Google Plus | Cheryl Waller

Google+ Sign-In Sounds Simple For Users, But Lacks The Personal Info And Distribution Developers Need

February 26, 2013 by Josh Constine Leave a Comment

Growth, to reach more users, and data, to improve the experience. That’s what apps need in an identity and social system. They’re what Facebook and Twitter deliver, and what the new Google+ Sign-In can’t without completed profiles, the social graph, and eyeballs. Logging into apps with your Google credentials would be convenient, but developers may be reluctant to offer the option.

Reading today’s pre-briefed coverage of Google’s new competitor to Facebook Connect and Twitter authorization, it feels a bit like reporters drank the Kool-Aid. The spotlight was kept on ease, security, nifty features, and lack of spam. These are legitimate advantages, and Google did well to capitalize on them. If I wanted to simply and securely sign in to an asocial third-party app rather than create yet another account, I might very well choose Google for the peace of mind.

Most people already have a Google account, and know their password well. Google has a great reputation for security, which Facebook and Twitter can’t say, and supports two-factor authentication. Ownership of Android lets Google+ Sign-In enable one-click app downloads from websites you’ve already approved, and there’s integrated Hangouts. Finally, Google hammers home the idea that it won’t “social spam” your friends like Facebook does. The search giant trumps up its Circles for selective sharing, and derides Facebook’s “frictionless” Open Graph posts that certainly rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.

Google’s Problem Is People, Not Technology

Unfortunately, lurking in the shadows are Google+’s shortcomings. Let’s face it. Most people do not have richly filled-out Google+ profiles with data to personalize apps they sign in to. They don’t have an accurate Google+ graph of their friends or influencers to import to populate apps with people to view content from or play/communicate with. And most importantly, they don’t spend enough time browsing Google+ to discover apps there.

As I said before, if I logged into an app I planned to use solo, Google+ might get the job done. But if I logged into a social app with Google+ Sign-In, it wouldn’t have the data necessary to give me a good time.

Let’s say I wanted to use the radio app TuneIn (hypothetical because most Google+ Sign-In launch partners don’t actually offer this new login option yet). It wouldn’t know which bands I Like or follow because those artists don’t have, use, or promote their G+ accounts so I haven’t encircled them. My Google+ Circles are a scattershot of tech early adopters and professional contacts with just a few actual friends, so it wouldn’t know whose listening activity I’d care to see. And finally, if I took the time and jumped through the friction-full hoops to share what I’m hearing to Google+, few people I care about would see it. They just don’t visit the G+ feed enough.

This is a crummy user experience, and it’s no better for TuneIn’s developer. It doesn’t learn much about me to refine its sense of its user base. Without the proper social graph of my friends on the app, TuneIn couldn’t show them my activity to keep them engaged and coming back. Its stance against “social spam” kills off chances to lure in new users before I even post. And the posts I do push go to a black hole that probably won’t drive downloads like sharing to Facebook or Twitter.

To succeed in app development you need distribution and data to build something worth recommending. Without these there’s little incentive to go through the process of building in Google+ Sign-In. Larry and Sergey’s social network needs this kind of shared content to make it a destination, though, so its understandable why they launched this. A lot of devs will ignore it. Those that do integrate will likely do so alongside Facebook and Twitter, not instead of them, though there is some risk for devs of users choosing Google+ instead of the more viral options.

Google+ Sign-In looks good on paper, and it’s smart for the search giant to get more serious about the identity space. If Facebook and Twitter didn’t exist, this could get popular, and because they do, Google needs to make a move. Finally, there are some social clusters active on Google+ and they will get social sharing benefits if they’re allowed to log in with it

But Google+ Sign-In’s problems stem from a late and lackluster entry into social networking, and Google can’t just engineer solutions.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: Blogging, Facebook, Google, google plus, search engine optimization, SEO, social, Social Networking, TC

‘Search, Plus Your World’ Just Got Bigger As Google+ iOS Apps Launch In 48 New Countries And Territories

January 17, 2013 by Catherine Shu Leave a Comment

The Google+ iPhone and iPad apps are now available in 48 countries and territories, announced Google engineer Frank Petterson via his own Google+ profile (h/t TNW).

Users with iOS devices can now download Google+ in:

Albania, Anguilla, Barbados, Benin, Bermuda, Bhutan, Brunei Darussalam, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cape Verde, Cayman Islands, Chad, Republic of Congo, Dominica, Fiji, Gambia, Grenada, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Liberia, Macau, Malawi, Mauritania, Federated States of Micronesia, Mongolia, Montserrat, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Saint Lucia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and The Grenadines, Suriname, Swaziland, São Tomé and Príncipe, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Turks and Caicos, Ukraine, British Virgin Islands, Zimbabwe.

