So, what is Google+?

To play devil’s advocate let’s consider:

There is the possibility that we are all over-analysing the situation and, as is common with a relatively new social service, are attempting to ascribe to it a meaning that fits our notion of what we think it “should be” rather than what it actually is.

As I have said elsewhere, we have a problem where Plus is both an all-encompassing social layer and a social networking component and confusion arises because they share the same name.

But, what if there is no predetermined plan for the networking component? No yellow brick road leading us to the magical social Emerald City.

What if the social network is just a reactionary response to a company realising that it was becoming irrelevant in the social space and being left behind by others (e.g. Facebook) who could far better identify a user’s interests and behaviour due to holding their social graph.

What if the social networking component is just the unfortunate byproduct of the overall goal to establish such a social graph; a necessary evil and the easiest way to get us to populate this graph for them. Something to be tolerated and merely a means of collecting data, collecting our relationships and letting us advertise our interests.

The discussion centres around the social networking component as though it is a standalone entity rather than as a tool in establishing context and connections.

Need

Did Google need a “social network”? No, but it was the quickest way to achieve its goal: a fleshed out social and interest graph which better enables the company to target us with relevant advertisements in the hope of increasing the response to those ads and, therefore, revenues.

What Google does need is our data. The creation of the single privacy policy to enable data sharing between services and the gleaning of aspects of existing social graphs could probably have provided a wealth of information but it would have been too little too late and the smart advertising money would have gone elsewhere. Google needed a way to populate their own graph as quickly as possible.

After previous failures in the social space it would probably have been preferable to stay out of the arena but the current nature of the social web dictated that a self operated social network was the only way to meet the needs of the company. Having somewhere shiny and new to play is a bonus for us, the users, but a burden for Google.

What if brand pages are not an altruistic way for us to engage with companies but merely a mechanism for us to express our interest so that Adwords campaigns are more effective?

Keeping it simple

It is widely recognised that the content most likely to be reshared or engaged with is visual in nature. Google has seen this for itself with YouTube and it is grossly apparent with the runaway success of Instagram and Pinterest.

From the site redesign and new look iOS application it is evident that there has been a fundamental shift in emphasis towards the visual in an attempt to garner what Max Huijgen refers to as the “lowest possible engagement”; a Like here or a +1 there – a quick and simple means for Google to join the dots.

There has been a move by users to creating more visual content as a way to increase engagement so is Google now doing the same thing on a network level even if that engagement is of the lowest common denominator?

The perceived war on words is little more than an attempt to maximise the amount of engagement in as short a time as possible as Google recognises that we are time constrained.

As Alexander Becker wrote, +1s and simple comments are “enough to build the interest graph” - all we need to do to express an interest is apply positive sentiment to an item (the +1) or a short comment to imply that interest based on interaction. The longer the post the more effort is required to process it and respond and this is possibly not in the interests of the service provider. Building the graph appears to be more about quantity (joining as many dots as possible) not quality (the depth of engagement).

If we are in any way engaged on Plus, even if that is the lowest possible engagement, then we are more likely to be clicking +1 buttons across the “normal web” thus fleshing out our interests graphs further.

In this context the reported average of 3 minutes of user engagement per month is a far lesser concern for Google as we can hit a reasonable number of +1s in a short space of time.

Disclaimer

This post started as a comment to a thread on Google+ and is intended as a discussion point. It is playing devil’s advocate so should be taken with a pinch of salt but it is also a warning that, as users, we should not be trying to judge a service based only on our own expectations.

That said, while we must not demand ever more complex functionality which could alienate the new user, perhaps Google has an obligation to not over simplify the service. It is, after all, in Google’s own interest to provide a service people will want to use and, by doing so, populate the social graphs.

Discuss this post over at Google+

Social networks are often criticised for being little more than online popularity contests where users strive to amass ever higher numbers of followers. The pressures of online influence systems demanding constant interaction with an ever wider reach also contribute to this feeling and we are advised that we should focus on quality and not quantity.

The argument most frequently used to “prove” that having a larger number of friends online is that proposed in Dunbar’s Number: the “theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships”. Dunbar‘s research concludes that the maximum sized group an individual can successfully socialise with to a meaningful degree is based on the size of the neocortex (a part of the brain in mammals). While Dunbar’s number is actually a range between 100 – 230 it is generally put at an accepted figure of 150.

Social networks are said to be incompatible with this research due to the constant pressure to gain ever higher numbers of followers or “friends” as we cannot hope to maintain a meaningful relationship with the hundreds or thousands that we may connect to.

Models

As I have mentioned previously, there are different social (or friending) models that can be applied to social networks which, themselves, will influence the way we deal with our connections so why is Dunbar’s number consistently quoted when dealing with the number of friends and followers on social networks?

The three primary models that we can apply to social are:

• friending, where both parties know and mutually follow each other,
• following, a unilateral act of subscribing to someone’s updates which may be reciprocal, and
• interest, where we will follow a topic rather than a person

The most instantly recognised example of the friending model is, of course, Facebook but the ability to subscribe to individuals and lists may serve to make the act of friending irrelevant except in the most specific of circumstances.

Gathering followers and following others are not, in themselves, contrary to Dunbar; having many people follow your updates, or subscribing to the updates of others, is not a “friend relationship” so, in theory at least, we can follow and have as many followers as we like.

Problems arise when we start directly reciprocating a follow with a view to greater engagement but, here too, we can make a distinction between the friending and following models. How we view our connections in social sites will determine how we interact with them and whether we choose to divide them into groups in order to facilitate a friend-type relationship.

Groups, lists and circles are ideal at helping us to separate our core friends with whom we can establish more meaningful relationships.

The new news

With the increasing move away from traditional media through subscribing to RSS feeds to using curation via social networks we are making a distinction between those we follow primarily for information purposes and those with whom we aim to have a closer bond.  Following more than Dunbar’s number on a social network need not mean we are trying to manage more “friends” but that we are treating them as a “news source”.

The act of curation is multi-levelled – we curate those individuals who curate information from varying sources which, in turn may include other curators, and so on – and does not imply any form of engagement. We can therefore actively follow the updates of many without any pressure to actually interact with them.

It is in our nature, however, to engage but that level of engagement will vary based on the individual and the relevance of the specific content being curated.

Context

Dunbar’s number defines only our closest connections and does not contain those who are known but “with a lack of persistent social relationship” – a definition which covers our more casual social acquaintances – so, once again, why is Dunbar’s number consistently quoted when dealing with social networks?

Dunbar argued that 150 would be the average group size only for those communities with a very high incentive to remain together (a village or tribe relying on each other for survival, for example) and “that as much as 42% of the group’s time would have to be devoted to social grooming.”

Consequently, such groups are almost always physically close: “… we might expect the upper limit on group size to depend on the degree of social dispersal. In dispersed societies, individuals will meet less often and will thus be less familiar with each, so group sizes should be smaller in consequence.”

