Nobody Gives A Damn About Google+: Really?

Any one of my colleagues will tell you that I am no Google fan boy.  I am weary of the data crunching capabilities it has aimed at your personal information.  A timely illustration was provided recently when Google announced that it would create a unified model of your web activities from across each of its properties (e.g. YouTube, Gmail, Google Apps).  This perceived act against consumer privacy has developed into much of a hullabaloo, especially when certain news outlets are citing that your information could be worth as much as $5,000 USD to market researchers and advertisers.

I’m keenly aware that there really isn’t any privacy on the Internet and Google’s move neither shocks nor offends me.  It makes business sense. 

Note: If you are concerned about the changes there are some actions you can take to limit Google’s ability to conjoin your information.  Google also provides some tools to help you manage your information.

That said, I need a capable platform for social media and I am finding Google+ to be an excellent solutions partner. 

I read a slew of articles last week deriding the existence of Google+.  One from WSJ and another from MG Siegler that motivated me to post a comment on Google+ last week.  Truthfully, there is a bit more to say about the value of this service so I’ll pen some additional thoughts here.

Google+ Circles

One of the most underappreciated features on Google+ is Circles. 

Circles is an elegant mechanism for organizing people by category.  I’m not highlighting just the simple relationship types (e.g. Family, Friends, Colleagues) but also more expressive types like Science.  The ability to share a Circle allows the recipient to instantly subscribe to a curated list of interesting people – granted that the source of the Circle is trusted.  Below is a screenshot of sharing a Circle within Google+.

Why is this concept so significant?  Having an instant group of folks to get quality content from provides the elixir for engagement.  Effectively, people are social when there are posts to be social about – get it?

Note to Google: Please allow me to subscribe to a plusser’s Circle versus me having to add it.  If I trust the person who is sharing the Circle enough to add the Circle I trust them enough to maintain it.

Google+ Isn’t Twitter – Yay!

I use Twitter pretty much everyday but I’m loathing the 140-character limit.  I am aware of the origins for the design decision but think that now the limit impedes dialogs more than it facilitates them.

Google+ has no such limits.  In fact, you could create an entire blog there if you so desire (ala +Robert Scoble). 

I enjoy the metaphor for threaded conversations in Google+ as it enhances readability and encourages quality interaction and commenting.  Twitter may have a firehose of Tweets but my experience has been that comments about a post arrive more timely and are better organized on Google+.  Add in Google’s ability to embed photos and videos inline and Twitter just can’t keep up. 

I also find it convenient (and necessary) to be able to edit posts after they have gone live.  Be it the occasional typo or new information that enhances the overall value of the post, editing is powerful and advantageous.

Why Not Facebook?

This is a hotly debated and somewhat religious topic.  It seems to me that both services are pretty catholic with respect to what they offer.  I will say that Google+ Hangouts are an incredible utility comparable to Skype video chat, except of course that Google+ multi user chat is free - as in beer.    

It should go without saying that of course, Google has an incredible search engine behind Google+.  This search asset will be near impossible to replicate at Facebook but with that engine comes other baggage – see the first paragraph in this post. 

Certainly both services will borrow the best ideas from each other moving forward so any meaningful incongruence should even out over time.

It appears that folks may bifurcate their activity based on a professional versus personal bent.  Google+ seems to be more professionally skewed at the moment with Facebook having the latest updates about your family and friends (although there is some chatter about teens leaving Facebook and heading over to Google+).

So is Facebook the competitor that should fear the most from Google+?

My money is on the Google+ vs. Twitter angle. 

Why tweet when you can plost?™

I Give A Damn

The arguments about the ghost town of Google+ may hold water when the numbers of service users are compared to those of Facebook.  I must say emphatically however that the folks I have been reading (most notably in my Science Circle) are generating and sharing incredible articles, original research and genuine insight that are beyond just entertainment – they are educational.  My hope is that enough people are exposed to these good works so that I can selfishly continue to enjoy and participate with Google’s elegant social medium.

Welcome (back) to the Cloud

What’s Old Is New Again 

There is a lot of talk about the revolution of The Cloud, HTML5 and the ubiquity of access to Your Stuff.  Indeed, it looks like Google is launching a new laptop (Chromebook), which is designed from inception to blend these three technologies into a single hardware platform.  Chromebook will do away with hard drives and will more or less be a browser-based machine.  All of the significant computing and data storage will take place in the Google Cloud.  Users will be able to effectively log into any Chromebook and have Their desktop, apps and data just as they left it from the last user session. 