Both the iPhone and iPad Google+ iOS apps were released in the middle of 2012, making their debuts after reports that Apple had intentionally delayed approval.

This international rollout comes just days after Facebook announced Graph Search. At the launch event, Mark Zuckerberg said he decided to work with Microsoft Bing instead of Google because Bing is more flexible on privacy. Facebook Graph Search may potentially take a bite out of Google by grabbing away users’ attention and cutting into the search behemoth’s ads business.

Though it has far fewer users than Facebook, Google has continually worked on improving its social network, which received a sweeping end-of-year update and packed its iOS app with new features in December.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: Blogging, Facebook, Google, google plus, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking, TC

Google+ Introduces “Communities” To Replace Old School Groups, Forums And Message Boards

December 6, 2012 by Drew Olanoff Leave a Comment

Whether you use Google+ knowingly or not, meaning whether or not you actually engage on the destination site, you have to realize that the project has been a complete shift for the entire company as a whole. Even though it has a separate name and a separate URL, you simply cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that the social tools within the project have been weaved into Google’s biggest products. If you call Google+ another “social network”, you are simply missing the point.

Now that we have that out of the way, we can move on to the actual innovation that’s happening with Google+, which is quite impressive. Today, the company announced a whole new set of features called “Communities”, which allow you, or anyone, to set up a place that’s not your own profile and not a business “Page” to have discussions on any number of topics.

The feature will be rolling out to all users today.

If you’ve been a heavy Internet user over the past ten years, you might be familiar with this concept. Yahoo! really nailed it with Yahoo! Groups, as it quickly became the destination to set up a place to discuss your kid’s soccer team, technology, sports, world events and everything in between. The flaw with products like that, including Google’s own “Groups”, is that it’s not integrated with anything else, they were standalone. It meant that you had to stop what you were doing and go somewhere else to interact. That was fine when there was nothing to do on the Internet, but now that we have a multitude of sites and options to keep us busy, that simply doesn’t fly anymore.

With Communities, you can create say, a TechCrunch community, and nest a bunch of sub-topics within it. For us, it would be Apple, Google, Microsoft, Social…you get the point. Anyone can then come along and start a discussion within that Community, sharing things from all over the web with the flick of a wrist, just like you would to a circle. The idea is that if you have a video of your cat jumping off of the couch, not everyone in the world wants to see that. Maybe your “Cat Lovers” circle does, and so will your new “Cat Mega Lovers” Google+ Community. Make sense?

Again, nothing new here concept-wise, the innovation is in the Google+ integration. By seeing what Google has done with its social project, you can then imagine how Communities could become an integral part of your work flow, search experience and social life. All from anywhere on the web.

Sharing (responsibly) is caring

I had a chance to take Communities for a quick spin while I visited the Googleplex this week. It will pop up on the left-hand side of the destination site, allowing you to create your own or search out others. You can of course find ones that interest you within the Google+ unified search experience. As far as options on what types of Communities you can make, that’s simple too: public, public with membership required to interact, private but discoverable, and private but not discoverable or indexed.

This could be great for your church group, gamer guild, drone clan or just a place to bring your family together to go wild with sharing things. Since it’s a static “place”, it’s easy to go back through an entire stream within topics without losing your place. It’s really slick. This is the first major release since last Google I/O’s announcement of Events, which are also integrated with Communities, of course.

The downside to this release is that it’s not readily available on the Google+ mobile apps, which is a bummer. If I start a Community on Google+, I want to be able to take it with me wherever I go. Of course, you can use the mobile web version of Google+, but the native app is too beautiful and intuitive not to use. Hopefully, the update comes soon.

By making Communities, and the rest of Google+, available throughout the web, you’ll often hear Googlers call this approach “Activating the web”, and it is to a degree. You can now share this article to a Community and a Google+ circle, including your mom, using our +1 button. Even she’ll understand how it works.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: Blogging, communities, community, Facebook, Google, google plus, message boards, plus, search engine optimization, SEO, social, Social Networking, TC

Google+ Introduces “Communities” To Replace Old School Groups, Forums And Message Boards

December 6, 2012 by Drew Olanoff Leave a Comment

The feature will be rolling out to all users today.