Dunbar has suggested that while we may have hundreds or thousands of connections on a service such as Facebook we will still keep a core list of 150 friends. As our interactions on social networks are scattered and varied, spread across multiple time zones and impacted by offline pressures such as family life and work it would seem reasonable that we would instead be far more likely to have a core “friends” group much lower than the 150 we are repeatedly quoted.

Is this why the first version of the social app Path originally launched with a 50 person friend limit and is it now, perhaps, being unrealistic by increasing that to 150 to confirm with the social norm? Or is Path the exception as it is designed to be used by existing groups of offline friends who are already a closely knit group?

Who are our friends?

While the term “friend” has been diluted by its adoption in social parlance who are these core people Dunbar is referring to? With whom do we want and need to maintain such strong relationships?

Family and close friends (perhaps from school or university) are obvious examples of such groups and it has also been suggested the number could include past colleagues or associates with whom we might want to become reacquainted. Work colleagues acting as a close team in a small organisation are also commonly suggested. These groups are an obvious fit when dealing with a service such as Facebook as the online experience will equate directly to the offline.

As Dunbar’s number relates to “relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person” it is obvious that we are talking about distinct social groups – a situation that is often not mirrored by our use of social networks.

Once we get beyond our immediate circle of friends we accept that the connections we make will be predominantly casual with no persistent social relationship so will not impede upon our cognitive ability to closely interact with a set number of individuals.

Ever decreasing circles

In life we drift through implicit social circles based on interest or location without even realising we are doing it and our experiences on social networks follow similar patterns despite explicitly following other users.

As our social circles expand so the degree of intimacy must necessarily decrease. Our core group of 150 is divided into four Circles of Acquaintanceship of increasing sizes from 5 intimate connections through successive groups of 15 and 50 to the full 150. As each level we will know less about the individuals within that group as their number increases. As our relationships change with those individuals they may migrate from circle to circle.

This logic extends beyond the limits of Dunbar’s number and it has been suggested that circles of acquaintanceship continue to 500, 1500 and beyond. Coincidentally, 1500 is apparently the number of faces we can easily recognise.

By using groups, lists and circles we organise our connections based on relationship and interest and may often find ourselves building a core list of users, or engagers, with whom we interact most frequently.

Our interactions with some may drop off as we drift apart or lose the common interest which prompted us to initially connect, ultimately leading us to remove them when periodically tidying up our lists – we lose touch with people when we are no longer exposed to them.

On other occasions we will become more familiar with others as we interact with them more frequently, sometimes extending this interaction offline. Just as in “real life”, this process will serve to promote individuals up through our circles of acquaintanceship and can potentially even move them into our core group of friends.

Familiar but not limited

The principals behind Dunbar’s number can be recognised in our activity on social networks but, by managing our connections, we make it largely irrelevant as long as we under no illusion that we must interact constantly and equally with all of our connections.

The tools we have at our disposal now negate the use of Dunbar’s number as an argument to not building an extensive social circle but we must recognise that, even on social networks, we will inevitably have those with whom we interact on a more frequent basis due to their relevance and interests.

Lead image by JDConway

Arguments over Google changing the like & dislike voting buttons on YouTube, as prompted by Wil Wheaton’s outburst, raise a number of issues despite the company currently only testing a range of alternatives.

The primary concern is that a move to using a +1 button instead of the traditional “thumbs up” would force users to join Google’s social network. To play devil’s advocate we already have to sign in with a Google account to like or dislike anyway so what’s the problem?

Choice

Unlike Search Plus Your World where personalised search is off for those not logged in, and can be turned off by default for logged in users, the forcing of the +1 button on YouTube users could be the first major stumbling block for Plus where there is no option but to use the new functionality.

The +1 button is akin to Facebook’s Like and as you can only click that if you have a Facebook account (which over 900 million do) you’d think people would be used to that kind of arrangement, right? As Google has explained to Danny Sullivan at Marketing Land:

“People are familiar with the concept of liking and following brands, businesses and activities in a social context.“

Has Google taken away something functional and replaced it with a limited alternative? We have to deal with change on a regular basis but when those changes are non-equivalent have they gone too far?

Under the new arrangement you would need a Google+ account to “like” a video but, as has been evidenced, not everyone wants to go this route. As regular users will be logged in with their YouTube account and this is required to rate items why can’t Google just auto-upgrade all accounts to Plus accounts providing they give sufficient warning? What are the implications of doing so?

Would there be a privacy outcry over doing this?

There should be two levels at work here:

1. having an upgraded account that enables the new functionality, and
2. actually configuring that account to share your actions.

Perception and direction

The perception that Plus is just a social network (prompting backlash because users don’t want to join) is the issue here. In my view there needs to be a distinction made between the new upgraded account and the social networking service as an application within Google’s ecosystem.

In September 2010 when we had all sorts of rumours about where Google would be going with social, or what it’s offering would be called, I asked “Is Google.Me a concept or a network?”

Back then we had no idea over the direction Google was heading, whether there would be an actual social network or just the idea of the social layer, and this confusion has carried through to today in the minds of many even after the“service” has been up and running for almost a year (including the limited access period prior to public availability).

The new Google

Google tells us that Plus is Google, a new Google where services play nicely together and talk to each other but the name is also synonymous with the social networking component hence the confusion.

When we were expecting Apple to release the iPad 3 they simply called it “The New iPad” and I think this is a move Google could have made. Instead of getting bogged down with names and concepts why not just call it “The New Google”. We are all subject to the new single privacy policy (which allows the company to share our data across services so as to better personalise the experience) so why weren’t all Google accounts upgraded to New Google at the same time?

Having an upgraded Google account, which would enable users to take advantage of certain cross-service functionality, should be separate from specifically using Plus the social network service. Google would still gather data from our behaviour and usage but the network would not be forced on users; instead; users could be left to decide if they wanted to activate it.

We choose to use Blogger, we choose to use YouTube, we choose to use Docs so why should Plus the network be any different.

Do we lose out with +1?

+1′s were introduced before the social network and we could click them whenever we wanted. The +1s tab on our Google profiles is off by default so, even if we hit +1s right across the web they will only be visible in situ. Why should the introduction of a social network affect this behaviour? The single privacy policy means that this data can be collected and used to influence other services and advertising so why should the +1 button rely on us using Plus?

Account issues aside do we lose out with the +1 button? Just as with “Like” we only have the option to express positive sentiment – we can only upvote and not downvote. We have no way of expressing our dislike of an item without having to resort to writing a comment but is this a problem?

Does an environment such as YouTube actually benefit from having the ability to downvote when we can flag an item if we find it inappropriate? There have been calls for a Facebook Dislike button and a -1 button for a while but do we actually need them in most situations?

