Laden finally being killed began and ended on Twitter.  From a Pakastani man documenting the raid in real time, to the first unofficial news of the story being leaked well before the President addressed the nation, to four thousand tweets-per-second being published about the news, television and newspapers took a back seat to social media once again.

Another pattern of breaking news is use of new tools to help us capture and share the story each time.  Last night some news outlets harnessed a powerful new curation tool Storify to pull together people's reactions to the news in one easily consumable timeline.  Storify enables "authors" to combine original content with social media curation to tell a story through the eyes of many.  I think this is just the beginning of us all following big historical events through quickly curated Storify timelines.

Here's my own coverage of last night's news, as told through my social media community.  I've broken down into a few sections: raw reactions & discussion, an overview of how people used different social media platforms to share & celebrate the news, and some interesting longer-form blog articles about how social media played its part in spreading the news.

SS+K Launches our Foursquare Mayorshup (Mayor Mashup) on Foursquare Day

Even since before I ever arrived at SS+K, there's always been a battle for "mayor" of the office on Foursquare.  But this year, with a few more obsessive Foursquare users joining the team, what was once was a playful game has become obsessive  competition.  Now it's not enough to be mayor of SS+K, we're competing for mayor of everything- the kitchen, the cafe, the conference rooms, and various other key office spots.  It almost feels like we have to get to work earlier just to walk around the office claiming all of our territory.

About a week ago some of us were talking about how the office Foursquare competition has started to feel a lot like a game of Risk, which people clearly controlling or conquering portions of the office map.  We needed a system to keep track of who controlled what, a leader board for our office.  So that weekend I put together a rough-and-tumble version of an SS+K Foursquare Mayor Mashup, relying heavily on the use of pre-existing social plug-ins.  Here's what it looked like:

The version I hacked together helped show who was controlling which office location, but it didn't really convey the feeling of civilization-conquering competition that is taking place.  So on Thursday afternoon a few of us talked about how we could build something a little more interesting in the spirit of upcoming Foursquare Day.  And in a hurried 24 hours, with the help of our friends at Firefall Pro, we pushed out version one of the official SS+K Mayorshup (say goodbye to "mayor mashup").

We're pretty excited about our SS+K Mayorshup.  For one, it helps convey just how much we love Foursquare.  But also, this is just the beginning.  We have a lot of cool ideas for what can be done on top of the Foursquare platform.  And while you can expect a much more polished and interactive version of our Mayorshup to come soon, we hope to be launching some even more exciting things beyond our own office game of global domination as well.  In the mean time, enjoy our Mayorshup and have a great Foursquare Day!

2 New Tools for the Social Media and Cloud Lifers: Memolane and Greplin

When I left college in 2004 I took with me 3 hard drives that had over a terabyte of movies, music, documents and more.  All of the content I had created or saved was a file on one of those hard drives amongst thousands of disorganized folders.  It took Google Desktop to ultimately deliver a search product strong enough to help me find anything I wanted amidst the horde of files.

Fast forward to today, where those hard drives with thousands of files sit dusty on my shelf.  It's not because I've replaced them with files on my latest computer, it's because, for the most part, I no longer have use for files on a computer at all.  Now thanks to my obsession with social media, and my aggressive transition to everything "cloud", all of my documents are scattered across thousands of websites.  Microsoft Office and Outlook have been replaced by Google Docs and Gmail.  My photos and videos sit on Flickr and YouTube.  In fact, tens of thousands of pieces of content are scattered across way too many social sites and web applications- so much so that it's getting impossible to remember exactly where I put any single thing, let alone find it again.

Enter Memolane and Greplin, two products to save the social media and cloud computing obsessed.  Memolane and Greplin share the noble purposes of helping you rediscover the content you have spread around the web, though each focus on a different subset of content and solve it in different ways:

• Memolane links up to all of your social networks (11 so far, and any RSS feed) and visualizes your activity in a really cool interactive timeline.  It allows you to view all of your photos, status messages, location check-ins and more organized day-by-day.  With Memolane you can do a basic search of your activity, but more impressively you can travel to any point in your social media history view a beautiful timeline and view what your experience was as told by your foursquare + Flickr + YouTube + Twitter + Facebook activity (and more) at that moment.  Memolane uses all sorts of meta data to put the timeline together, and even successfully managed to import and accurately assign photo's I'd taken in 2002 and uploaded to Flickr years later.

• Greplin connects to the top few social networks, but focuses more on cloud computing sites like Gmail, Google Docs and Dropbox.  You can't browse your documents visually, but you can instantly search across all of your sites to find anything you need.  Greplin returns search results really fast and organizes them by message, event, people and file to help you find what you're looking for more easily.  Greplin is a freemium service, meaning some of the accounts it links to come free, but others (like Google Business Apps and Evernote) are paid additions.  Greplin isn't as sexy as Memolane, but it's incredibly powerful and useful as working in the cloud becomes more common.

While Memolane and Greplin tackle similar problems, they each focus on a different set of content and help you rediscover it in different ways.  Since I am putting more and more content online each day, I expect to use both of these services often.  Have you tried them yet? If so, what do you think?  What features do you think they need to be more helpful, or what are other services that are helping you organize your cloud life?

Three reasons why I'm so excited for Foursquare v.3 #4sq3

Last night Foursquare launched the latest version of their iPhone app, Foursquare v3.  This marks the third year in a row they're launching at SXSWi, the perfect stage for the Foursquare team to show off what they've been up to and why it's going to change everything.  This year's refresh is an awesome overhaul, and really proves how hard the Foursquare team is working to make the platform into something immersive and valuable.  Here are the top reasons why I'm so excited about the latest version of Foursquare application:

• Powerful new personalized recommendations
  Foursquare launched a new tab in the mobile app "Explore" that houses all kinds of recommendations for you.  You can view trending places, pick a category or search for a topic in particular.  What makes this more intriguing than just about any other recommendation engine I've seen though is that every recommendation comes with "reasons why" Foursquare is suggesting this place.  It could be because your close friends keep going there, because there are a lot of new tips there, because you go to a whole bunch of places like it, or more.  I immediately trust recommendations that are transparent, even when the reason given is "this place is totally different than you're usual" (which you might just see).

• More compelling loyalty and rewards opportunities
  Two big challenges with earlier versions of Foursquare were that deals were hard to find, and they usually only applied to the mayor.  Both of these have been fixed, and then some.  Now when you pull up nearby places you see an alert at the bottom of how many specials are close, and have the option to browse only those specials.  There are also 6 new types of specials that businesses can offer, such as deals for friends that check-in together, regular customers, 'swarm deals' and more.  This makes Foursquare even more capable as the backbone of business loyalty programs, and makes deals a lot more value to customers.

• More interesting data and gaming metrics
  Foursquare says the gaming mechanism is entirely rebuilt, with dozens of ways to earn points in ways that will encourage you to try and do more, such as points for returning to places you used to frequent, trying a new type of food or catching up with an old friend.  You also see updates to your game ranking ranking every time you take an action, and the game is now always based on the "latest 7 days."  I'm also really excited to see personal data being brought into the application.  On your profile tab is now a section that shows your most explored categories, which you and your friends can visit to see what you are most likely an expert on.

These new features in Foursquare, along with their earlier additions of photos and commenting on check-ins, complete Foursquare's transition from novelty game to powerful platform.  A lot of people have dropped off from using Foursquare after they tried it because they didn't see the value; this is Foursquare saying they heard you.  Give it another try, spend some time exploring the features, see more of what makes mobile / geo social networking so interesting, and let me know what you think.