Last week Google launched their long awaited social network, Google+ and while it is currently in closed beta, I have been lucky to get an invite and have been using it for the last 5 days. View my profile to see what I’ve been up to.
What is Google+ and can it give facebook a run for it’s money?
According to Google:
The Google+ project makes sharing on the web feel like sharing in real life.
But will that get them the critical mass that so many of their previous social apps failed to get? Google’s executives have been quick to deny the companies social ambitions and have instead stated that google+ will only improve the user experience within the google ecosystem and that this product is about understanding social, location and other signals so google can enhance its core search platform. They can say what they want, but to me this product poses a real threat to twitter and not to facebook.
So what can you do on google+?
Google plus running in the Chrome web browser.
When you first join you are asked to add your gmail contacts into circles. Don’t worry, you only need to add the people you expect to interact with on a social network. At this time it is unlikely that any of your friends will be able to join, but do put them into circles now while you remember. Circles enable you to separate out your private life from your public life, therefore allowing you to send status updates to only certain groups of people. Watch the video below to see how useful circles are.
I have been known to exaggerate at times, but the status update in google+ is more useful than twitter as you are not restricted to 140 characters and you can include all of your media within google+, therefore you are not relying on third party media hosts such as yfrog or twitpic. However, you can do this in facebook, so it’s not the ultimate platform for updating your status. From an ease of use perspective, it is very easy to post an update, control how visible that update is and you can edit your update. Yes, unlike twitter and facebook, should you make a typo you can just edit that post. Accidentally posted your exact location? No bother, just delete the location from your post. Simple.
Sparks
One of the many things I do on twitter is search for specific subjects e.g. I’ll search the hash tag android to see what people are saying. On google+ google are introducing Sparks, which allows you to search a specific subject and pin it to your sparks area. This allows you to check in regularly to see the latest information. This is no different than using a saved search on twitter, except that it looks a lot better and seems to be more user friendly. If something really interesting comes up I can share that with my android buddies or to my wider social circle. This you would struggle to do on twitter.
Group messenging
Google plus has its own native android appGoogle plus running in the Chrome web browser.
Huddle is clearly aimed at iMessages (Apples soon to be released iOS messaging app) and allows you to a send instant messages to multiple recipients. It also features its own separate android app which is a sinister way of threatening all those other group messaging apps such as ping chat.
Group video chat
The killer feature for me is hangout which enables you to hold a group video chat. If I want to have a video chat with my family who live all over the place, now we can have one conversation instead of multiple conversations. We could say we’ll hangout on a Sunday afternoon and just chat to each other as each turns up. What I like about this approach is the lack of pressure to be somewhere or answer the phone.
There are other nice features such as the integration with gmail where you get notified to your google+ updates, the seemingly free photo storage with picasa and the (rather scary) instant uploads from your mobile of your recent photos (can be turned off) to name a few.
So who should be scared?
I don’t think facebook has anything to be worried about, they are just so big, with many active daily users who really engage with the site. They have a business model that is making them serious cash and they are growing revenues year on year. If anything, google+ will inspire facebook to push out new features. The potential loser in this is twitter, a company that is not turning a profit and has much venture capital invested in it. Those guys will want their pay out soon! The reason twitter has been so successful is is limitations, but twitter seems to be moving away from the basic 140 characters and let’s be honest, would you as a third party twitter app developer be confidant that they will keep those APIs open?
Gmail has 200 million active monthly users and if google can persuade those to switch their social profile to google+ then they will have serious traction. There are far more google accounts, so the potential is there if google can sell this social network to the masses.
your google+ stream on the android app
What can we expect in the future?
Google has already said that they will release APIs, so third party apps and the ability to post to several social networks will happen soon enough.
Native apps on the iPhone and iPad should be with us within days depending on Apple’s app store policy.
The uptake to the service will be slow! Remember how long you will have been on facebook and twitter. I have been on facebook for 5+ years and twitter for at least 4 years. If google+ can stay around, let’s judge how successful it is in a couple of years.
Businesses can expect to tie in their google profiles and place names into google+ so that they can offer a better customer service experience. Imagine using your mobile to search for a local business, check out their profile, ask them a question on google+ (any availability for a table at lunchtime?) they can then respond directly to you. Even better would be to update their status with offers and lunch menus etc.
Marketers will love this site. I have no doubt that google ads will creep in eventually and if facebook is anything to go by, marketers will have access to all sorts of profile data. Therefore Adsense will become much more targeted. Let’s remember that while search might be google’s best product, they are for the most part an advertising company and that’s how they make their money.
Google apps customers need this product fast. Huddle and hangout would be really powerful within the workplace.
Conclusion
Is this going to be my main social network? Probably, but only if I can get my family to use it. I find google+ to be more engaging than twitter and much more valuable than facebook, but it’s early days and the noise ratio is quite low.
To join visit plus.google.com and don’t forget to say hello to me on google+.
Learn how you can add google’s plus 1 button to your wordpress posts which will allow visitors to your website to recommend your content to their friends.
Google added a feature to search results that let’s you recommend search results to your friends. It’s called Plus 1 (+1) and you can now include it on your own website which allows your readers to “recommend” the page their viewing to their friends (and to google!).
Here’s how you can add the Plus 1 button to your wordpress site.
In order to add the Plus 1 button to your wordpress posts you need to add it to ‘single.php’.
<!-- Place this tag where you want the +1 button to render -->
<g:plusone count="false"></g:plusone>
<!-- Place this tag after the last plusone tag -->
<script type="text/javascript">
window.___gcfg = {lang: 'en-GB'};
(function() {
var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true;
po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s);
})();
</script>
From your wordpress dashboard, go to Appearance and select ‘Editor, then single.php. Open up your favourite text editor and copy all of the text in single.php and save it, just in case something goes wrong!
