What Google Plus Really Is

There has been a lot of talk about what Google Plus is and the ongoing battle of whether it is a ghost town or a hidden gem of interaction and engagement. Which is it and why? What is Google Plus really supposed to be?

Party on Wayne! Party on Garth! 

There is a lot of confusion as to the intentions of what Plus is supposed to be. Some people say that is supposed to be a Facebook alternative, while others say it more like Twitter or other social networks. With the host of things you can do inside of Plus, it seems that people are not sure exactly what to do with it.

One thing is sure though, Google is integrating Plus across its entire platform of apps. With circles integration in Gmail and Docs, Search Plus Your World personalizing your search results, +1's across the web, YouTube integration into Hangouts, and Plus notifications across Google products, it is clear to see that Google wants Plus to be everywhere Google is. 

So where does this put Plus in the market? Mashable blogger, Lance Ulanoff reports on Guy Kawasaki's interview with Google+ Lead Vic Gundotra saying that "Gundotra said that what people do not understand is that with Google+, Google is actually building 2.0, in other words this is the next generation of Google as a broad-based service." This hints to what many have suspected the whole time, that Google Plus is not as much of a social network as it is a social layer on top of Google's already existing platform. As Gundorta says, "The Idea that we could build a social layer across everything is difficult for people to understand until they use it." 

This is why so many people are confused, because Plus is a social layer on top of your Google profile. It allows you to do anything that you would normally use Google for, but it gives you the added ease of sharing and some great extra unique tools as well. Since this is a social layer, naturally, there are social groups developing inside of Plus. Some topics seem to be more heavily present on Plus at the moment, such as tech bloggers and photographers. I think that as people continue to use other Google products they will see the added value in this social layer and begin to use it more. 

Since Plus is built this way, it seems likely that the growth and use of it would be slow. Despite the large numbers of sign-ups on Plus, there are many accounts that are still inactive. This is likely because these people do not use Google services as much as the rest many of the people who love Plus. 

When did this happen?

On its own, with the technology and the design, Plus could be a great Facebook competitor. However, I think that Google made the right move here in not going directly after Facebook with their social product. As we saw from the initial hype, many people weren't willing to ditch their Facebook accounts overnight, and many more were unwilling to go through the process of recreating their social network in a new place. Google adding Plus on top of their current services allows Google to add more value to their products, but they will also gain the necessary time and data to really develop the network at a more scaled pace. Facebook wasn't even close to the Facebook we know of today when it first launched over 8 years ago. It is clear to see that Google is no where near done with Plus and that we should be seeing a lot from the service as it continues to grow. 

Google Plus Has Great Potential

Google Plus is Google's newest and hottest social service that they have launched quite successfully. The site as it currently stands is a great service that offers a better way of sharing content with people in your networks through its clever method of grouping contacts into Circles. They also offer video chats and file sharing through its gchat service. A new content discovery tool that they are calling Sparks is also an interesting way to discover new things based on topics. Despite Google's great offerings so far on its service, I believe the best is about to come.

Google offers a huge plethora of services that are begging for more social engagement. Places, YouTube, Docs, Email, Blogging, and its beta Music service are definitely among these services. Google has had many of the pieces to build a powerful social network for years, now Google has possibly found a way to unify all of those services in a centralized hub that could take the internet by storm and keep Google on top of the internet for many years to come.

Despite the fact that these services already offer some sort of sharing options, it easy to think of how these could all be expanded and improved with the Plus social platform. For instance, it would be nice to be able to easily share an interesting email with your social circles instead of the old fashioned way of just forwarding an email. With the new look for Gmail coming soon that looks very similar to Plus, it doesn't seem far off that Google is planning on integrating it into Plus one way or another.

 Blogging could be enhanced by incorporating a feed of your latest blog posts from across the web on your profile or allowing you to pull full feeds from blogs you also write for. With recent rumors of a name change for Blogger and Picasa too, it is clear to see that they have serious intentions on integrating more of their services as well. Music beta could easily share songs that you thumbs up (perhaps +1 in the future) or just click and choose your social circles.