By removing the ability to dislike are we losing a way to show what we are most definitely not interested in? Alternatively, is it a case that in a world of positive sentiment this could be implied by not liking something (perhaps the lack of a social signal is just as powerful as a positive action) and in the Plusverse Google has given us ignore and block.

Downvoting helps when we are looking at ranking items like responses to questions – the up and down arrows on Quora for example – crowd sourcing opinion in this way is incredibly useful but I am not convinced of the need in certain other places.

TL;DR

In summary, I can appreciate why Google wants a unified account system easily sharing data between services but confusion arises when this social layer approach is synonymous with a separate social networking service. It is easy to understand the resentment of forcing the latter upon users just to take advantage of the benefits.

Why not discuss this post on Google+

You can view the proposal here: The 3 R’s of Social Influence (Embedded PDF)

Gauging the true influence of an individual is a complex affair and hinges on a host of factors including a stable identity.

Current systems such as Klout and Kred do not measure influence, they measure interaction by way of pure numbers: shares, retweets, likes, +1s, comments etc. extrapolated out over your connections and those sharing your content. This is not true influence and, in treating it as such, we can become slaves to the gamification of activity.

This proposal suggests how social influence may be more accurately measured by expanding the data points and locations that are monitored to achieve a more holistic view.

Contents

• Where to measure
• Context (creation v curation)
• The 3 R’s – reach, reputation & relevance
• Identity
• Sentiment

Download the full proposal in PDF format here: The 3 R’s of Social Influence (PDF)

Image by Sean MacEntee

Tom Anthony wrote a very thought-provoking post over at SEOmoz showing how authorship and social signals could have a profound impact on search. Inbound links have decreased in influence over the past couple of years, in part due to abuses of black hat SEO, and Tom asks one key question in his post: “How much do we trust this link?”

The introduction of social signals and authorship means that we can now see not only where we are being from but by whom regardless of where they have posted so that we have a situation where “a person” not just a site is creating that link. Tom states that Google,  ”knowing this is an authored link, by a human who they have data about” can place far more trust in it. Using a combination of existing PageRank and AuthorRank would give an overall weighting.

This lead me to draw together a number of points I have been considering for a while and ask what if we went beyond just authorship?

Welcome to the trust network

With authorship Google is trying to address the faceless nature of the web but is simply knowing who created something enough? While we can infer that an item (and consequently any links from it) may be of higher quality because someone is willing to put their name to it this might not always be the case.

We, therefore, need a multi-faceted approach incorporating trust, interest and authorship to gain a true picture.

Trust

Trust is something I’ve been talking about for a while which is, I believe, one of the biggest reasons that Google launched Google+ with a real names policy.

The introduction of social signals on their own just ends up having the same problem as links with endless accounts “curating” content possibly with an ulterior motive. With the launch of a new social product, that also aimed to be an identity service, Google needed to establish a “trust network” as well as a social network in order to be taken seriously.

Who we are, what we do and how others view and relate to us is key for determining our trustworthiness when both creating or curating content and linking to others.

Influence

Current influence systems are badly flawed as they simply measure raw numbers. We need to go deeper and that can only be done by combining more signals: volume, yes, but also trust levels and sentiment analysis. Rather than purely looking at the number of shares, comments or likes on an item we have posted we need to take into account the “response sentiment” to our actual posting as well: is it relevant, is it appropriate or accurate, are we just trolling in order to falsely generate a response?

When looking at the Ripples feature on Google+ I suggested that analysis could be extended to the actual responses so that influence could be determined by sentiment and the analysis of multiple ripples starts to give us a picture of who is sharing our content on a regular basis.

Social sharing is now just as valid as traditional linking – it is, after all, just linking in a different form to a different audience.

Interest

One of the big movements in social which hasn’t quite come to fruition is the interest network. The big players are all dabbling on the periphery but so much more can be done to truly utilise our interests to create connections and ad hoc social graphs as opposed to the explicit graphs we create by following “people”.

When examining interest we will be trying to identify the key players and subject matter experts for each area thus implying an inherent sense of trust in these individuals.

I have mentioned in the past that influence should not be based solely on numbers but, for those who publish research papers, articles, even trusted blogs on a given topic, to have influence also determined by the critical response to their works – again sentiment is playing a big part here. An individual post could receive hundreds of shares comments – good for purely crunching the numbers – but if those responses only serve to criticise and point out how wrong the author is then this is false influence.

Relevance

Common interest contributes to a persons relevance and gives us a basis for trust. Google is already working on the relevance of our connections, and we can sort those we follow on Google+ by this criteria, although a lot more work is needed and most probably forthcoming.

Relevance is not static, however, as it will depend on our interests, location and even current platform – be it web, desktop application or mobile – so there are numerous factors which determine the relevance of other but this may change over time and based on specific circumstances.

When looking at Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram I suggested how the social giant might use the alternative graph information to facilitate per-platform targeting of advertisments. Similar principals could be employed to assess current relevance based on what we are doing, where we are doing it, the platform we are using and its capabilities: what is our connection speed or do we have a front facing camera for example.

Social signals

Search Plus Your World was a huge move towards increasing the importance of the social signal: the links are important because they are relevant and our trusted connections say they are. Extending this relevance and trust will provide even greater value when using social results.

Keywords usage is also changing as the social web develops; simply using keywords is no longer enough as we must take the interest graph in to account and, you guessed it, the interest graph is also influenced by our trusted connections and their relevance.

On Google+ we can apply a weighting to each of our Circles so that the content appears in our streams with different priorities, imagine the impact when this starts being applied to the social signals we see elsewhere on the web and in search – the trust network will be well established.

If we do not get value from our search results we can currently use the “ask your friends” option to post a question to our Circles but true relevance would already be placing emphasis on the posts and shared items from those deemed most likely to provide an answer to the particular topic we are searching for. Perhaps we could have a “trust flag” for those we always want to see results from but the majority of the relevance and trust calculation will be automatic.

Bringing it together

Where our trust network (a combination of those we rank in active circles and who we interact with most frequently – an extension of the relevancy algorithm) intersects with our interest graph we have a meaningful indication of influence about potentially any given topic which can be built on the fly. Combined with traditionally trusted sources from outside our networks we have the potential for excellent results.

Images by thorinside and myself

During the recent quarterly report Larry Page indicated 170 million accounts had been “upgraded to Google+” but this information is seemingly not sufficient. Although the figure indicates a steady and substantial growth (reports have indicated 40 then 90 and now 170 million) the apparent reluctance to divulge specific visitor figures is being used to back up the claims that Google+ is a ghost town and an embarrassment.

There is still a direct comparison being made between Plus and other social networks when there is so much more to the equation. Yes, Plus has a social networking “component” which closely mirrors the likes of Facebook but this must not be taken in isolation as it is only a part of the experience.

Who is a user?

