Reboot: What Should Become of Google+ ?

I thought the big news this week of the departure of the head of the Google Plus social networks was a tailor-made opportunity for me to push the reset button on Digital Dialogue. This is something I really want to talk about. There is a lot of chatter taking place in the social networking/digital community about whether this is just a run-of-the-mill leadership change at Google or it symbolizes something about the future of Google+, the most misunderstood and most-maligned social network in the bunch. Well here's my take: this should be a great time for Google  to regroup and reboot the social network. Google, stop trying to be Facebook. Stop trying to beat Facebook. Stop trying to require people to use Google+ as a passageway to other Google products that they really want to use (like YouTube). Be who and what you are and emphasize what you bring to the table. Imitation as a form of flattery doesn't work in the social media space.

If there is one marketing strategy that will never work in a million years, it is the decision to force a product onto the public. Even if it is a good product, people will never embrace it when they are introduced to it through coercion. That's just human nature. It is never a good idea to cram a product down people's throats, eve if it is something they need. If you identify your primary audience or clientele, do your research, create a good product in response to that research and then properly market it, it will sell itself. People naturally resist being forced into anything when it comes to products and services. I believe you run away as many or more potential happy clients than you stand to gain when you force something on people. To me, that was and has been the problem with Google+ from the beginning and I am surprised it was so blatant. I am more surprised that strategy was allowed to persist. Incredible.Almost like a robbery in broad daylight on the town square.

So here is my suggested approach now that this is a pausing point for Google+: calm down.  Pull back the reins totally from the forced-on-you product approach. Heck, disconnect it from YouTube now just to show "good faith." Can you de-link it from GMail? Just let the social network "be" for a while. Let it breathe on its own and see what develops. Hold off on any new flashy features (it gets more confusing with every new feature introduced...they all seem like desperate moves ). Be fully confident and honest about what you have created and let the digerati decide how and when to use it and for what. Most social networks just pop up on the landscape and they let the public decide how good it is or whether it is even going to gain traction through digital word of mouth.  Be willing to enjoy true success by risking failure.

Personally, I like Google+.  I don't really call it a "social network" like Facebook, but rather see it as an information network. It's a place I got to find out what other people are saying and sharing about topics I am interested in. I do not go to Google+ to see what "friends and family" are up to because, quite simply, no friends or family are on Google+ actively. I suppose they just signed up (forced to maybe???) but don't ever use it. They are likely among the great multitudes who were walked down the Google+ aisle in front of a shotgun.

I firmly believe Google+, with its clever design that I find appealing, would have been much farther along today had it stuck with traditional marketing. I don't think it would have topped Facebook in number of active users, but I bet the average monthly time spent on the network would have been much better and it never would have acquired the degrading tag, "Ghost Town."  I also think the name (too late to change that now I guess) was a misnomer. The name should have emphasized and included "Circles." That's really where it tried to be different, right? It was a way to share information in Circles. Google+ sounds like a new, more powerful household cleaner ("you tried Google, now try Google Plus!"). Wouldn't Circles have been a cooler name? Or Google Circles? Even "hangouts" is a nebulous name? What's a hangout? A more meaningful name would have been Live Circles. Just thinking out loud.

I believe Google+ has a place in the digital community and is something people are looking for in social networking and in information sharing. But Google+ can never become all that it can be through artificial demand. That's like sharing to the wrong circle.

Here are some other commentaries on this week's Google+ news:

http://time.com/77080/if-google-heads-to-the-grave-at-least-itll-have-direction/
http://www.fastcompany.com/3029725/most-innovative-companies/whats-next-for-google
http://www.mediaite.com/online/google-reportedly-junking-google/
http://mashable.com/2014/04/24/google-isnt-dead-its-just-overexposed/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/25/google-plus-dead_n_5212819.html

Social Media Newspapers Are Underrated

The first time you get one you are not quite sure what to do with it. It generally shows up in Twitter. It looks like electronic junk mail. I don't think I will ever get to the point of swearing by them, but the truth is social media newspapers have a lot of potential. It's all about niche.

I'm referencing the self-publishing newspapers from paper.li. I like the concept of a newspaper that aggregates information from social media sources. It is an idea that needs perfecting, but currently it has plenty of utility with still a long way to go. Here is how I use it now:

1. I publish a handful of papers just for my use on topics I am keenly interested in just to see what people are saying.

2. I publish one for an organization I am in and it is so far very popular. I shifted from daily to weekly and the interest increased because the content improves at a longer publication interval.

3. I sometimes create temporary newspapers for a hot topic in the news. It may be for as short as 1 week. You don't have to publish a paper forever. Judge it by the type of content you're pulling in.

