Google+ heralded a new era for the search giant with a last-ditch attempt to succeed in the social space but are things being pushed too far and too quickly?

The unofficial Google Operating System blog has pointed out that all new Google accounts created – regardless of the reason – will now also automatically require GMail and be Google+ accounts.

Larry Page announced in the Google quarterly report that Plus has now passed the 90 million user mark – no small achievement in itself – and Google are obviously keen for the service to expand as much and as quickly as possible.

Doing evil?

It is being suggested that Google will come under fire with regards to this especially after the complaints around Search Plus seeming to heavily favour Google+ in SERPs (search engine results pages).

The GOS blog post does not indicate when this change occurred – it would actually make sense to have been introduced at the same times as Search Plus but maybe gone unreported. Irrespective of this, perhaps the timing could have been handled a little more delicately considering the outcry over Search Plus, the move was always inevitable.

Greg Finn at Marketing Land says that this is surprising considering that Google+ is still essentially a beta but it has come an exceedingly long way since being opened up to the public being a fully fleshed out product which is more than ready for prime time.

Google+ is Google

It was originally explained that Plus would become part of the entire Google ecosystem acting as a social layer as well as a social network meaning that, regardless of which Google service you use, you are hooked into the network’s social features.

What surprises me, however, is that people are acting as though they could never see this coming. I wrote back in October:

“Once the social layer has been integrated into other Google services we have a huge potential catchment – anyone who uses a Google Service and has a Google account is a potential Google+ user.”

If all Google services are linked via Plus then it follows that all Google users would, therefore, need a Plus account to enable the personalisation (via circles) and other social features. Like it or not it is a natural progression; it’s just a question of whether you visit the actual network directly or share via another service.

A push too far?

Is it unreasonable for Google to force its social network upon users like this? While the vision is that Plus will be a central component of the Google experience it is presumptuous to assume that all users need or want the social connectivity that Plus affords. Just as we can turn off personalised search then should this extent to the whole social element?

Now that Plus and its hook in to search are to be considered as part of the FTCs (Federal Trade Commission) anti-trust probe into Google it would not be unexpected that the company be forced to offer a “Google Lite” option providing the ability to opt out of all personalisation: a disconnection of the Google+ element.

This would not necessarily be a complete loss for Google – social functionality would instead become opt-in – as search results, recommendations etc. could still be customised by locale and regional trends even though there would be no direct social influence.

I stated that some “will no doubt cry foul if all Google accounts are automatically enabled for Plus” so there must be choice but whether that choice is a complete opt out or, as I described previously, a need to explicitly enable the Plus portion of the account is up for debate.

Brave new world

It is a bold step to bet the future of the whole company on its ability to compete, via Google+, in social and this is reflected in the oft quoted decision to have bonuses for all staff linked to the success of that future. Google has the talent to achieve its goal but must not become over zealous. The social landscape is full of promise and reward, whilst no fool, the company must not rush in unguarded.

After all, there is a reason angels fear to tread here.

Image by Miso Susanowa

Competition is hotting up in the social space as Facebook extends the open graph and Google goes all out with Search Plus and is rumoured to have breached the 100 million user mark. While aiming to keep simple is acquiring Summify a way Twitter can compete?

Twitter has a mixed record when it comes to acquisitions:

Summize: Twitter acquired the excellent search company after announcing they were a “perfect match“. At the time Twitter said on its blog:

“There is an undeniable need to search, filter, and otherwise interact with the volumes of news and information being transmitted to Twitter every second. We will be adding search and its related features to the core offering of Twitter in the very near future.”

Ironically Twitter search has generally gotten worse ever since with the age of tweets you can return being reduced to a matter of days (sometimes even less).

TweetDeck: It is widely accepted that Twitter only bought TweetDeck in order to prevent UberMedia getting hold of it as the company would then have held too strong a position within the Twitter ecosystem. UberMedia was rumoured to being launching its own network and Chime.in (an attempt at an interest-based network) eventually arrived but, without the popular Tweetdeck on board its influence was reduced.

Since acquisition TweetDeck has been reworked to fall more in line with the core Twitter image and functionality which many are unhappy about as they claim Twitter has removed some of the best features.

Tweetie: The popular client for Mac and iPhone, is probably Twitters most visible success story although it was initially greeted with caution from some quarters.

Trendly: Twitter bought Smallthought Systems, the analytics company behind Trendly, and were due to be offering real-time analysis which never seemed to appear.

Twitter acquires Summify

It has now been announced that Twitter has acquired Summify – a service which produces a summary of key news from your social circle and presenting it in a more elegant fashion – just as it was starting to really take off. On the face of it, this seems like another perfect match for Twitter but it remains to be seen exactly how the network with utilise this new resource. Talent acquisition? No doubt. Technology acquisition? Hopefully.