I wrote back in October that “anyone who uses a Google service and had a Google account is a potential Google+ user”. This emphasises the point that Plus is a social layer across everything, or the “social spine” as Page put it.

Facebook have admitted that it considers a user “active” if they so much as click a Like button somewhere on the web even if they never visit the Facebook page itself – the same is true for Plus. Clicked a +1 button? You have used Google+. Performed a search and got social results? You have used Google+. There is no distinction but there is a double standard.

As I mentioned, Google does not have to persuade people to use a social network it just has to extol the virtues of sharing” – people may not access the Plus site directly but will still be taking advantage of its social capabilities and this makes them active. Consequently, there is no need to distinguish between those who have or haven’t visited the Plus homepage.

The perception that Plus is synonymous with the social networking component persists with some unwilling to consider otherwise.

Numbers

The obsession with numbers is unfortunate as the success of a “network” seems only defined by its user base; this is an outdated view for simpler times with standalone services and many – including members of the tech press who ought to know better – need to wake up to this.

Numbers are easy, numbers can tell a story. The storytellers like a simple tale to be laid out before them but is it the right one?

Chris Brogan has asked when social stats will grow up and actually give us something useful to work with. This won’t happen while the majority are still working solely on the number of likes, followers, and site visitors. Online influence services serve to reinforce the problem by focusing on exactly the numbers we don’t want.

Education

As Plus is integrated into more aspects of “Google life” so more needs to be done to educate and encourage the user but, ultimately, once Google+ truly is Google the process will be seamless and we will all be Plus users.

Why not discuss this on Google + here.

Image by massdistraction

I have been a staunch user of SpringPad for the past couple of years preferring it over the superior Evernote. In that time I have used it to plan and write well over a hundred blog posts so when I heard that a new version of SpringPad was coming and, as it has formed such an essential part of my workflow, I was obviously excited about what was coming.

My initial reactions to the new website and iPhone app were mixed but after changing a few display settings I thought I would be okay. Now I’m not so sure.

I can’t criticise Springpad for wanting to develop and enhance their product but, for me, it has become overkill for what I need.

First impressions

On installing the iPhone update my immediate thought was that the default Gallery view, with items laid out in Metro-like squares just didn’t work – there has been a lot of comment that the new version looks like a child of Evernote and Pinterest – unfortunately it is the bastard child and definitely inherits its looks from its image sharing mother.

Switching to list view was an improvement but the font is too large and not configurable.

Getting past the views we have a problem with items that have been written outside of the app itself not wrapping for the smaller screen (unless re-edited locally to remove formatting) which makes them largely unreadable even when previewing.

Social

SpringPad has succumbed to the lure of social and, in my opinion, suffered for it. The emphasis is now on sharing and comments. Where you used to be able to add notes to your items and edit those notes later you can now only add comments which are intransient.

You can still attach images to items, either directly by taking a photo or from the camera roll, but not links unless as normal text in a comment. Frustratingly, those comments are purely social and require an active connection to be submitted whereas notes used to be added locally and synced with the main item.

The new website suffers in a similar manner to the new look at Google+ in that there is too much unused space (although in SpringPad it’s not necessarily white).

The service is no longer a competitor with Evernote as far as I am concerned and tries too hard to be something it never was. The spirit of the service has been lost in a mad rush to capitalise on the popularity of social.

While you could previously follow others there was still a predominant focus on your data and syncing that between multiple devices – that focus has gone and the data now plays second fiddle.

It’s not all bad

One saving grace for SpringPad (at least as far as I’m concerned) is that the formatting markup it supports matches Google+ so it is a simple matter of a quick copy & paste to get pre-formatted text in to Plus. On its own, however, this isn’t enough when other things have been lost.

It is such a shame that the core functionality has altered so drastically in this new iteration as the app itself looks good and has an excellent pop-out menu on the left – just like the Facebook app – which gives quick access to your notebooks.

Less is more

As much as I hate to say it, it looks as though I will now be looking for another editor to replace SpringPad both on the iPhone and on the web. The service has become overcomplicated and forgotten what originally made it so great.

Many will probably love the update but not everything benefits from having social thrust upon it.

UPDATE

In what could almost be a direct response SpringPad CEO, Jeff Chow, has admitted in a post that they dropped the ball in a number of areas and will move “forward by looking back”. Specific issues he mentions include those I included above such as comments you can’t edit, poor use of space and going overly social.

I’ll watch developments with great interest.

Numerous articles exist arguing that the big company ethos that accompanies a public listing ruined Google – it has sold out to its new corporate ideals – and others voice obvious concerns that Facebook will head the same way with quarterly returns and shareholder demands becoming all powerful.

But is it, in a way, a conflict of interests for a company that relies so heavily on the end user?

People v dollars

It is not in Facebook’s interests to put the almighty dollar firmly ahead of the user as the service is ultimately reliant on its user base for business but there has to be a balancing act. While the user should expect certain standards from the company they must also realise that it is a business which needs to make money; there is no such thing as a free lunch (or social network).

Those saying that Facebook will become the most dangerous company around after IPO are, perhaps, scaremongering to a degree but Facebook must still be held to account to ensure that the pressure to succeed doesn’t drive it to act in ways that it shouldn’t.

To the limits

Facebook has always pushed the boundaries of online acceptability, especially with regards to privacy, and I see no reason why it will – or should – change just because it becomes a publicly traded company.

Many of the advances we see in social technology have come as a result of Facebook pushing the envelope or reacting to the competition. There have also been some major howlers but modern social networking is still a young field and there are bound to be mistakes (from any company) while the limits of acceptability are defined.

Over time these limits morph and, in many cases, recede as society becomes more familiar, and at ease, with sharing online but the rate of change is not the same for all so we must remain guarded.

Who watches the watchmen?

One advantage for the user, and conversely a disadvantage for the company, is that going public suddenly means you a direct accountability to a lot more “owners” (albeit often in small measure on an individual basis).

Unpopular acts committed when privately owned may cause a few thousand dissenters to close their accounts which is but a drop in the ocean to a company like Facebook. When public, on the other hand, a few thousand dissenters could potentially dump their shares causing a direct financial impact due to falling prices.

This accountability will force Facebook to think twice about any overtly risky practices but I hope not at the expense of stifling innovation.

Image from Facebook’s Form S-1 Registration Statement

Google and Facebook are both in the information business but their primary business gathers data in different ways: Google via search and Facebook via user-generated/shared content and relationships.

Google launched Plus to utilise the social model of data collection. User content, shares, +1s all help to flesh out the social graph and when linked to the core business of search give Google a much better picture of out likes and interests and real-time trends.

Facebook has one of the largest data collection models going with such a huge range of data being freely offered up by its members. The only problem is that the data is such an amalgam that, perhaps, signal can get lost in the noise despite some of the most complex algorithms around. Instagram offers a different kind of social graph and, as it is more focused, is a good counterpoint to the main Facebook graph.