Revolutionary right?  Kinda.

The Cloud movement makes me think about the days when IBM was king and the Mainframe was its dominion.  Back then, users could log onto any Dumb Terminal within the corporate connected infrastructure and would have access to their own stuff right where they left off.  It wasn’t pretty for sure but users had ubiquity of data and apps.  They never worried about backup strategies, upgrades or compatibility.  Everything just magically worked – in The Ether. 

Strangely enough it seems like the concept of centralized configuration management, data storage, security and data persistence is having a rebirth of sorts; albeit the hard lines to the machines can now be missing.  Employing a small amount of literary license; Chromebook becomes the new Dumb Terminal and the Cloud becomes the new Mainframe.

The iCloud Cometh

Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s, a movement away from the Mainframe environment was all the rage.  Client-server or distributed computing was what all the cool kids were doing.  The goal was to move the data out to a client (PC), which had its own fast processor.  No longer would users have to compete with each other to share processing or schedule jobs on a Mainframe. Now users were independent and could work on said data against their own timeframe and on their own terms.  Freedom!  Prodigious Processing Panacea!

Fast forward to the Connected Age and computing ubiquity.  Now what was once desktop class processing power has been moved into the palm of your hand.  Storage is now cheap whilst bandwidth evolved to become more copious and omnipresent.

Now it seems that having an isolated machine isn’t such a great idea.  I want to access My Stuff from whatever device I happen to be using, wherever I happen to be.  I don’t want it to be trapped in the silo of my personal computing device.  How can I be saved? 

Welcome (back) to the cloud.

Google vs. Microsoft: Let the 2D Mobile Barcode Wars Begin

In my last post, I covered the types of information that a 2D bar code can store, and why that is cool for customers, advertisers and publishers alike. I also introduced the Wilson CCC Conjecture, or the idea that consumers need devices that are convenient, capable, and connected, for any type of mobile advertising -- including 2D barcodes -- to proliferate.

Since my first installment, I’ve seen a lot of movement in the barcode space, as marketers are starting to focus their attention and money on this technology. As an example, Calvin Klein has put up huge billboards in New York and Los Angeles, replacing its iconic images of scantily-clad, denim-wearing models, with decidedly unsexy, boxy, red QR codes. The tagline is “Get It Uncensored,” and when you point your barcode-enabled mobile phone camera at the billboard ... well, I don’t want to be a spoiler, go download a free QR app and try it yourself here. This is the type of activity that will push 2D barcodes into the mainstream.

As barcodes go mainstream, there are dominant formats emerging as the standard. Early efforts arose from small startups that have created proprietary formats, but the two that have gained the most traction are from companies that have deep pockets: Google's QR Codes* and Microsoft's Tags.                    

QR CODE             TAG

The images above represent my vCard (an electronic business card) as interpreted by QR Code and Tag. Why might one format succeed over the other? Open vs. Closed, respectively, is one answer.  VHS vs. Betamax is probably the other.

Google's QR Codes vs. Microsoft's Tags

Open: Google has made their development efforts open-source so that developers can both create and interpret the QR Codes. The company has also integrated QR Codes into its small business Place Pages, and given business owners a QR Code poster that will allow passersby to scan and get information on that business instantly. If you are an Android device user, QR Codes are popularly used to take a consumer straight to a downloadable application, ringtones and other content from the Android Market.

Closed: Microsoft, alternatively, has decided to keep their efforts proprietary. There is no mobile software development kit (SDK) available for developers to build applications that could use the Tag concept, thus hampering acceptance of the format. While anyone can generate a Tag from the Microsoft Tag site, a developer has to login to obtain information on individual Tag usage. Developers also can't create their own custom system for managing the creation and eventual reporting of the Tag campaign. There is even rumination that Microsoft will at some point charge for some of the Tag features.

VHS: Google’s efforts will bring widespread adoption of the QR Code standard.

Betamax:  Microsoft spent a lot of time and money creating the Tag.  It is technically a superior design; it offers incredible error correction (image can be scanned upside down, shadows can be on image etc.) but the lack adoption will make it a niche product at best.

Regardless of the format that wins, this is an interesting space to watch. My prediction is that 2D barcodes will become as ubiquitous as web addresses with the instant gratification via your mobile phone, so expect to see them everywhere you look in the near future -- from magazine ads, to movie screens, to soda cans.

*Note: The Toyota subsidiary Denso-Wave developed the QR Code.  It is defined and published as an ISO standard - free from any license.