Thursday, August 25, 2011

Google + early adopters don't worry, your friends are coming... if you want.

I use Google +. I really like Google +. If you don't know already, Google + is a shiny new social networking service that Google are preparing to launch.  I say preparing to launch because one thing that seems quickly forgotten is that the Google + service is in a "limited field trial" which essentially means a Private Beta. There is more to be added along the lines of revenue streams for businesses and some re-branding of other Google services to integrate into the released product. After previous failures with Buzz and Wave which showed the search giant that simply integrating something into a search page doesn't make a social network, they have returned for another crack with what is a clever, well designed building block for a great network.

Like any service that relies on relationships of any kind, your experience will hinge on your ability to communicate with the people you want to. So the point has been made so far that Google + is just like Facebook with none of your friends. Well that is somewhat valid as there are only about 25 million users on Google + compared to 750 million active users on Facebook. But it's worth remembering that in order to get people on to a new service of any kind you can't simply give the 750 million Facebook users a Google + account. Nor can you just put a link to it on the Google home page for it to be ignored. That is why the idea of the field trial has come about. First they released it internally, Google + has been active for months prior to the trial among employees, then they invited members of the IT media and asked them to invite their contacts. From there Google did some classic marketing by opening and closing the invitation system over a 2 week period to build hype and make some exclusivity to having a Google + account. It certainly made me want one!

So what's the point? Why bother? Comparisons to Facebook will be the starting point for most and rightly so considering they are the leader of the social networking market. There is a massive difference in the way that the two companies at the helm of these sites want you to interact. Facebook make money through advertising, licensing and to a lesser extent their internal marketplace (you can buy e-gifts for people and other things). Google's services however focus around one sole principle, search. The more people who put their eyes on their search service, the more they can sell their advertising partners the wealth of information they have to target marketing. So Facebook's desire is that you spend as much time inside the Facebook world as possible so that they can retrieve their information for target marketing. Google however don't care where you go, just as long as you use their search to get there.

So my first point is integration. Facebook provides pretty extensive ways to link in to your account to the point where many people don't visit the site regularly. There are many clients that hook straight into your account as well as countless apps for which ever smartphone platform you choose. The one site I am tipping most web users go to at least once per day is Google, it may even be your home page. Further to that, if you use the web regularly, you are probably signed up to one or more of Google's services and have a Google account. The same account is used across all of Google's services and it's that sort of integration that makes the experience so easy. You can move between all of the services you use regularly with the navigation bar at top of the Google page and also instantly share or view information from Google +

My second point is around the features in Plus. With the point already made that Google + is just like Facebook with none of your friends, I would actually say that it's more like a combination of Facebook and Twitter with none of your friends. It shares concepts with both sites and introduces some unique ideas and features.

Contact organisation is one of the clever features. By using Circles to manage contacts, it allows for a very flexible way to share information. So it works like this, you can have as many Circles as you want, contacts can be placed in more than one Circle, contacts know that they are in your Circles but don't know which circle they are in. So you could have a Circle called "Jerks" if you wanted to (why you would is another matter that I am not an expert on). When you share something you have the ability to post publicly or to one or more Circles or contacts. So the way I look a this in a comparison to Facebook and Twitter is the ability to target shared info to specific people or groups of people effectively negates the need for private messages and works better than Lists or Groups combined. Like Twitter, if you have someone in a Circle and they post publicly, you will see it in your stream so the idea of following is here too and of course hashtag support.

Hangouts are arguably the best feature that Plus has. Hangouts are video and voice private chat rooms using the Google Talk messenger service. You can start a hangout with one person or many. There is a limit of 20 at any one time but that should be more than enough. So think about having Skype with your whole family all within Google +. Add to that the ability to share You Tube content with the people in the hangout and you have a pretty powerful tool. Some media people have used it to record video pod casts and celebrities have used it as a way to interact with their fans.

The Stream shows you your content of people in your circles who have either shared with you because you are in their circles, or shared publicly. You can filter your stream to show only people in specific Circles or new people sharing with you. You can of course mute people you are tired of hearing from, and you can edit your own posts and track the timeline of other edited posts.

Now if you move to the mobile experience, there are Google + apps for both iPhone and of course Android with a Windows Phone app said to be in the works. The mobile app has all features that the site does except for Hangouts. There is a mobile-only feature called Huddle which allows you to start a group chat (again using Google Talk services) with one or many contacts. You can chose an entire Circle or just select individuals. This is great as you can find out where everyone is when you are supposed to be meeting. It's also an easy way to engage with the specific people for a circumstance. All you have to do is have a Circle setup and it's one touch. The Android app also has a great feature called Auto Upload. Any photo or video your phone (or tablet takes will be uploaded to a private Picassa Web Album. This is great because it makes sharing the content very easy and also gives you an online backup of you activity that only you can see.

There are a few more features built in like Sparks (customisable news feed) and the newly added Games, but for me, the power lies in the ones that I have mentioned above.

Now comes the part where I tie the title back into the rambling! Remember when you first found out about Facebook? You didn't just wake up one day with a Facebook account with 300 friends, it took time to evolve and while almost everyone you want to communicate with socially is on Facebook, they too took time to get to where their account is now. Take some time to play with the features in Plus, if you like them and you like the service, then it's up to you to get the people you want on there. Invite them, and explain to them what it is and why it's good. In the transient online world it does take some effort to invest in something new. It also takes some effort to convince people that it's worthwhile, but if you are an early adopter then make the effort to get them there and you won't regret it.