Monetisation

Google stated that there was immediate plan to directly monetise Plus – there is no need to. The social layer combines signals from right across the Google ecosystem as well as externally due to the +1 button enhancing the core data generated by Search. By using all of this data (and now with the single privacy policy) Google is far better able to target us with relevant advertising in all the locations it has historically done so without having to introduce further ads on the Plus site itself.

Does Facebook need to directly monetise Instagram?

It is widely accepted that mobile is an under utilised resource when it comes to Facebook making a buck but is Instagram the right place to do it? The application is a perfect example of a clean, simple mobile application and its users love it for this simplicity. Does Facebook want to ruin that? Most likely not.

Just as with Google+ would Facebook be able to gain enough data to better target advertising on the website without needing to resort to mobile or, as I suggested, would it make more sense to use the different social graphs both combined for an holistic picture and independently for “per platform” ad targeting based on our use on that platform?

Is this all made irrelevant by the IPO because of which Facebook may feel pressured to directly monetise mobile anyway?

What are your thoughts?

Why not discuss this on Google+ here.

Image by Jeremy Brooks

In a post on Forbes, David Coursey argues that Instagram is Facebook’s Pinterest killer. He is “very aware that many will disagree with this analysis” and I have seen a number do exactly this but is Pinterest really a Facebook competitor.

It is now.

By acquiring Instagram Facebook has made Pinterest a competitor as well as the likes of flickr and Google+, in fact anywhere users share a lot of pictures. Facebook has effectively said it wants to be the major player in photo sharing.

At first glance the Forbes article seems a bit fanciful and can be accused of overplaying Pinterest’s status but when you consider it has recently been referred to as the third largest “social network” and Facebook has acquired Instagram to better facilitate it “building the best experience for sharing photos” it’s obvious to see that Facebook is at least a little concerned about this upstart.

Pinterest is not a true social competitor along the lines of Google+ as it has a significantly smaller remit but, for those Facebook users who predominantly share photos, there is an obvious temptation to try the “next big thing” especially considering the buzz that Pinterest has been generating lately.

One key area where I disagree with David is that I don’t believe Facebook would be best served by creating a new service with Pinterest type boards. As I posted yesterday, it makes more sense to hook into Interest Lists as this will enhance their functionality and give some people a reason to use lists where they might not have done so before. There is no reason search results could not be presented in a board-like fashion but this should not be the basis for any integration of Instragram in to Facebook.

Mobile

With its IPO looming Facebook must ensure it has multiple revenue streams to justify its incredible valuation but is currently missing out on the whole mobile arena. Pinterest has come under fire for its affiliate use and trialling of Skimlinks (which has been described as a test and not a service plan) so there is potential for Facebook to potentially capture the market before the competition by leveraging the Instagram application on iPhone and Android.

Combining its existing social graph data with the new photo-specific relationship information from Instagram gives Facebook a great basis for ad targeting in a way that goes beyond the norm. Not only could advertisements be targeted based on interests and relationships but also on a per platform basis as our social graph will most likely differ in a task specific environment such as photography.

A  gamble?

Whether Facebook makes a reasonable return on its investment remains to be seen but there is no denying it has placed itself in a strong position in relation to the competition with regards to online photo sharing.

So, if the Instagram functionality is not going to be gobbled up by the ever hungry social giant what does Facebook stand to gain?

A testing time

Despite massive usage statistics there has been a recent groundswell of discontent amongst certain quarters. While there had previously been no alternative perhaps an element of complacency crept in but, since the arrival of Google+ (probably more because of its feature set and potential captive audience) on the social scene, the has been an uptick in activity to fend off the competition before it can establish a foothold.

Facebook is not concerned about competing with Google on a social level per se but any significant shift of its users affects the bottom line: advertising.

On board

The Instagram brand is huge and, now that it has finally spread to Android, has a massive potential user base. It is not in Facebook’s interests to dissolve the service and risk upsetting – and even alienating – a lot of people considering the rumblings mentioned above. Instead, Facebook must gather as many strings to its bow as possible in order to retain existing users and attract new ones now that growth is reported to be slowing.

Although this isn’t obviously an acquihire there is no doubt that the addition of Instagram’s staff to the Facebook team will provide a different perspective on sharing – something which the larger company is keen for us all to do with everything.

Friends with benefits

There are a few areas that the social network can immediately benefit from a close relationship with the Instagram application but care must be taken.

One obvious move would be to make Facebook the default means of sign up but that would most likely be deemed a step too far by users. Linking accounts to Facebook could, however, be heavily pushed.

Mark Zuckerberg has announced the intention to extend the reach of the “app and brand” – what better way to extend the reach of a social product than by linking it to the largest social network on the planet. By hooking in to such a large portion of the population Instagram (or at least pictures taken with it) is immediately placed front and centre for hundreds of millions of users.

While the acquisition of Instagram is being sold as an extension to “building the best experience for sharing photos” we cannot deny it is an ideal opportunity to enhance Facebook’s position in this area and better compete against the likes of Flickr and Google+.

Interests

As I mentioned previously, Facebook is looking to extend its reach beyond the simple friend to friend relationship and building a solid and widespread interest graph is a major step forward.

Instagram provides tag support already but this can be linked to interest lists. Combined with the talk of a search product from Facebook and you have a discovery network to rival both Google’s social search and Twitter’s discover tab which is in its infancy but due to grow enormously in scope and influence if my suspicions are correct.

Facebook has no need to build a full search engine as the indexing of external content is crowd-sourced to its users with likes and frictionless sharing. The acquisition of Instagram is yet another way to achieve this.

Android users are spoilt in this regard, and it is only to be expected, but it amazes me how two tech giants like Apple and Google can’t provide an equally stellar experience on the iPhone.

Politics

How much of it is politics I don’t know but it does appear that either Apple is placing roadblocks in the way or that Google is dragging its heels and intentionally not wanting to match the experience on Android.

You could understand the latter’s position and Google would live to encourage more users to defect from iOS to Android. Apple on the other hand would be better served by making the experience as good as possible so that users are not even tempted to leave.

Options

Knowing that things are not ideal what are the options open to us for using Gmail on the iPhone?

Apple’s Mail app

We can configure the default Mail app to connect to Gmail in one of three ways:

• the built-in Gmail settings (which is actually IMAP)
• as an Exchange account
• manually as IMAP

I’m not an email power user but there are two features that I need: push notifications and Gmail’s ability to send email as additional addresses as I use it to send from my colinwalker.me.uk address. Unfortunately, none of the above native options provides us with both of these features.

The only choice here that supports Push is configuring Gmail using Exchange Activesync but this does not provide support for sending as additional addresses.