Google also has a lot of potential to turn the social networking industry on its head by being one of the first networks that allows you to easily maintain work contacts as well as friends all on network. We all have heard terror stories where people are fired or sued over something they posted on Facebook or Twitter, but with circles it is now much easier to make sure that only the right people see certain posts. You no longer need to fear (as much) about sharing things on a social network that might get picked up and read by the wrong person. Also, circles should help stop a lot of things coming into your feed that you really don't care about. For instance, on Facebook, I have friends that have a variety of careers and interests that I'm just honestly not interested in at all. I often see tons of updates from these people, and it can become quite annoying quite quickly, but the hope with Circles is that these people will realize I don't care and they'll stop sharing things about their job or industry that I have zero interest in with me. I know that I am happy that I no longer have to annoy friends of mine who aren't into graphic design with posts about design, and I don't have to worry coworkers with any personal things that I may want to share with certain people. It's not the end-all-be-all solution, but its definitely a huge leap in the right direction.




Google's plans to add business pages with enhanced features also sounds very promising. If Google plays its cards right and listens to user feedback, this site has a powerful potential to be something truly amazing.



Looking for a quick guide to get started with Google Plus? Check out this article for the info you'll need.

If you already using Plus, you can add me here.

What other ways can you think of that will help propel Google Plus into being the social king?

Google Needs To Revamp It's Search Features

Google is undoubtedly still the largest search engine on the web. They have created an empire on top of their quality results, expanding into all sorts of other ventures. However, if the company wants to stay just as successful in the years to come they will undoubtedly need to adapt their products and services for the future markets.

So far they have already created and launched some great new search features such as Google Instant, realtime search, the wonder wheel, and the new subjects for search results. All of these add some great functionality and can really help when you are searching for something.

As the web grows bigger and more crowded everyday, the importance and necessity of search engines is growing tremendously. We need to be able to find and sort content as quickly as possible in our world of constant internet connectivity everywhere. So how can Google stay on top of the search engine empire that they created?

Categories

Google should create search result filters that sort content into various categories for easy content discovery. So next time you search for "inspiration" on Google, you would see content divided up into categories such as design, life, motivation, and other categories of the sort that help you understand the type of information that you are looking at. This would allow users to more clearly see and navigate through the different subtopics that exist inside of the scope of the broad search terms that people commonly use. Google already has lots of data and algorithms that would allow the search engine to do this with relative ease.

Reorganize Search Filters

Like I just mentioned, Google already has a lot of great content filter. The problem is that a lot of these features and filters seem to be hidden to the common user, even though they are almost all just sitting in the side bar on the left of your google search results. These filters should be more prominent for certain search results. For instance, when I search for design inspiration, since Google should already know that I am a designer, it should display more results from within my social networks as the prominent results. When you search for a scientific plant name, Google should display scholarly articles on top of the other search results. If Google brings these search result filters to the forefront, they can significantly increase the value of their search results.

Google "Wonder Wheel" search results with all of the other search filters displayed along the left side.

Display and Layout

Google's minimal display results are quite gorgeous most of the time, but it is arguable that Google needs to spice up its search results. I can agree to this to a certain degree, I think that the minimalism that Google provides is great and makes personally filtering and analyzing the results a much easier experience. However, I think that they can definitely alter the way they display their results to add more value without adding more clutter. The way that Good displays topics on their home page is one style that may be able to add a lot of value to the way the results can be displayed. This method of content display would allow the normal search results to appear in a similar fashion to that of the image results that Google uses, this would allow google to show a lot more content on a single page while still keeping things simple and beautiful. This is just one idea of how the search results could be altered visually to make them more useful, there are thousands of other visual variations that could accomplish great results.

Good.com displays content in beautiful block forms.

Music Madness - Feel Good Music

With all this new beautiful spring weather coming around, I thought it was about time to make a little playlist to reflect that good feeling of spring and sunshine!

Music Madness - Chill Playlist

Here is a really chill playlist for your ears' pleasure. Listen to it here or check it out on YouTube.

