Skip to main content

It's damn smart of Google to launch their social product in the background

The tech blogs are all aBuzz (see what I did there?) about the first peek at Google's long-time-coming entry into the social field, Google Plus (or, as they awkwardly write it, "Google+").

Google is being smart here, and that's not a phrase I've used much in the last couple of years. They know that no one's going to abandon Facebook for something that's the more of the same except Google, so they seem to be just launching it almost in the background. That is, that they'll launch it, explain it, and then let people find the uses for it as it, rather than doing some massive product announcement/launch, which will lead to inevitable disappointment.

Now, whether this can be a useful tool is anyone's guess. Their slick line of "We believe online sharing is broken" is right, or at least close. Social media is in a constant battle to stay interesting, accessible and understandable. It's possible that Google's Circles, Hangouts and Sparks will be the next leap forward, but it's also just as likely (or even more likely) that they'll just be more confusing Buzz (see what I did there?) words that keep it from ever being adopted.

If there's one part of it I'm interested in, it's the Circles. As someone who keeps two separate identities to keep the professional/not-offensive parts of my online personality distinct from my random, swearing, politically-opinionated personality, I would love to see a better way of doing that than the clunky "groups" feature. I have hope, but Google's policy of being half-baked has dashed my hopes before.

One of the bigger "we'll see" tech announcements in a while...
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why are we still judging work done by time spent?

Every morning, when I fill in the hours on my work's electronic timesheet, I'm struck by how odd it is that we're still judging our work by the time spent on it. It's odd because it's old-fashioned. In the paper and phone world, you could really only do work when you were at work. But we do work all the time now. I check my email when I first wake up. Does that mean I start my day at 6:30 am? Should that be reflected on my timesheet? How about when I respond to an email or check Basecamp when I'm on the bus? Does my work day start then? How about when I look at Google Analytics at night or think about email newsletters when I'm in the shower (which I'm somewhat ashamed to admit I did this morning)? On the other side, if someone finishes the work that they're meant to do, why should they feel like they need to stay at work until 5:00, just because that's the official time of the work day? I don't think anyone would argue that time spent ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Some scattered thoughts on the money of digital music

If you haven't already read Digital Audio Insider's interview with Camper Van Beethoven's Jonathan Segal ¹, it's a must read for anyone with even a slight interest in digital music and the money of the industry. Segal has tons of thoughts on just about every aspect of digital music, but best of all, he brings in these thoughts as someone whose initial music industry experience was in the days of purely-physical media, when "pirating" meant copying something onto a blank tape. My main takeway is general and obvious but an important reminder: we are in a transition time for music, and what it will become is anyone's guess. I think Segal's take on merchandise and live performances taking the place as artist's primary source of income as "asinine" is too harsh to be true, but I do think that we're in such a state of transition that any shot at predicting artistic income in the future is completely in the dark. Such predictions are really ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sentiment Measurement Beyond Metrics

You know, headlines like that one really put me on the fence, balancing between "Ooh! Metrics!" and "Wow, no wonder people think it's boring and geeky." ANYWAY...today I'm definitely in the former camp, in the sense that it's exciting because it's a philosophical puzzle: how can you solve a problem that can never really be solved? Yesterday, I commented on Avinash Kaushik's post where he asked, "If you were to measure the success of a company’s social media efforts how would you do it?" My answer: For social media, the obvious metrics still hold: referrals and conversions from referrals. But being from a nonprofit background, where the higher-ups are often skeptical of social media, the real metrics are the words. There’s nothing more valuable than the tweet that says "I love that {your org} is on Twitter" or the time you respond to a comment on Facebook addressing a wide concern about your organization or when you comment ...
Post a Comment
Read more