Long time internet acquantance Ryan Brymer added a thought provoking comment to my last post which I felt deserved a full response:

“is there a place for new social networking sites?”

In a way, Facebook has really cornered the market on this – worldwide. There will always be a Burger King to every McDonald’s, but what we see growing more in retail and food is the niche. Could the same be true of Social Media?

If my goal were to corner the market on cheap, quick hamburgers, no bank in their right mind would give me money. It seems foolish to go in and try to compete in the worldwide social media market… even if your name is Google.

What I want to explore is the relevance and adopt-ability of localized, specified, social networking tools.

Before the launch of Google+ I wrote that Facebook owned social. That was then, this is now: the landscape has been changed.

So, is there a place for new social networking services? Definitely.

Scale

What we currently see as Google+ is merely the beginning and, even then, some mistake the service for just its most visible component: the Stream. We are so used to the concept of status updates that it is too early to fully understand where social can go.

Back when we were playing the guessing game about whether google.me existed and what it was going to be I asked if it was, in fact, a concept and not a social network. Well, the last month has told us that it is both. We have the instantly recognisable Stream and sharing components but we also have the promise of a much wider integration with Plus also providing that, oft mentioned, social layer for other services.

We have the Picasa tie-in and a degree of integration with Youtube, the upcoming social gaming and rumours of a Q&A service (Google Questions) to rival Quora – not to mention my previous comments on the possible ways the Blogger blogging platform could be integrated.

Plus will be far more than a stream and much greater than the sum of its parts.

Micro or Macro?

Ryan would like to see more “targeted social” and I would argue that, with search and topic based categorisation as an extension to circles, Plus could almost become all things to all people. Google needs to move beyond just circles which have been criticised as limited and Fridge (specialising in online group management) is the perfect acquisition to do this.

By effectively grouping with enhanced controls we can make Plus work for us.

Analysts predicted that location based services would explode and be the next big thing. We have seen growth with Foursquare and Facebook Places (Google are also steadily improving the functionality on offer with their incarnation of Places) and local deals with the likes of Groupon but we are still waiting for that explosion.

I would, therefore, be inclined to ask if location – and any specific topic – is actually too niche to form the basis of something on its own?

Google is not just trying to get in to the burger flipping business and be the Burger King to Facebook’s McDonalds. Instead it wants to be the mall that holds the burger bars, the chinese & italian restaurants, steak house and supermarket.

Google wants to think big by enabling us all to think small in different ways, within the same framework but – because of groups and circles – overlaping only as much or as little as we want. Whether we want to be hyper-local or global, niche or generic, a proper framework within a “container” environment could serve as home to all.

Ning tried to be such a framework, a place where we could all build our own targeted networks but it stopped there with each individual network being an isolated island in the social ocean, disconnected from the outside world. Google+ enables us to have our islands with their own populations but build bridges between each of them and even the outside world should we so desire.

The bottom line

Obviously, this is not all the result of benevolence on Google’s part, they are not simply creating a creche within the mall for us all to play in but, if they can convince us to play in their creche and let them know what toys we like, they will have the perfect opportunity to sell us new ones.

Image by Osei

The second part in a look at the use of identity in social networks.
Part one is Identity and social; who are we?

Google+ is not alone in dealing with identity within the remit of a social network and is certainly not the first to have received criticism for the way identity has been handled.

Twitter and Facebook both utilise forms of identity in order to extend their presence; whether it is using Facebook connect or the option to sign in with Twitter both are seeking to be the presence of choice for their users.

Identity = intent

The Twitter ecosystem exploded at an incredible rate and the option to sign in using your account appeared virtually everywhere. The key issue with Twitter, however, is that despite its best protestations it still doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be or how it is going to get there.

We may be able to connect to other sites, to log in and comment or personalise our experience but Twitter does not require us to use our real names so we are often dealing with a pseudo-identity which is less trustworthy and, therefore, of limited use outside of the Twitter ecosystem.

Twitter started life as an aside, an offshoot, and grew both organically and haphazardly with no plan and no direction. The user base and developer community largely ruled the roost with the service itself being very accommodating in order to grow. There appeared to be almost a “grow at all costs” mentality which caused criticism that the company was essentially giving away its data for free. This, quite obviously, left Twitter in an awkward position when it then came to trying to take control of what it had become.

Facebook was planned for a specific purpose from day one. It has grown beyond its original remit and features have been added not at the request of the user, or developers, or to play catch-up with the competition but when it suited Facebook to add them; when it made sense and when it fit with the overall direction the company was taking. Think about how Apple has added features to the iPhone and you will see a striking parallel.

It was always intended that your account on Facebook would be an identity – the very purpose it was designed for required real names as it would have been pointless without them. The reach of that identity, however, has shifted over time; it is a logical progression.