Free And Amazing Android Music Apps

Now that Android has been around in the mobile phone platform ecosystem for a while, there is now a large selection of great apps across all categories to choose from. This definitely holds true for the music apps available in the Android Market, as there are now a few great music player apps that go far beyond the stock music player on your phone. The apps covered here are all available for FREE, and you can install them from your computer to your phone with the links provided.

doubleTwist 

This is a one of the best looking music players available for Android. It's deliciously simple and fun to use along with having some great looking and equally simple and beautiful looking widgets to match. One of the best features is the (optional) accompanying doubleTwist desktop app avaialable for both Mac and PC that supports syncing with your iTunes library as well as your photos and videos. There is also an amazing add-on app called doubleTwist AirSync ($4.99) that will let you sync your phone wirelessly to your iTunes library.

Songbird

This is one of the best mobile music players I've ever had the pleasure of using. This app offers more useful and robust features than just about any other music app available. The UI (user interface, or the way it looks and feels for those of you that aren't familiar with the terminology), is pretty good and just about everything you need is less than one or two clicks away. Beyond great music playing/navigation and the pleasing UI, Songbird also offers a few social integrations like posting the now playing track to Facebook, Last.fm scrobbling, as well as Flikr photo streams for whatever you are listening to. Just like doubleTwist, there is also a desktop version of Songbird that is available for Mac, PC, and Linux that allows pretty easy syncing options with your device, but I do not believe they offer wireless syncing yet. A nice little touch with that is there is also a free remote available to control your desktop version of Songbird called Songbird Remote Free.

Other Music Apps

Here are some other great music apps that you may also be interested in:
Pandora - Free internet radio streaming with personal stations. It tries to play music you will like.
Shazam - Music discovery and sharing.
SoundHound - Song identification made easy. Hear a song at the bar and want to know what it is? That's what this app is for.
SoundCloud - If you don't already know what this is, you probably don't need it.
Subsonic Music Streamer - Stream music and video from your computer to your mobile device.
Audiogalaxy Music - Dead simple music streaming from and your computer.
mSpot Music - Stream your iTunes to your phone. Also lets you sync some music to your phone for when you can't access internet on the go, as well as lets you stream from any computer's web browser.

Do You Want Super Powers?

Duh! Who wouldn't? Well this kid decided that he really, really wanted superhuman powers so he took the matter into his own hands...literally.



What kind of superpowers should we artificially create next?

Core War

Back in the days processing power used to be all about the clock speed, these days it seems to be all about the number of cores you have. First it was dual core processors, but now those have become the industry minimum in most cases. Then you could have two dual core processors on your motherboard, acting as a sort of quad core. After that it was true quad core, and then somehow we stepped backward into the triple core arena. As the process for creating CPU's has gotten progressively smaller and smaller of the years we have been able to fit more and more cores onto a single die allowing users to have better real world multitasking performance. The main problem is when it comes to implementing these technologies into smaller platforms such as compact desktops, laptops, and now netbooks.
      Well Intel, as they having been doing for the past few years, is leading the way with these new innovations and has just announced a soon to be released Core i7 mobile CPU. This is great news for on the go multimedia enthusiasts, gamers, and professional gamers alike. The i7 series is one of the most advanced processing technologies available on the market today, and now this powerhouse is almost ready to be shipped out in your next laptop! These processors come with "Turbo Boost Technology" which selectively shuts off unused cores and uses the extra power to speed up the remaining core(s) while doing its best to preserve battery life. Even with this mode and other some of the other features I doubt that users will be getting much battery life with these beasts installed, so I wouldn't expect to see them on Apples expected MacBook update this fall. And if you are interested in buying a new laptop with one of these, I hope you have deep wallets. Also, be sure to keep a look out for 8 core desktop processors sometime next year!

Check out the official Intel release info here.
Or read more about it at Gizmodo.

Where are the Speakers?

Black voodoo magic? Perhaps, or more likely its the new "invisible" speakers from Emo Labs. They have created a new way to implement speakers onto thin devices that suffer from poor sound quality due to crappy, small speakers. They use a clear material that looks like contact paper (you know, the stuff you used to put on your books in grade school) and they apply that to the screen of a device like a TV or  maybe even an iPhone? It uses cross vibrational technology to create a sound that you can feel on the screen. Pretty cool technology, enables better sound quality and allows devices to become even smaller since they wont have a need to include speakers. Check out this video for a demo.



Read more here.

My Favorite Videos of the Week: Version 5

It's been a while since I've put together a playlist for you guys, I apologize. But here is a new round up of funny vids and what not for ya!