Sharing (responsibly) is caring

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: Blogging, community, Facebook, Google, google plus, message boards, plus, search engine optimization, SEO, social, Social Networking, TC

Google Enters The Social Enterprise With Public Debut Of Google+ For Businesses, Free Through 2013

August 29, 2012 by Sarah Perez Leave a Comment

Following moves that began last October, when Google began allowing Google Apps users access to Google+, the company announced today several more features which are aimed at pushing Google-branded social experiences deeper into the business world. Specifically, the company is rolling out support for restricted sharing options, video meetings integrated with other Google products like Gmail, Calendar and Docs, and additional administrative controls within Google+ with today’s public launch of Google+’s enterprise offering.

Google’s Vice President of Enterprise Amit Singh told TechCrunch in December that the company was already using Google+ as a collaboration platform internally, and promised at the time that it would bring Google+ to the enterprise market in 2012. “Google+ is the next big thing for the enterprise,” he said at the time. “We are going to do the same thing with Google+ that we’ve done with Gmail, and other consumer-facing apps so that Google+ can be adopted in more of enterprise setting.”

Today, Clay Bavor, Product Management Director, Google Apps writes on the Google Enterprise Blog, that Google is now ready to move some of the Google+ enterprise features into a “full preview” mode, meaning that any organization that has adopted Google Apps can now try these features for free until the end of 2013. That’s a key bit of information, since it implies that Google does plan to eventually charge for the social collaboration tools, similar as to how it charges for its online productivity tools today, including Gmail, Calendar, and Docs. And Google already has inroads to adoption for this market, given how tightly Google+ is baked into its other business-friendly products.

The initial tools which are rolling out now are only the first of several, says Bavor, who adds that Google will continue to add more features and admin controls in time. Some companies have already been pilot testing the enterprise features, including Kaplan and Banshee Wines, he says.

As for what exactly is being opened up today for all Google Apps users to try? First is private sharing, which allows users to mark posts as “restricted,” making them private to their organization and disallowing the ability to re-share them externally. These posts can also be shared with individual outside partners or colleagues, if need be.

Video meetings (aka “Hangouts” in Google lingo), which is the group chat feature that allows up to 10 users to face-to-face chat over webcams or smartphones is now integrated with Gmail in Google Apps, Calendar and Docs for Google Apps users. Like the private sharing feature above, this isn’t really just a business-only option – Google added Google+ Hangouts to Gmail in July, for example. Hangouts are also supported in Google Calendar.

Finally, Bavor talks about additional administrative controls for business users. This is the most critical part to the service, from I.T.’s perspective at least. As with Google Apps, the admin controls for Google+ allow companies to set defaults for post restrictions, and they can enable restricted Hangouts for private company meetings. Details on pricing and what’s planned next are not yet available, but companies working in the social enterprise space – including Jive, Microsoft-acquired Yammer, and Salesforce, are being put on notice.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: Blogging, enterprise, Facebook, Google, google plus, search engine optimization, SEO, social enterprise, Social Networking, TC

G+ Posts Show Your Exact Location On A GMap, And That Shouldn’t Scare You

August 14, 2012 by Josh Constine Leave a Comment

As the lines between Google and Google+ grow blurrier, so do privacy norms. Today we’re posed with whether we want our location made abundantly clear to anyone we share G+ posts with. Now when you post to G+ from mobile and you enable automatic location sharing or geo-tag yourself at a local spot, a big Google Map of your exact location is shown in the G+ stream on the web.

The combination of exact geo-tagging and these maps give Google+ much more aggressive location sharing than Facebook or Twitter. That shouldn’t scare us, though, as long as we’re conscious and use the tools to control what we expose.

Previously, you could purposefully share your location from G+ mobile or allow the app to automatically geo-tag you. However, the location would appear as a tiny line of grey text at the bottom of G+ posts that you had to click through to view. Now the map is immediately visible at the bottom of geo-tagged G+ posts when viewed on the web, enriching the feed.

For comparison, Facebook only auto-tags post with the general city you’re in, not your exact location. And if you tag a Place in a post, friends still have to hover over or click through to see a map. Twitter meanwhile only tags tweets with location when enabled, only tags your city not your specific coordinates, and tweets must be expanded to show the map.

Personally, I don’t mind sharing my exact location. “Come at me, bro!” aka I’m not really worried about thieves or stalkers. Seriously, most “privacy concerns” about this type of thing are overblown. Still, some people, including young women, have more to think about when sharing their location.

Google+ lets you choose which Circles you share with, and the maps just make the existing location system easier to view. Auto-tagging defaults to off, but stays on if you enable it.

What’s important though is that you are in control, and Google isn’t going to treat you like a kid. If you want to blatantly auto-share your exact location every time you post, it won’t stop you. Just like being an adult, more freedom requires more accountability.