Although the built in Gmail settings are using IMAP they to do not support additional addresses unlike configuring Gmail as IMAP manually where you can add multiple addresses in the settings (separated by commas) to enable this functionality. Despite this being a handy workaround IMAP does not support Push so it is not an ideal solution.

Extra steps

It had been suggested that I use the Boxcar service to emulate Push on circumstances where it is not supported, for those that do not know you configure your email account to forward to a Boxcar address which forwards the details to the Boxcar app on the phone. This then shows a notification and can be configured to open the email application of your choice.

This seemed like an ideal solution but after testing for a while I found it to be particularly clunky with disappearing notifications and, overall, a far from seamless extra step. A real shame as it is a great idea.

Sparrow

The hot topic as far as Gmail is currently concerned is the email application Sparrow which does indeed look like a fantastic email client. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support Push (the developers say yet) and doesn’t appear to allow the sending from additional addresses.

Boxcar could be used to get round the first issue – albeit in its own clunky way – but the second issue is a deal breaker.

Google’s native Gmail app

Much has been written about Google’s Gmail app being poor – it’s not stellar but supports Push and, as per an update yesterday, now supports sending from additional addresses. Combined with Labels and some Priority Inbox support (show important mails) this actually gives quite a compelling reason to use it.

The app is not without its flaws, however, as in true Google fashion there are some UI inconsistencies and notifications do not appear to show on the lockscreen or in the notification centre. The app badges do work so at least you have some visual indication of incoming mails.

As is expected with Google the native app looks and acts very much like the mobile web page. It also includes a slide out folder list on the left so users of the Facebook application will feel at home.

The lack of sharing functionality within iOS does mean that the Gmail app is not available when you choose to send something by email such as the link to a web page so I have, therefore, had to leave Gmail configured as IMAP in the default Mail application but have this set to not poll for mails.

Conclusions

As mentioned, the Gmail on the iPhone is less than ideal and we are driven to specific solutions based on the functionality we require. While many will say I’m missing out on the experience provided by apps like Sparrow but I will be using the native Gmail applications for the time being. It is a satisfactory app for a non power user (despite its own quirks) and I shall give it a fair run.

Jon Mitchell over at ReadWriteWeb fired me a tweet after my post yesterday about a possible Google commenting system saying he had just submitted one that disagreed with me.

His post “Why Google+ wont fix the comment problem” argues that by introducing its own tool to compete with Facebook comments, Disqus, Livefyre, et al. Google will not improve the commenting problems we frequently see despite its best intentions.

Just as Plus was introduced with the tag line “Sharing is broken” you can almost hear any Google+ based system being sold with “Comments are broken” – a true statement but not one the company would be advised to use.

Somebody else’s problem

What problem would Google actually be trying to solve with its own commenting system? Would Google be altruistic and try to fix comments for the whole of the open web? Hardly, that is probably impossible and is somebody else’s problem.

Google would instead be trying to get more engagement, more data and more “active users” on Google+ to bolster existing efforts.

Reasons to be cheerful

Jon highlights a number of reasons why a commenting system that hooks directly into Plus might be of advantage:

• almost instant indexing for Google search, the potential SEO boost is huge
• Google has a great spam filter reducing the need to moderate manually
• the What’s Hot system on Plus could potentially highlight a popular conversation to a much wider audience
• comment threads will be “stickier” – there is generally much better interaction on Plus for smaller blogs linking to Plus could encourage extra traffic and, with the use of the red notification box, contributors could be easily pulled back once more comments are added

For those who haven’t already replaced their native commenting system these could be very persuasive reasons to adopt.

Any commenting system based on Plus would, logically, be implemented in-house first meaning that millions of Blogger blogs would either have the option to switch or, as is more likely the case, be switched over automatically if they haven’t implemented an alternative solution. Certainly, all new blogs created at Blogger would have this turned on by default. As I posted before, this could immediately kick-start the full implementation of the elusive social layer.

Google+ could potentially see a huge uptick in interaction by doing this if even only a fraction of blogs, and consequently commenters, used the system.

Join us

There would have to be scope for those who do not have Plus accounts but there could also be an incentive to sign up to Plus the first time you comment at a site using Google’s system (just as you are given the option of creating a Disqus or Livefyre account) thus increasing account numbers without users ever needing to visit Plus itself.

Google has been criticised of its vague reporting of active users due to including those who have used a “Google+ enhanced product” but may not have necessarily visited the actual social network. Prepare for further controversy.

Just as Facebook counts anyone who clicked a Like button on a third-party site an active user so Google will be able to classify anyone who leaves a blog comment an active user of Plus. Because this commenting system will inject content into Plus this is perfectly understandable and could swell the reported figures enormously.

Can we fix it?

Google may not be able, or even trying, to fix the problems with comments on the open web (even if their system was portrayed as a way to do so) but could instantly fix the problems of gaining more interaction, data and active users.

Plus needs to shake the stigma of being ” just another social network” and, like a caterpillar, emerge from the chrysalis of its social layer.

Why not discuss this post on Google+

Image by amanky

I have long said that Google+ has a problem of perception; the social networking element has been thrust front and centre with little seeming to happen with regards to the promised social layer.

It is easy to understand why so many position Plus as a direct competitor to Facebook as they have no other frame of reference. That could be about to change.

Layers

Since before Plus was launched I have been advocating that a profiled based identity spanning the Google ecosystem, sharing you data and activities across the various services would be a great way to go but I also said that the company needed a destination in order to avoid becoming a social but part player.

We have the destination but little of the extended layer reaching out into other services.

YouTube and Picasa have seen some integration but the biggest strides , somewhat controversially, have been made in search with Search Plus Your Word bringing socialto Google’s core product. Not only do our SERPs include results direct from Google+ (indexed within seconds of being posted) but we can also directly ask our Circles for advice or their opinion directly from search I you don’t find what you are looking for.

The company is extending on this by now providing the ability to follow people directly from search and even thank them for making a recommendation by adding +1s to content – taking the social interaction to another level:

Clicking the above leads to

So far so good for the core product but what about making plus useful elsewhere?

Comments everywhere

Rumours abound that Google could be launching its own commenting system, much like Facebook comments, that lets third-party sites hook directly into Google Plus in order to better facilitate a response to their content.

When it was suggested that Blogger could be rebranded to fit in with Plus I suggested a number of ways this could be done to make use of a social layer – an integrated commenting scheme was one of theme. I also said:

“If Plus effectively becomes a comment hosting system internally within Plus then there is nothing stopping Google from opening it up via API to other platforms à la Facebook comments in order to compete directly with those of the social network.”

Feeding the monster

Google is not in the social game just for our benefit, it is out to collate as much data as it can and will embrace any opportunity for us to feed it in to Plus.

To achieve this effectively I believe Google has to move away from reliance upon the single destination that is Plus. The social layer must facilitate the flow of information both to and from the social network and a Google commenting system for external sites should be the first step in making this a reality and kick starting the social layer.