I said in April last year:

“It is widely accepted that Twitter is not for everyone but this may be a limitation of the timeline format. Perhaps it is time for a bit of a shake-up.”

That shake-up finally arrived towards the end of last year with the arrival of #newnewtwitter – a complete redesign and unification of the UI across the different means of access – and I stated that “the new view on the #discovery tab would appear to be the first step“.

Summify’s ability to filter your feed and pull out the salient items would be an ideal way of enhancing the #discover tab by presenting more personalised news based on your own network rather than a generic list from trending topics.

Summify has immediately shut down a number of features including profile pages and the ability to make summaries public (all summaries will now be private until the service stops supplying them) and, obviously, disabling new user registration everyone will hook in directly via Twitter.

Business is business

In a way it is a shame to lose the social elements of Summify but Twitter is out to make itself a better service in order to attract and retain more users.

Summify provides value for many but this value is gained from Twitter’s content outside of Twitter’s control. It is, therefore, in the network’s interest to have this functionality in-house and force us to come to its own site where it can regain that control and serve related “promoted content” based on the topics the summary presents.

The acquisition is another example of Twitter wanting to reassert itself on its ecosystem; it is easier to acquire than to build but make no mistake, if Summify had not sold Twitter would no doubt have further developed #discovery with its solution.

The continuing expansion of social networks is a growing concern as they find new ways to entice and retain users. Consequently, they can no longer slip under the radar of the authorities. 

Around 18 months ago I questioned if social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter would “become the next Microsoft” by which I meant that they could grow so large as to be virtual monopolies with all the associated risks for potential abuse of that position.

Since then we have had continued efforts from Twitter to reclaim its ecosystem by incorporating functionality made popular by third-party tools and clients. The company has even purchased TweetDeck, the most popular third-party client around, seemingly just as a way of preventing UberMedia from getting their hands on it.

Facebook is ever controversial and continually uncoils its tentacles, extending them further into the ‘normal web’.

Facebook Connect and Comments allowed us to use one identity in myriad locations enabling the social network to learn our habits and the relationships between who we know, what we do and where we go. The open graph will now permit us to ‘watch’ and ‘eat’ rather than just Like and it will all feed back to the mothership just like our listening habits from Spotify and our reading habits from publications such as the Washington Post.

Anti-competitive

In my previous post I asked:

“Can we envisage a time when a social platform is large enough to attract the attention of the authorities for anti-competitive behaviour?

Will we see complaints from one service against another or will complaints come from outside the social web as other areas start to feel threatened as social platforms look for new areas to expand to beyond their traditional domains?”

It looks as though that time has arrived.

All the time social networks stayed firmly pigeon-holed the rest of the web was fine with these upstarts gobbling up the spare time of web users; going beyond this remit, however, meant problems were bound to occur sooner or later.

Taking action

Facebook is now huge but, being largely self-contained, has mainly had to contend with privacy issues until recently when the site Timelines.com decided to sue the social behemoth (whether rightly or not) over the use of the name “Timeline” for its new look profile.

The Timelines action could well be the first of many as social networks seek to continue their growth the trend will be towards offering more widespread functionality in an attempt to attract new sign ups and retain existing users – without them advertisers will not be willing to pile in the funds required to keep services alive.

As well as an actual threat does size carry the risk of perceived threat? Even if a particular network or feature is not actually a threat  how many instances might we see where another service is sufficiently threatened that they the need for a pre-emptive strike to reduce an unproven risk?

A phoenix from the flames

Google has had a number of failed forays into the social space but long recognised the need to get involved or get left behind. People are getting more of their information from social networks thus reducing the need for traditional search; why Google something and spend time going through the results when you can have your friends do the work for you. There are always some in a rush to please in the great online popularity contest that is social media.

Google+ is a success, that cannot be argued, and the burgeoning user numbers suggest that it may soon catch Twitter. The approach to link the social network into all aspects of the Google ecosystem is an obvious ploy to increase the rate at which people sign up. On its own this appears not to have caused concern amongst competitors – presumably as it is linking in to Google’s own offerings. The problems began when Google+ was combined with search by “Search Plus Your World” causing anti-competitive objections to be raised from a competitor (Twitter) and beyond.

It has been conjectured that, as Google will have an awareness of exactly what it can expect to get away with, Search+ could be a calculated risk designed to force the FTC’s hand and prompt an investigation into Facebook’s practices of locking down data. By a logical extension, however, it would not be such a huge leap for this to pave the way for a full investigation into all social networks and how they operate?

• Could Twitter be forced to no longer favour its own URL shortener and image upload service?
• Could Google be forced to re-work it’s algorithms to show search results more fairly? Or will it be instructed to make social search separate as Bing currently does?
• Could Facebook be forced to open up the open graph?

A new era for the web

Image by Tom Morris

How Google’s Search Plus Will Impact SEO And Why It Matters.

My new post at Media Tapper.