Some refer to the slide towards openness as the “Zuckering” of privacy norms. But now Google’s social layer is maturing. As it slowly saturates all of the search giant’s products, it will raise questions for each of us about “Google+ification”, just how much we want to share, and whether we’re aware we’re sharing.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: Blogging, Facebook, Google, Google Maps, google plus, Opinion, search engine optimization, SEO, social, Social Networking, TC

Google Acquiring Frommer’s Travel Brand: Zagat Integration, Google+ Improvements To Follow

August 13, 2012 by Sarah Perez Leave a Comment

Google is in the process of acquiring the Frommer’s travel brand from the publishing company John Wiley & Sons, Inc., in what is a further effort to beef up its Google+ business information listings service. The deal is nearly closed, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal, which also speculates that the Frommer’s brand could be merged into Google’s Zagat brand following the completion of the acquisition. (Update: it will be.)

Frommer’s has been up for sale since March, when its parent company announced that it intended to explore opportunities to sell a number of its print and digital publishing assets in its Professional/Trade businesses, saying that they “no longer align with the company’s long-term business strategy.” These included not only Frommer’s, but also culinary, general interest, nautical, pets, crafts, Webster’s New World, and CliffsNotes.

The travel brand Frommer’s got its start back in 1957 with the publication of founder Arthur Frommer’s “Europe on $5 a Day,” and later expanded to include a collection of over 300 guidebooks as well as the Frommers.com website. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. picked up the property in 2001. Although not confirmed at this point, it’s probable that Google is only interested in the travel content Frommer’s has amassed, and the book publishing portion of Frommer’s business will cease. As for what Google saw in Frommer’s, that’s not quite as clear. Although its brand is still well-known, the quality of its content can be a little shaky – its reviews, for example, are often outdated. Perhaps the selling price just made the deal worthwhile?

Wiley is agreeing to sell all of Frommer’s travel assets to Google, including the Frommer’s brand, Frommer’s Whatsonwhen events listings, and its unofficial guides. Proceeds of that sale will be redeployed to support growth in other areas of its business, the company has confirmed in a release. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but it’s expected to close at the end of the month.

Google previously purchased restaurant ratings service Zagat in September 2011, which published guidebooks and apps with detailed ratings and reviews. Zagat’s content has since been used to improve Google+ – specifically Google+ Local which replaced the company’s previous business listings service Google Places. Like Zagat, Frommer’s and the other travel content seems a natural fit for Google+ integration as well.

Update, noon ET: A Google spokesperson has confirmed the deal, saying that “the Frommer’s team and the quality and scope of their content will be a great addition to the Zagat team. We can’t wait to start working with them on our goal to provide a review for every relevant place in the world.”

We’re also now hearing that the Frommer’s team will be joining the Zagat team, and indeed the acquisition is related to improvements related to the local search experience across Google. Initially, the Frommer’s content will come to Google under its own brand and will be further integrated with Zagat over time. No definitive decision has been made on the Frommer’s printed guides, but the deal is supposed to enable users discover reviews across Google, which means online.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: Blogging, Facebook, frommer's, Google, google plus, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking, TC, travel

How Google+ Punk’d The Oatmeal

August 12, 2012 by Josh Constine Leave a Comment

Since The Oatmeal draws comics like 5 Ways To Fight A Crack Whore, the kids down in Mountain View figured they could play a joke on him.

This summer the artist wrote that Google+ comment threads sound like *crickets*, poking fun at the social network’s lack of engagement. He also criticized not being able to “set up a fancy profile URL so I don’t have to link people to http://plus.google.com/blergasdf1234 thimbleturdorgasm99meatpoopypoop xv9donkeypie ” — a made-up, ridiculously long string of random characters.

Yep, you saw a “turd orgasm 99 meat poopy poop” in there. But hell hath no fury like an engineer scorned.

In retaliation, the Google+ team didn’t cite its user growth stats or give an excuse for why there are no custom profile URLs. Oh, no, that wouldn’t be nearly witty enough for the search giant’s brainiacs.

Instead, they just redirected http://plus.google.com/blergasdf1234thimbleturdorgasm99meatpoopypoopxv9donkeypie back to The Oatmeal author Matthew Inman’s Google+ profile “https://plus.google.com/100193529331792590881/posts” . Congrats, Matt, you’ve now got “donkey pie” at the end of your own special Google+ vanity URL.

Maybe his comment threads won’t be such a ghost town now that anyone who types in the joke URL will be able to put the comedian in their Circles.