Once here, find this bit of code:
<?php arras_postheader() ?> (It might be different for other templates)
and paste the the code google suggest immediately after. It should look something like this:
<?php arras_postheader() ?>
<!-- Place this tag where you want the +1 button to render -->
<g:plusone count="false"></g:plusone>
You might need a little bit of trial and error, but that’s how I got the plus 1 button to appear my posts on this blog.
Google announced yesterday the release of the Android 2.3 SDK or Gingerbread as it has become known. The mobile operating system (OS) will be seen first on their new flagship mobile phone, the Nexus S manufactured by Samsung and soon after on the Nexus One.
So what features can we expect to see?
UI refinements for simplicity and speed
Faster, more intuitive text input
One-touch word selection and copy/paste
Improved power management
Control over applications
New ways of communicating, organizing
To name only a few. Full details can be found over on the Android Developer site.
Android 2.3 Keyboard
One of the changes I’m hoping will make a big impact is the redesigned keyboard. Android devices have always lagged behind the iOS devices and google is promising big speed improvements for touch input and better copy and paste. I am currently using Swype on my HTC Desire which is a big improvement over the stock 2.2 keyboard and a massive improvement over HTC’s bundled sense keyboard.
[UPDATE: XDA have the 2.3 keyboard available for rooted 2.2 Android devices already.]
I’d keep an eye out on the XDA forums as there is sure to be a custom rom released for the Desire (and other devices) around the New Year.
As for the Nexus S, it is of typically bland design but boasts probably the best hardware of any mobile phone on the market today:
A 1 GHz Hummingbird processor paired with 16GB of internal memory makes Nexus S one of the fastest phones on the market.
75% less glare than on other smartphone displays on its 4″ Contour Display
Rupert Murdoch is quoted on the BBC News site today stating that search engines that index “news” are essentially stealing the right to reproduce that content within their own search results.
“There’s a doctrine called ‘fair use’, which we believe to be challenged in the courts and would bar it altogether,”
Is this someone who has fundamentally lost all grasp on reality? Has he, or none of his senior executives ever used the Internet? I ask these flippant questions on the basis that the majority of Internet users use a search engine when looking for something, may that be clothes, electronics or news! If News Corp go down the route of blocking search engines from accessing their site, that will mean less people read stories published on News Corp sites. Less page views means less revenue, but Murdoch has a plan for that.
Murdoch’s News Corp are already working on a model that will charge their users to access content within their websites by June 2010. In fact, News Corp are working very hard:
“No. We are working very, very hard at this but I wouldn’t promise that we’re going to meet that date.
I understand that a business needs to generate revenue to survive, I really do, but I don’t think News Corp (or Murdoch for that matter) understand that very few people will pay to access this type of content online. The exact business model is unknown, but it has been suggested that there could be a tiered approach with premium content made available to those paying a higher monthly fee, while micro-payments could be applied to those looking to read a single story.
In the UK we have the BBC paid for by the licence fee i.e. it is essentially free to use. The BBC News website already competes head to head with every news / media organisation out there, therefore if you introduce a subscription model who are your competitors and what will they charge? As a user I already spend more time on the BBC News site than any other, introducing a pay wall only restricts my access to your site and it certainly does not encourage me to pay to read content that I can get elsewhere for free.
“There’s not enough advertising in the world to make all the Websites profitable. We’d rather have fewer people coming to our Websites but paying.
This is fair enough, but if you compare it to other content industries like music and film how successful are they at this? In the UK I am not aware of any subscription model for watching films online, perhaps Love Film and iTunes can offer a similar service. In the music business Spotify offers unlimited listening both at your desk and on your mobile for £9.99 per month with no contract. This seems pretty good value as there are no adverts with this deal, but I wouldn’t pay £9.99 per month to read news.
For News Corp to win over customers they will have to charge less than £1 a week and offer some really exclusive content and HD quality video streaming otherwise I fear their plan could backfire on them
It’s been a busy week for googlers with the release of many updates and new product announcements, none more important that turn by turn navigation for Android 2.0 which threatens the entire GPS industry.
Google Social Search A lot has been made of twitter’s search engine and how it can enable real time search, but what of Google’s attempt to provide real time search? It has long be known that google is indexing social networking sites, but now it has launched an experiment: Google Social Search which wants to help you find more relevant public content from your broader social circle. You need to be logged into iGoogle:
Sign in to Google and do a search. If there’s relevant web content written by people in your social circle, it will automatically show up at the bottom of your search results under a section called “Results from people in your social circle.”
Seems like this could be quite fun and useful to those who are following lots of people.
Google Docs Long a favourite of mine, google docs are maturing nicely. While not being the most powerful office application, docs does do one thing extremely well – available anywhere with a net connection in other words at work, at home and on my iPhone! Docs now sports a standardised look and feel across all of the Google Docs editors.
One of the features of docs has always been the ability to share and export your data, but now google have taken this feature a step further: “Convert, Zip and Download” making it even easier to work on your google docs in alternative environments.
Turn by Turn Navigation with Google Maps Google Maps has allowed users to get directions via their mobile phone for sometime now, but with the release of Android 2.0 Google have entered into direct competition with the likes of TomTom and Garmin. As Google states:
This new feature comes with everything you’d expect to find in a GPS navigation system, like 3D views, turn-by-turn voice guidance and automatic rerouting. But unlike most navigation systems, Google Maps Navigation was built from the ground up to take advantage of your phone’s Internet connection.
Currently only available in the US and on the soon to be released Droid, but is certain to be rolled out to other devices and countries in the coming months. Will Apple allow it on the iPhone?
The question for me is this: Will this drive users to purchase an Android phone?