Fashionably late

Google has the advantage of knowing exactly what it wants Google+ to be, and how far it can reach, from the word go. Google accounts have been tied in to identity before but the search giant now has the advantage of seeing the Facebook model in operation and recognises that a true online identity can be made to work for you in myriad ways. Just as Facebook Connect extends Facebook’s reach across the “normal-web” so Google profiles will do the same.

By establishing a real, reliable and trustworthy profile system which can be used across the normal-web (rather than a pseudo-identity a la Twitter) Google can, to a degree, sit back and wait for the data to come to them. Google is, after all, a data company using everything it gathers to find trends and patterns in order to better target us with relevant ads and information.

Google doesn’t need our real name in order to make money – it has been doing perfectly well so far – just so long as we are consistently logged in with the same account, be it pseudonymous or otherwise. This only works, however, up to a point. Just as with Twitter, we can be who we like within Google’s own ecosystem; we can be tracked and targeted based on our behaviour but once outside in the normal-web we face an issue of trust especially if money is involved.

Trust

The likes of Google may not be about to become banks but there is no doubt that your social profile, whether it be Facebook or Google or any other player, could be increasingly used as a primary source of identity verification for a wide range of third-party activities and, for this, the identity needs to be completely trustworthy.

Image by Daniel*1977

Who should filter the social web? Should we as consumers be given the option to display information as we want it or should the network enforce its own filtering technology?

An interesting discussion has arisen recently around the concepts of filtering the social firehose in order to make the consumption of our streams and feeds less daunting and more relevant.

The Circles functionality within Google+ has really ignited the discussion with power users complaining that, while Circles may allow us to divide individuals into groups, they don’t allow us to dive into content based on topic or interest; my previous post talked about the lack of a workable interest graph and how we might look to remedy this.

Concerns

Tom Anderson, co-founder of MySpace, initially voiced concern that Google may wish to use the expertise it has developed in ranking and filtering search results to create algorithms for displaying our Google+ streams in order to improve the signal to noise ratio and potentially “ruin the service“. He wonders if Google is even able to let the user take control.

Louis Gray (blogger and VP of Marketing at the filtering service my6sense) expands on this detailing that some feel that content filters based on interests can become self perpetuating: we are presented with content based on our perceived interests and as we then interact with that presented content the filters further refine themselves until we are shown such a focused subset of data that we are missing the bigger picture.

There have been complaints that Facebook has all but ended casual friendships because of its EdgeRank filtering technology. Edgerank looks at each piece of content on the Facebook site and then every interaction with that content to best guess our usage patterns and relationships in order to present us with our “Top news”. If we do not interact with someone for a while, or certain types of post, we may not see them after a while and our “casual” relationship may dwindle to nothing through lack of visibility.

Facebook provides us with the option of seeing the 300 most recent news items but the filtered view is the default. The option exists to alter this but, as is usual with Facebook, is tucked away.

Do we need filters?

Twitter has no filters, it is a firehose and we effectively filter the content by choosing who we follow. Lists can break down the number and types of people that we follow in to more manageable chunks but there is no actual content filtering. This is performed by search, hashtags and third party services such as my6sense should you really want to go that route.

There appears to be more of an understanding on Twitter that the flow is just an ongoing stream and you dip your toes in the water whenever you get the chance. You can’t hope to read it all so why even try.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has confirmed that the company will “stay simple” rather than try to compete on functionality with the likes of Facebook and Google+ and this is part of its charm. If such a policy works for Twitter can it work elsewhere?

Should we also ask if the need to filter our streams is a universal requirement or primarily the curse of the power user? Is a network such as Google+  going to be mainly populated with power users due to its nature or will it appeal to the masses? Looking at the core functionality of the Stream there is no reason why it should not be adopted.

Choice

As I asked above, should it be the consumer or the network that chooses how we display information? Also, as the consumer, should we have the ability of dictate any filter that is applied?

Currently, Google+ displays our stream using an “all or one” approach meaning that we view the contents of all of our circles together or that from our followers in just a single circle. There have been calls for this to be updated to allow us to select multiple circles; this is a good starting point to allow us to manage our stream but we probably need to go further.

Sparking an idea

Sparks is the one (existing) feature which has come in for the most criticism for not being fleshed out but it could lead by example when looking at how we could implement a method of filtering our streams. Sparks lists our saved searches on the left hand menu for easy reference so could we not apply a similar concept to our stream?

As we may want to filter for interests within any of our circles perhaps we could create “views” within our stream on a per circle basis. Taking the lead from Sparks these views or filters could be saved for easy reference and applied at will (as in the image to the right) – the default view, however, would still be everything. It would be useful if we could create filters for just about anything: posts mentioning Android, all posts except pictures etc.