Facebook is changing and has been for some time. Individual features are always in flux but we have recently been seeing a subtle but fundamental shift.

Despite joining Facebook in 2007 I’m almost never there as it doesn’t really fit the way I use social. I’ll be the first to admit that, offline, I don’t have many that I would really consider as “friends” so, seeing Facebook as for a specific purpose, I have not added hundreds of online acquaintances like so many others.

Just as I said that LinkedIn had lost its focus Facebook has become a victim of its own success and, consequently, morphed from its original purpose.

Do I know you?

We know Dunbar’s number – the commonly proposed 150 person limit on how many actual friends we can realistically handle without any form of restriction upon those relationships – but seek to call ever greater numbers to our banner. Social is, and has always been, an online popularity contest for many which is why we now have influence rating and hosts of “top ten” or suggested user lists.

As Facebook grows and seeks to further monetize via its advertising model it is obviously not in the service’s interest for its users to adhere to Dunbar.

As I have said previously relationships are the real social currency, the interactions we have with each other and how this defines us as both individuals and a collective group. The more connections we cultivate the more data sites like Facebook can gather and the more effective it can be at pattern recognition.

So, how do we rationalise the service’s need for us to maintain large numbers of connections with our own apparent desire to focus on more tight-knit social circles?

Subscriptions

When subscriptions were first introduced I called them “Fan pages for the masses” as they provide the ability to follow anyone’s updates without the need to be a friend so long as they have them enabled. Some also felt that Subscriptions could do away with Pages altogether as there would be little need of them for many.

While it could be argued that, with Subscriptions, Facebook merely recognises that we sometimes want to follow non-friends I asked if adding this unilateral method of following was conforming to the social norm?

Being able to fill our feeds with the updates of those we don’t know makes the next logical step a re-evaluation of those we have marked as “friends”. The practice of unfollowing has been around for as long as social itself but, now that we are faced with more networks and more demands for our time, it has become a popular undertaking. As people downsize their social graphs so the signals they generate are reduced which is bad news for host service.

Not just friends

Social is no longer just about friends and that is where Facebook tries to reach a compromise with its new tool for suggesting “Acquaintances” sitting alongside Subscriptions in helping to shape our relationships and distinguish between them.

The Acquaintances list appeared on Facebook last year but had to be populated manually. The functionality now exists for the service itself to automatically suggest who it thinks is not a close friend and, as such, whose updates you might to want to see that much of.

The term “friending” has lost meaning and merely come to mean “mutual following” but it is not in Facebook’s interests for us to unfollow others as those relationships, no matter how casual, are then lost and the social graph is weakened.

Back to influence

By enabling us to indicate our strongest ties and closest relationships Facebook can create a better model of our influence and the influence of others upon us. We will care more about the opinions and recommendations of family and close friends so we can be better targeted by ads that are more likely to be relevant based on our connections with others.

The combination of subscriptions and the acquaintances list lets Facebook gauge our interests and behaviour from opposite poles. On the one hand, it is allowing us to increase our connections without the overhead of friending but, on the other, we are then being encouraged to focus on those that mean the most to us; a clever move disguised as making our time more rewarding.

Business is business

Facebook is changing and will continue to do so in order to better serve the needs of the company. Those needs will often coincide with those of the user but, ultimately, those shares aren’t going to grow themselves after IPO.

Lead image by JDConway

I made the move from Android to an iPhone 4S at the weekend and reactions have, as expected, been mixed ranging from the disparaging “a downgrade” to “welcome to the club, you won’t regret it”.

Having been an Android power user for almost two years I feel able to comment in a rational, balanced way without any fanboy style reactions. So, here are my thoughts on making the transition.

Activation

Quite ironically, I set up a wireless access point on my old HTC Desire so that I could activate the iPhone whilst coming home on the train. I did not previously have an Apple ID or iCloud account but setting them up and getting the device up and running was painless.

There are sufficient similarities between the two operating systems that anyone could easily make the jump from one to the other without much fuss. Having the majority of applications available on both platforms is also a great help as you have that instant familiarity thus lessening any potential culture shock.

There are always learning curves and I initially thought I could not get the iPhone to sync directly with a Google account. Configuring iTunes to bring in contacts and calendar data from Google is simple and avoids but this can also be achieved by setting up your Gmail account as an Exchange account rather than using the Gmail specific option. Either way it saves you having to manually recreate all your stuff despite it living in two very separate homes.

Hardware

I have always liked the build quality of the HTC devices I have owned, although largely plastic they feel sturdy and not likely to break so there was a lot to live up to. I don’t yet have a case for my iPhone so am probably over-cautious about it being largely glass but it feels extremely solid and well put together. It has a reassuring “heft” to it even though it is not actually that heavy.

One thing an Android user will instantly notice more than anything is the single button. It’s quite strange at times not being able to hit a “back” hardware button but you soon get used to this functionality being on-screen. I have mentioned before, however, that the inconsistency with which applications make use of the back button on Android is a major failing.

Seeing is believing

A lot has been made recently of The New iPad’s retina display but we mustn’t forget where it all started. I used to think that the display on my Desire was good, I used to think that the retina display was over-hyped – was it really that much better?

Having used the iPhone for a while and comparing it side by side with a “normal” display the difference is obvious and striking. It’s not just the pixel density but a combination of the screen resolution and font that makes text incredibly readable. By way of illustration I spent half an hour reading my RSS feeds in Google Reader at arms length with no trouble at all; I would not have been able to do that so comfortably on my Desire.

Software

Android also lets itself down when it comes to software; inconsistencies in the OS and core Google applications have become a bug bear which hastened my desire to move to iOS. While I have only installed or use a limited number of apps on my phone I have used a sufficient number here and on an iPad 2 to know where I feel more comfortable.

The fragmentation with Android versions, screen sizes and device capabilities is often cited as a major issue and it is easy to see why developers are targeting Apple first – if they target Android at all. iOS is without it’s share of issues in this regard, however, with a number of applications being released separately for the iPhone and iPad meaning that the user is forced to purchased them twice.

Experience

It is always said that specs are largely irrelevant as long as the device you are using is able to adequately perform its role; you don’t realise how true that is, and how much “experience” counts, until you have used both an Android device and an iPhone. iOS feels much more polished than Android, it is far smoother when rotating the screen or transitioning between pages. Animations within applications themselves are of consistently high quality that everything just feels better.

Android lovers may wax lyrical about the ability to install this custom ROM or that custom recovery, “root” the device and be able to perform all manner of tweaks on it but, to be honest, once I found a solid, stable AOSP (Android Open Source Project) ROM I stuck to it and stopped tweaking my device.

There should not be a need to have to root a phone and muck about with it just to achieve a particular level of functionality – while iOS can be jailbroken I don’t see that I will need, or want, to.