I believe the biggest change that needs to happen with this technology now is that it must improve the relevance factor. Whatever aggregator is being used to create these electronic papers obviously needs perfection. Too often, papers publish with three or four totally irrelevant articles. I am sure this is being adressed. It is too obvious.

This really is a promising technology.

Tablets May Make Cellphones "Telephones" Again

You can fit one in a purse. or you can slide it in the inside pocket of a jacket or suit coat. That is if you get a 7-inch version of the tablet computer. And so if these 7-inch screens continue to sell at a rapid clip and smartphones continue to bog down with poor battery life, watch for the tablets to become the top choice for mobile computing and cellphones may just slowly slide back to being plain old telephones.

The biggest complaint people have about all the new smartphone technology is that it severely drains battery power. It is frustrating to be in the doctor;s office or waiting at the tire store to have your phone go completely out while you are listening to online radio or watching videos. we all get tired of the "digital rat race" to find somewhere where we can plug in for a few minutes of charge so we can keep listening to that favorite station or finish watching that YouTube video. So far, I have had much better luck using my tablet  (no, not an ipad either) for entertainment and keeping my phone in my pocket in case I truly need to make a call. Some of the same apps for the smartphones are on tablets anyway.

The bottom line is that tablets seem to ruin longer because there aren't so many programs running in the background. And because they don't have to juice up a phone that is standing ready and waiting to receive a call while you are trying to surf the Web.

You should not be surprised that someone has already thought about this. Here is something that one of the mega players in the phone and tablet market, Apple, is considering now that might keep smartphones from becoming obsolete because of dumb battery life issues: Self-Charging Phone.

Why Pinterest is So Hot

Add the "P" medallion to the growing wave of social media icons. Just like that, Pinterest has struck a nerve in the social media community and is now the third most popular social network behind Facebook and Twitter. So how can that be and why is Google Plus struggling to gain traction? Because Pinterest is unique. It brings a new and different activity to the table. It isn't copying any other social network and has created a new phenomenon around the visual nature of the web.

I have not tried Pinterest yet. I simply browsed the site to see what was so hot about it. And I get it. Even if it ends up of little interest to me personally, I get why this site has created such an uproar in social networking. This is a bulletin board on steroids. How many times have we posted items on the side of the refrigerator for future reference? Before Facebook and the advent of networking as we know it, how often did we (and we still do, some of us) send around a photo or other graphics file to friends and family with a note, "see this."  And how many times did it get passed around in the ether to others with the same interest as you have in the information? Pinterest is the electronic version of the refrigerator magnet, the bulletin board and the "old school" e-mail. Simply a way to share visuals in a public community.

Right now, the demographic is quite heavily female. I think eventually it will catch on with men as well an will become a true heavyweight social network as it evolves. Not that having men as a noticeable demographic means it is "validated." Instead, a greater gender balance will help bring it into mainstream communications and simply increase the popularity. Already, it is being discussed in terms of its application to small business and marketing. Sounds like the well-worn path of some other social networks that seemed silly and useless on first glance. I expect to see it used in sports, politics, government and Fortune 500-level businesses soon.  Some interesting stories about Pinterest:

"How You Can Make Pinterest Work for Your Small Business" (Washington Post)
"Marketers Find a Friend in Pinterest" (New York Times)
"Pinterest's 15 Most Popular Pins of All Time" (Huffington Post)
"5 Ways to Use Pinterest for Recruiting" (Mashable)

The Flurry of Social Media Activity: Who Will Be Left Standing?

Right now, there is a "summer storm" whirling around social media. The landscape is shaking and shifting as some of the major players try to position and re-position themselves, looking to gain a  foothold in what is becoming an increasingly popular space in cyberspace: the social media space. When all the commotion ends, we don't know who or what will be left standing.

It seems that the debut of Google Plus last July has triggered all the activity. Facebook and now Twitter have come forward with major revamps to 1) do what they do best even better and 2) fill any "gaps" in their product offerings that they have noticed in trying to keep up with the competition.  To gain any measure of meaning from this, look back to these once-dominant social media "leaders": MySpace, Yahoo (remember how portals were all the rage?), AOL (they truly ruled the world in the 1990s), and what about the "news" sites that triggered the cool-at-the-time debates about "push vs pull" technology? we don;t hear about any of those discussions any more. And we don't talk about these and many more Internet "roadkill" in dominant terms. Their day ahas come and gone. It was hard to imagine when they each had their turn at the top of the mountain, but it happened.

That's my point about all the fuss over Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter, you name it. lt is downright silly to pronounce any of these "dead"or "the winner" because there are many miles to go in this journey and anything can happen to tilt the wheel in any direction. The Internet is too fluid and the audience for social media too "transient"to place bets on how the social media wars will shake out.