Search

I have no doubt that a lot of the issues we face with finding and viewing our content on Google+ will be resolved once Google have implemented the search functionality that was not ready for the launch of the “field trial”. We will then have to see how it is envisaged that items will be tagged and subsequently located.

Control

Personally, I agree with Tom that we, the user, should be in control. We should determine any filters in place, what posts are visible and what we have muted (be it post types or people).

Once an API has been released the noise will increase and we will face the prospect of cross-posting from other services rather than the explicit manual posting we currently enjoy so being able to filter our streams in the way we want will be more important than ever.

Image by aslakr

Social is always changing, technology changes, but do people change? Have they altered the way they interact or is any change merely a result of the opportunities afforded us by the technology itself.

Brad Feld recently talked about the differences in the way we deal with our social circles depending on whether the network uses the friend or the follower model.

There are, in fact, three models that we can apply to social:

• friending
• following, and
• interest

Facebook gives us the best known example of the friending model where we explicitly say “I know this person” – but this has now been extended to I know of this person due to the proliferation of online relationships rather than the real world friendships which formed the original core of Facebook. Friending is synchronous; both sides must sign up for the connection.

The follow model is mostly associated with Twitter – and now Google+ – and allows us to subscribe to the updates of anyone whether we know them or not and without need for acknowledgement by the person we wish to follow. A more fluid arrangement.

What is a friend?

Social media has diluted the word “friend” to the point where it is now an all-encompassing term for any of our social connections – perhaps it is the wrong word. We are all familiar with its meaning in offline life but this gets lost in translation when moved to an online environment.

John Whittingdale MP – the chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee here in the UK has been criticised for being Facebook “friends” with Rebekah Brooks (ex News of the World editor) among others implicated in the current phone hacking scandal.

When asked about this during a radio interview he remarked that being a friend with someone on Facebook these days doesn’t actually mean that you are their real life friend. A very true statement these days. While we have to acknowledge someone as being a friend we all (both requestor and acceptor) treat Facebook’s friending system as a glorified following system, as Brad mentions in his post.

Friend or follower?

Times, and social practices, have changed since Facebook was used to just keep in contact with friends and family but is it the fault of those of users requesting to be a friend, those accepting these requests (should we be more rigid in who we friend) or is the act of “friending” itself now outdated?

Facebook will tell us that the friending system create improved relationships and that Facebook Groups are a better environment than Google+’s circles as everyone in the group knows everyone else but is this really the case? Questions are being asked as to whether the “friending” system still has a place in social or whether we should only operate on a “following” basis?

On the other hand, does friending have certain merits when it comes to controlling our social environment and who can see our updates? Should other networks employ a mixed following/friending system to indicate differing degrees of interaction depending on our relationships with certain individuals?

In addition to the basic Circles structure in Google+ would we see any benefit from core Circles, such as Friends and Family, introducing such an extra layer of permissions that general followers don’t have?

Follow your interests

Managing our social interactions by the use of an “interest graph” seems frequently overlooked with little facility to actively discover useful content based on any given subject or topic. Any focus on interests seems to be as an afterthought.

When Twitter rebranded itself it proclaimed that we should follow our interests but we are offered only searching for people based on those interests and the use of hashtags (which are open to abuse and spam as highlighted by Robert Scoble) to find what we are looking for.

Facebook tries to create a structure around interests with Pages. We can Like a page based on a particular topic in order to receive updates and can see who else like it but interaction tends to be minimal for some reason. Conversations do not seem to grow in this environment. Pages are permanent and structured and there is still no ability to enter into topic based discussions on ad hoc basis.

Everywhere we look there is no real focus on the interest graph as distinct from our friend or follower graphs. Things have to change for use to make better use of social. Google+ may have given us greater control over how we share content with different groups but these groups are still explicitly defined.

Different faces

Our relationships with people are not static and we do not have the same relationship, or share the same interests with all. From time to time we do not even share the same relationship with the same person. Our lives and personalities are composed of different facets, we wear a different face depending on the circumstances.

Admittedly, it is early days for Google+ having only seen the light of day for a few weeks and (despite the impressive 10 million+ member count) still being in “invite only” field test but there is still a lot of work to so which Larry Page alluded to in his quarterly results briefing.

There is currently a big disconnect between Google+ and other areas of the organisation which needs to be rectified: +1′s on Plus and off for example – called the same thing but currently performing quite different functions.

The question, therefore, remains: how do we categorise both ourselves and our content?

Badges

Google has announced that its News users can earn “badges” based on the level of their consumption by topic – the more you read the better the badge. This has, perhaps understandably, not gone down too well amongst a socially savvy crowd who are seeking a more refined approach to advertising their interests in order to connect with like-minded individuals; the gamification of news in this manner does not address this. We do not live in Google News but, in fact, take our sources from all over the web, from social networks, RSS feeds and traditional media.