A long time coming

My disillusionment with Android has been growing and the move has been a long time coming;  it will not be one I regret in a hurry.

This is a re-write of an original post on Google+

Images by myself and Richard Masoner

Google+? You’re doing it wrong.

Google+ has a perception problem but is there really a wrong way to use it? Vic Gundotra thinks so.

Dealing with duplicate content.

Twitter and Facebook have been taking different approaches to the problem of duplicate content. How could we learn from these attempts and possibly apply similar principles to Google+?

K.I.S.S. or, Be careful what you wish for.

We must be careful when requesting ever more complex functionality for our social networks. By making services fit the needs of the early adopter we risk losing wide-ranging appeal so must be careful what we wish for.

3 minutes.

Figures indicate that users are spending less time on Google+. Are the figures accurate or are they measuring the wrong thing? Should Google be worried? Is it just a question of averages and what can be done to boost time on the service?

Do we need a shift to interest based social networking?

Do we gain the most benefit from following “people” or do we need to think about subscribing to topics? Why do we use social networks and are they actually suited to interest based discussion?

Join in

If you haven’t already done so, check them out and have your say.

Almost a year ago, after SXSW 2011, I thought there had to be a better way to discuss events like this on Twitter without flooding the feeds of followers who might not be interested. ”Going beyond the hashtag” was born which was my idea for creating temporary, implicit networks within the normally explicit world of Twitter.

I tried to pitch the idea directly to the company but no feedback mechanism exists for this kind of submission. Tweets to the likes of Dick Costolo and Jack Dorsey seemingly fell on deaf ears.

Another take

Fast forward a year and Twitter engineer William Couch (@couch) has presented a system called Osprey at SXSW 2012 which, somewhat familiarly, aims to stop tweets for specific events clogging up the feeds of our followers by creating a separate backchannel. The execution might be different but the goal is the similar.

He has created an external tool which utilises “replies and favorites, because they are inherently quiet”. People wishing to participate in a particular discussion tweet @replies to a specific account which can the be voted up by favouriting. As Twitter does not have a native method for counting favourites the tool provides this ability on an external site – event panelists or organisers can then use this a way to direct the flow of their event.

Obviously, being able to vote up tweets and questions is a major plus but the need to create both a new Twitter account and an external site might be seen as a drawback.

Channels

When suggesting my idea for implicit networks within Twitter I proposed that the separation of event based tweets could be achieved by the creation of temporary “channels” that could show as an additional tab within the Twitter interface.

Affirmation

It’s good to see that someone within Twitter itself is recognising the problems caused by the inevitable flood of tweets in our streams caused by a major event but it would be nice for some kind of functionality to exist directly in the service. The problem with introducing any new functionality, however, is that there is a trade-off with simplicity and ease of use – especially where Twitter is concerned.

A combination of a native Twitter channel and the voting ability provided by counting favourites would, in my opinion, be the perfect mix without needing to resort to an external site.

Maybe I’ve just been suckered in but I still fail to understand the huge outcry over the Google Single Privacy Policy. Are there genuine concerns or is this all much ado about nothing?

Google will not be collecting any extra data and will still not provide any personally identifiable data to third parties without explicit consent.

While there were previously over 70 separate privacy policies these did not act in isolation and already included the provision to share data between services (with a couple of exceptions such as YouTube, presumably as it was an acquisition and not a native service).

Have things really changed that much?

Google is accused of pandering to the wants of advertisers rather than the needs of users but, whilst I would agree that not everything that has happened in the last year is in the needs of the user, Google is actually building on its own needs rather than those of advertisers. Google needs to improve the effectiveness of its targeting systems in order to attract more advertisers and therefore stay competitive in an increasingly difficult market.

Advertisers will always target the consumer but the internet has improved the efficiency of the targeting process. No longer do advertisers have to put out fairly generic ads based on the magazine you are reading or TV program you are watching in the hope that a sufficient percentage will react.

I don’t know about you but I’m all in favour of seeing ads that are more relevant to me as an individual rather than a lot of the rubbish I have inflicted upon me.

On the Plus side

I said back in January that I saw the single privacy policy as a key factor in the more widespread integration of the G+ social layer with other Google services – the three factors that I remarked were all falling in to place were:

• teens
• pseudonyms
• the single privacy policy

I believe it was no coincidence that these three were implemented/announced so close together. Because of the diversity of services and users across the Google ecosystem each of the three factors above were potential blockers to full integration.

With Plus in its arsenal Google is becoming ever more like Facebook in operation but the latter has everything contained within one walled garden. Google has many gardens and just wants to be able to play ball over the fence or, even, tear the fences down.

Am I wrong? Let me know.

Why not discuss the original post on Google+.

Image by Sean MacEntee

Despite our best efforts to cling to the past we must finally concede that Twitter is no longer a social network - or that aspect at least now plays second fiddle. It feels as though the service is caught between two ideals – stuck in transition like a butterfly stuck in its chrysalis.

The company has positioned Twitter as an information network but many still think of it as social. We must wonder if this will be a barrier to its progression as a service?

Change

There have been a number of changes such as the #discover tab which promote the idea of it being a place to find things but, conversely, you also get the mixed message of @connect which aims to improve our social experience; each tab is equally visible but @connect is listed first – not the action you would expect. 

Admittedly, any change has to be gradual in order to keep us along for the ride but change must come.

For twitter to be taken seriously in its new, self-styled role I think it needs to move away from the feed driven beast we have all known for the past 6 years.

Don’t talk, discover

#discover was a bold move as it was a departure from the status quo. I have said previously that the acquisition of Summify was a perfect opportunity to really enhance this by making it more personal (especially with SPYW getting a lot of attention). Twitter needs to step up to the plate and make this happen. Rather than getting standard “stories” or location-based trends our experience should be better tailored to our own usage:

• what is in our profile?
• who do we follow and how are they described?
• what hashtags do we use?
• what brands do we follow or interact with?

Combine personalised information with key trending topics and you would have a powerful tool to keep people coming back to the service.

The feed is dead

Now that our feed is predominantly awash in a sea of links it is not a very inviting place. Perhaps the time has come for Twitter to move away from this means of display and instead use a new enhanced #discover tab as the primary view when arriving at the site.

I wrote in March last year that Twitter could go beyond the hashtag and use a form of channels to better facilitate topic based discussion. With a main news view this might be a perfect time to make such a move. With increasing usage of Twitter to discuss trending topics, sports events and “Social TV” we could be approaching the time when conversation on Twitter will occur away from the primary view and be mainly based on what we discover?

All change

Could Twitter actually become a place where we “consume” news first and talk about it after? Is this too radical a shift from the service we all know and love or is it a logical conclusion based on recent events?

Why not discuss the original post on Google+

Image by Odd_dog