I believe "who will be standing" is a lame question. The real questions is how will the landscape look when the fighting is over.  Frankly, Idon't believe there will be any "loser," and instead we'll see a different pecking order in which all the principal players in the social media survive and carve out a niche of some sort. I am enjoying watching the transition.

Is There Such a Thing as Tech Burnout?

I wonder if many of us are beginning to feel this way as we find ourselves fully wired 24 hours a day. It is a wonder that our dreams aren't wired and broadcast over the Internet when we are sleeping. I came across a couple interesting pieces on this subject today while scouring the news stories on Google News. Wonder how true you think any of this is? See what you think after you read these articles.

The article that started the debate was published in the N.Y. Times by Stephanie Rosenbloom.The other article is actually a commentary on the Rosenbloom piece.  A lot of this has come to the forefront with all the talk about Google Plus, the new social network, and the questions that has arisen from that debate is, "do we need another social network?"
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Get Used to Technology Burnout (The Atlantic Wire)
For the Plugged-In, Too Many Choices (N.Y,. Times)

My Experience with a "Google Plus Invite"

First of all, this is about "the friend of a friend." So I am not a "first tier" invitee to the new Google Plus social networking thing-a-ma-bob site.  But let me say I was very excited to get an invite, especially since it came "out of the blue" as a total surprise from someone in my office who knew I was interested in it and wanted to try it out. She was simply able to invite me after she got an invite. I have been somewhat desperate to see what the clamor was all about and I am glad that I did. She was not desperate and was just curious.

I have actually enjoyed the past 24 hours of playing around with Google Plus and getting to "test drive" it. It is nicely designed, well thought through for the most part, and seems to be rather easy to use.You feel like you are in a "communicator's pilot seat" when you are inside the network. It's very much like being inside Facebook.Same neighborhood, different house. But I like the concept and I think it is more "grownup" and has the potential to generate more discussion and feedback on issues rather than just be a "show and tell" site.

But here is the $64 billion question: how are they going to get so many millions of people to switch? When people dropped My Space and gravitated to Facebook, there weren't nearly that many people on a so-called social network." It grew in popularity over time because it was something different with a new twist on an old idea of "finding and keeping up with old friends."  I say this because when I reached out to about 20 of my Facebook friends to "join me"on Google Plus, the responses ranged from no response (mostly) to just "so...the world is still rotating on its axis..." I am talking about educated, well-connected, out-and-about social people who like being seen and heard. No one (except me) seemed to be in a hurry to "pack up the house" and move over to a whole new neighborhood hook, line and sinker.

I'm not even so sure people outside serious techies and true communications professionals"get it" about Google Plus. I felt sort of "weird" as if I were a deejay trying to get people to dance to some type of  weird new music in the middle of a party that was going good. Overall, I like what I have seen and I have started using the new network, but I don't have anybody else to play with except the person who invited me and a lot of people I don't know (like Bill Gates!) who I am following just to have some kind of activity on my account. To me, the key will be what happens when the doors are open to the public. Will people come rushing? In my case, I was somewhat deflated to know that I was the only one in my "circle" who was excited about Google Plus. I felt out of synch in a digital sort of way. I thought people would thank me and rush to sign up and be my Google Plus friend.

I think the biggest thing Google Plus has to work on is improving the "Sparks" feature At first, it is really cool to get a marquee roll of articles, blog posts, videos and other items on topics you are interested in. And it is cool you can have feeds coming in on multiple topics. But it seems to update very slowly if at all. It needs to be "real time." Maybe they are working on that. They have to be. It is too obvious. But that is a tremendous feature. It's great that you can pull items from that list and simply share them.

My favorite part of the network is quite simply the Circles. I use Facebook friends list,but this is a much easier way to group people and I like the fact that you don't have to ask someone to "be my friend," which to me can be kind of awkward on Facebook. Circles is cool, practical and very effective. I can only imagine how cool it would be if I actually had some real friends in them. I actually think Google Plus is misnamed. It should have been called Google Circles. Google Plus (or +) sounds like a new hyper search engine. Google Circles immediately gives off the impression that we are talking about people and communication...our circles! Such a name might draw more non-techies to sign in when it is available or accept invitations from people like me.

The only confusing part right now is the link to Picasa (soon to be Google Photos). It's not clear to me how it works and out of caution,I have posted no photos of my own outside my profile picture. The way that is explained and presented on the site should be revisited.

Overall, I like Google Plus,and am happy I got an invite. It won' t make me leave Facebook totally, but I have room to operate in both networks if I can just get some friends to join me. No fun if I am in this sandbox all alone with no one else to throw dirt on!