The best part might be that somewhere in the Google+ code is a little comment to future engineers about the redirect, noting “Don’t take this out, we’re fucking with The Oatmeal.”

Check out TechCrunch’s coverage of how The Oatmeal earned a bunch of money for charity by telling a trademark troll’s mom to go have sex with bears.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: Blogging, Facebook, Google, google plus, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking, TC, the oatmeal, WTF

The Subtle Genius Of Google+ For iPad: Popular Posts Appear Bigger

July 11, 2012 by Josh Constine Leave a Comment

You shouldn’t have to squint at Like and retweet counts to discover the best content your social network has to offer. So with one simple design choice, Google+ for iPad (and Nexus 7 ) has created a better tablet feed reading experience than Facebook or Twitter. As Google announced at I/O, on tablet, Google+ posts with more engagement are shown larger.

The Google+ iPad app launched today feel more like Flipboard, where surging seas of information turn into smooth sailing thanks to visual cues to what’s crucial. Browsing update after update doesn’t feel monotonous. In fact, it’s quite refreshing and addictive, enough so it might help Google+ finally shake that ghost town label.

Every day we teach our social networks what we care about most, but their’s little response in their design.

On Facebook, popularity is a number of Likes and preferred placement for a post. Our feedback makes the news feed more relevant to read, but not any more dynamic to look at.

On Twitter, popularity is retweet and favorite counts, and how frequently a tweet appears in the stream. Twitter recently acquired content summarizer Summify, and personalized email service RestEngine in order to launch an email digest service showing the most engaging content from those you follow, but beyond the counts every tweet still looks the same.

Without visual differentiation Facebook and Twitter feed reading can quickly become exhausting. That’s becoming a bigger and bigger problem as information overload keeps getting worse.

Google+ for tablet combats this fatigue. At first, trying to read it is a little jarring as all the updates aren’t in a neat little column. However, I’d skim over those neat little columns on other social networks, sometimes missing great photos or enlightening links in my haste.

Google+ makes the best posts stick out so I’m sure not to miss them. It also optimizes the placement of posts so wider or taller posts aren’t squished into squares. While Twitter’s easy-to-scan format is part of the experience, Facebook might consider copying this design for its tablet apps.

On the limited screen size of mobile or the lean-forward experience of the web, standardly arranged feeds make more sense. But on a tablet with a big beautiful retina screen, efficiency doesn’t have to come first. So lean back on the couch, take a deep breath on the train, and give Google+ for iPad or Nexus 7 a whirl. You might be surprised how content comes to life.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: apps, Blogging, Facebook, Google, google plus, search engine optimization, SEO, social, Social Networking, TC

To Fight Off Airtime and Google+ Hangouts, Facebook Tests Adding Video “Call” Button To Profiles

June 14, 2012 by Josh Constine Leave a Comment

Desperate to increase video chat usage, Facebook is testing out a “Call” button on top of people’s timeline profiles. I don’t think I’ve received a Facebook video chat since Facebook partnered with Skype to launch the feature a year ago, but now that might change. If a friend is online on the desktop version of Facebook, those in the test see a “Call” button next to that friends name on their profile , while previously a tiny videocamera icon in the text chat window was basically the only way to start a video chat.

Facebook seems to have realized it needed to highlight the feature, otherwise when people want to smile and laugh with friends face to face their first thought might be the Google+ and its Hangouts, or the newly launched Airtime from former Facebook President Sean Parker.

Airtime debuted last week with the mission to re-humanize the Internet through the intimacy of real-time video chat. A subtle message of the launch was “Facebook really isn’t the personal” because users primarily interact the asynchronous news feed posts or text-based chat.

That might have touched a nerve with Facebook, which prides itself on being the premier way to connect online. Maybe Facebook agrees that real-time video chat is much more vivid way to share, and it’s a shame so few people even realize it exists. Facebook actually had a Call button on the old version of the profile, but it got buried in a gear settings drop-down menu. Now the feature will be much easier to find, and when you stop by a friend’s profile you might decide to ring them for quick face-to-Facebook.

We haven’t seen any of the additional Facebook Skype features promised at the video chat feature’s launch in July 2011, including group video chat, Facebook-to-Skype-Client calling, or paid Facebook to standard phone number audio calling.

Maybe now Facebook will step its game up, and consider adding those and copying the standout feature of Airtime and Hangouts (which Google spruced up today with collaborative video playlists and easier sharing): allowing two people to watch a video such as a YouTube clip together at the same time.

As much fun as staring at someone else’s face is, Sean Parker proved at the Airtime launch that sometimes you just want watch a gopher scream “Alan!” with one of your best friends.