Controversy aside, social search is here to stay so it is better to embrace it early rather than get left behind. 

“Since going live, Google+ has been hailed by some as a replacement for blogging – a view not universally countenanced but the argument for creating content directly in the social stream where most interaction occurs is quite strong. Now, with the integration of these social signals in to Search+ some are, perhaps, getting ahead of themselves proclaiming the combination as the future of the web.”

Search+ has created a huge ripple, even if only by notoriety, but is a long way from changing the search paradigm.

Read the full post here: How Google’s Search Plus Will Impact SEO And Why It Matters.

Many excellent ideas in the social space, including those from Google, are often hampered by poor execution rather than any fault with the service on offer. Search Plus would appear to be no exception.

I have long been an advocate of social search and called on Google to integrate it into normal search back in August 2010. I also wrote that there were 3 ways Google could use search to have an impact in social:

Recommendations

Using likes, shares, tweets etc. to influence search results and use this to help provide a global real-time trending solution.

At the time, Facebook was driving 13% of all traffic compared to 7% from Google – no doubt due to the social element. It wasn’t a worrying statistic for Google but I said:

“with their own social network, they could get their hands on some of those referrals and build it into their recommendations“.

Related Content

By integrating social into search I envisaged the provision of additional related content – some kind of “you may also like” arrangement but wasn’t sure if it could be successfully pulled off in real-time.

The heavy integration Plus into search has made this easier than I thought (although not as wide-ranging) and the first elements of related content are Google+ user profiles and pages associated with that particular topic.

Statistics

Here I mentioned the possibility for real-time stats and integrating tools such as Google Analytics. As we know, Analytics has since incorporated both social interactions and real-time results into its reports.

More recently I stated that Google Ripples could form the “basis for some kind of analytic offering, especially for Brand Pages when they arrive.” The combination of real-time & social statistics combined with effective visual utilities would be a game changing toolset for brands to have within the social network they are using.

There may be trouble ahead

So Search Plus, at its root, is quite similar to how I expected it might be – it ticks a lot of the boxes but still suffers from issues the impact of which could have been reduced with better execution.

The biggest, and most obvious, issue which has been the subject of countless online column inches (here and beyond) is the overwhelming amount of Google+ data compared to other sources. Search results do return other sources (Live Journal, FriendFeed, WordPress etc.) but the sheer volume of data creates an imbalance and it is easy to see why the likes of Twitter are so incensed.

Secondly, and quite infuriatingly, is the continued idea of “suggested users” based on popularity. The “related people” returned by searching for certain topics suffers from the same problems that caused Robert Scoble to ask to be removed from the Google+ suggested users list.

We are presented with a link advising how we too could appear in that list but the answer is that it is just another self-perpetuating popularity contest:

“The more quality content you create and the more people that engage with you, the more prominent your profile will become”.

And so we have the vicious circle; the most popular will be shown and by default get more followers by being on the list meaning their place is assured in future. Rather than just generic “related people” lists there must be a way to make it more dynamic thus preventing us from always being shown the same “elite” users.

Finally, people get angry when they feel things are being thrust upon them. My previous thoughts that Google could be better served by not making social search the default or, perhaps, prompting you when using it for the first time (maybe also every now and then afterwards) to actually choose your method of search might have lessened the impact.

Perception

As with Google+ itself Search Plus is suffering from the perception that it goes against Google’s do no evil mantra. If we ignore the playground “he said, she said” shenanigans between Google and Twitter the overwhelming quantity of Google+ items in search results gives the impression that the social network is being hugely favoured (even if that isn’t Google’s intention).

Looking back at the original social search (when results were shown in a different section) we can see a different approach. Social results then would contain:

• Websites, blogs, public profiles, and other content linked from your friends’ Google profiles
• Web content, such as status updates, tweets, and reviews, from links that appear in the Google profiles of your friends and contacts
• Images posted publicly from members of your social circle on Picasa Web and from websites that appear on their Google profiles
• Relevant articles from your Google Reader subscriptions

A lot of this had been superseded by Google+ but the second item is really worth looking at again: Web content, such as status updates, tweets, and reviews, from links that appear in the Google profiles of your friends and contacts. In fact, each of the first three items refer to links the on users profiles.

We all furnish our Google+ profiles with other accounts, our recommended links and sites to which we contribute in order for Google to extend its knowledge of who we are but that knowledge seems forgotten once we perform a search.

With Search+ we appear to have taken a backwards step with the data Google intends to show us.

Taking stock

Providing a better balance of content based on the knowledge Google has about its users would be an obvious step in combating some of the criticisms of a Plus-heavy system. Combining with a less aggressive approach to forcing the changes on to its users could have made Search Plus a successful launch but, as is too often the case, it has been marred by controversy.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but previous experience is an equally effective teacher, we just have to learn from our mistakes. Unfortunately, it seems that Google sometimes doesn’t.

Image by Jeffery Beall