Current discussions around the social web have suggested a few options:

• hashtags
• labels
• badges

Hashtags could be an obvious choice, they are well-known and widely used on Twitter and are currently being advocated on Google+ by the likes of Chris Messina who originally proposed the idea. Jeff Jarvis has argued that implementing hashtags on Google+ would take the given topic “cross-platform” using a convention with which most of us are already familiar; extending the power of the tag and enabling us to tie in threads from multiple sources.

This would be great for users but, due to the incredibly close tie-in with Twitter, may not be an ideal choice as far as Google are concerned. This close tie-in implies a reliance on Twitter and Google are, therefore, unlikely to want to adopt hashtags as an official standard but, instead, adopt some of their own (perhaps already existing) terminology.

Labels are already in use within Gmail and we are well versed in using them to categorise the contents of our inboxes. As Google are already planning greater integration of Google+ and Gmail perhaps using labels as a means of identifying the subject matter within Plus itself and other services.

Badges are already well-known from services such as Foursquare so Google would apparently be taking advantage of this familiarity. The primary complaint about badges within Google News is that they are imposed upon you based upon your consumption rather than being chosen by the individual.

Badges could not only promote our interests but also be used to tag the content within our posts and maybe, as we consume content, further badges could be suggested to us based upon that consumption but not automatically applied.

Again, badges are largely associated with other services so may not be the best choice if Google is looking to distinguish itself from those other services. Labels could, therefore, be the most sensible suggestion as they are the one term that is already intrinsically linked to an existing Google product.

Solving the disconnect

Whether it’s +1′s, badges or labels Google must resolve the disconnect between Google+ and their other services. As more service are brought in to the Plus methodology any ambiguity in definitions or behaviour must be removed so that using any given function in any service performs the same action with the same end result. Only then can Google’s social “project” be deemed a true success.

Images by Thomas Hawk & What What

The launch of a new social service is guaranteed to cause controversy one way or another, but the current topic du jour is whether Google profiles should be limited to real names or if pseudonyms should be permitted.

The Google Profiles help article advises that profiles work best:

“… in the identified state. This way you can be certain that you’re connecting with the right person, and others will have confidence knowing that there is someone real behind the profile that they’re looking at.”

It is therefore required that a profile be created with the name “you commonly go by in daily life.”

Avatars

The internet is a place where we play different roles and assume multiple identities in games, forums and social networks and often this does not happen under our real names. We assume alternative personae where we are often only known by the name of our character.

Stephen Shankland over at cnet argues that “people’s online names, while not on their birth certificates, often are a real persona – reputation and all”. Some believe that we should, therefore, be permitted to extend this identity into other areas including our Google Profile.

Beyond social

To argue that Google’s naming policy illustrates how the company ”still doesn’t get social” is, in my opinion, taking things in completely the wrong direction. Google has far wider reaching considerations than just social. To the casual observer it is easy to equate just the activity stream with Google+ but that is merely just the beginning.

Twitter is filled with pseudonyms, joke accounts and more but Google+ isn’t just a social network – Google themselves don’t refer to it that way just as Twitter changed itself to a news and media network. Plus is, instead, an amalgam; at its heart is a profile which Google intends to be the identity system across a whole range of internal products and, by extension, an identity provider for third parties so it makes sense to play it safe and promote accurate identification from the outset thus avoiding any potential legal fallout.

One rule for one…

It has been suggested that Google could operate a two-tier system for real and pseudo accounts with disclaimers and possibly and option to not have your profile used for “identity” but, extrapolating the current growth of Plus, this could become hard to manage and it only takes a few to “forget” to tick the right box when joining for problems to arise.

Profiles include the facility to place nicknames or pseudonyms in the “Other names” section of the profile but this doesn’t go far enough for some.

Circles

Perhaps the best solution might be for a compromise.

The Google+ stream is built around the concept of using our circles to control how, and to who, we read and share. Advocates of using these alternative identities for profiles have suggested that, perhaps, the option could be given to use a specific alternative name when sharing to a particular circle; have a Second Life circle? Why not share to that circle using the name of your Avatar. This would extend the idea that we are acting differently with different groups based on our relationship with them.

The only problem with different names on a per circle basis is the risk of duality depending on whether posts are re-shared beyond the original circle. There would be potential for confusion should we be in both that person’s circles and extended circles. If we see a re-shared post do we see it as originally published by the real name or the pseudonym? Would only those within the target circle see that user as the avatar? Would this cause a logistical nightmare with Google having to keep track of millions of relationships just to work out which name we see?

In the continuing debate of anonymity versus authenticity Google are firmly positioning themselves on the side of “authenticity via identity” – perhaps rightly so – but maybe there is a little room to manoeuvre.

Image by Matthew Burpee