Rapidity for Improvements
Is the idea of rapidity for improvements in direct conflict with qualities of life? http://eicker.at/Hyperconnectivity
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Gerrit Eicker
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Gerrit Eicker
Google Search
Google: Another look under the hood of search – the evolution of Google Search; http://eicker.at/GoogleSearch
Gerrit Eicker
Google Plus + Google Reader
Google Reader gets redesigned and plusified: Google Plus now on Search, Blogger, Google Apps; http://eicker.at/GoogleReaderPlus
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Gerrit Eicker
Google: “Today we’re rolling out the new Reader design, and the Google+ features that we mentioned just over a week ago. Before the day’s over, all Reader users will be able to enjoy the following improvements: A new look and feel that’s cleaner, faster, and nicer to look at. The ability to +1 a feed item (replacing ‘Like’), with an option to then share it with your circles on Google+ (replacing ‘Share’ and ‘Share with Note’). … Updates to Google Reader on the web are rolling out gradually and should reach all users by end of day. A new Android application will follow soon. If you have questions about today’s announcements, please check out our Help Center.”
RWW: “After announcing on October 20 that Google Reader would be annexed by Google Plus, Reader has gotten the ol’ +1 today. Google is rolling out the new, clean Plus theme that has already come to Gmail, Docs and elsewhere, and it is replacing the Reader ‘Like’ function with the +1 button. Sharing from Google Reader now produces a +snippet. I guess we no longer need that nice workaround. … For anyone who doesn’t use Google Plus, there are some amazing RSS clients that use your Google Reader as the back-end but let you share however you’d like. And you know you can still add all your preferred sharing services to the ‘Send To’ tab, right? The same settings we showed you before to add Google Plus as a Reader service will let you add anything else, too.”
RWW: “Google has made very clear over the past month that Plus will be integrated into all of Google’s products over time, so this wasn’t a surprising move. However, rather predictably, there has been a user backlash anyway. … I believe that comment was a little disingenuous from Gray, because he knows that Google dominates what’s left of the RSS Reader market. There are always alternatives, but the reality is that relatively few people will use them. What’s more, most of the alternatives rely on Google Reader for content. … The RSS Reader market has declined because reading content is a very fragmented experience these days. … Even despite all of the changes in the way people consume content on the Web, Google Reader had been the holdout as a specialist RSS Reader product. It has (had?) a passionate community of RSS Reader fanatics.”
TNW: “The new look falls in line with the rest of the changes that we’ve seen from Google over the past few months, specifically after the launch of Google+. You’ll see a new preview pane that shows you all of your stories, with subscriptions along the left in a list like before. – Sharing in Google Reader is now considerably different than before. Instead of having a network in and of itself, anything that you share is now going to happen via a +1 to Google+, as detailed in a blog post last week. Google says that it has done this in order to ‘streamline Reader overall’, but the changes aren’t as welcome by everyone. … Ultimately it doesn’t take away from the usefulness of Google Reader as a product, and it’s not the first time that Google has pushed its way into your social life, either (remember the launch of Buzz?). At the end of the day it will be up to users to figure out if they want to share content via a +1, but chances are that Reader fans aren’t going to be adversely affected overall.”
TC: “As expected, Google has ignored the cries of the niche community of Google Reader sharing enthusiasts [as well as what seems to be the entire online population of Iran], and has pushed forward in its plans to remove Google Reader’s native sharing features to promote deeper integration with Google+. While the ability to share with Google+ is an obvious important step forward for Google’s social agenda, it will be disappointing change for at least some of the Google Reader community – a community that even went so far as to create a petition to save the old features. The petition is now pushing 10,000 responses.”
Blogger: “In fewer than 4 months since its launch, more than 40 million people have joined Google+, making it a living, breathing space for social connections and sharing to thrive. – Today we’re excited to announce the first way you will be able to leverage Google+ – by making it possible to replace your Blogger profile with your Google+ profile. – In addition to giving your readers a more robust and familiar sense of who you are, your social connections will see your posts in their Google search results with an annotation that you’ve shared the post.”
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Gerrit Eicker
Winer: “People should know that there is more than one way to do an RSS reading app. Google Reader is one approach. A thousand flowers should bloom to fill the gap it’s creating in the market. There is a way to do plumbing that’s open, that people can subscribe to, independent of Google. That does what Google Reader just stopped doing. I would try to make it work as much as I could without inventing new formats. … I love when people like Richard put awful ideas out there like the one he did. You’re trapped inside Google’s silo, even for something that was open from the start like RSS. Well I think there are a lot of people who are smart enough to know that that’s not true. Those are the very people I want to work with.“
Gerrit Eicker
Google Plus Reviews
Google Plus is a technological masterpiece, but cloning Facebook is not an innovation; http://eicker.at/GooglePlusReviews
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Gerrit Eicker
BI: “Save for some minor improvements, Google+ offers nothing groundbreaking enough to drive the masses from Facebook. Almost every feature from ‘Circles‘ to ‘Streams‘ has a counterpart feature in Facebook. – The only notable exception is ‘Hangouts,’ the feature that lets you host group video chats with your friends. … All these criticisms don’t mean I think Google+ is a bad product. It’s actually well-designed and easy to use. … At the end of the day, Google+ is a solid product on its own. But it’s not rich or new enough to get people to make the switch.”
DT: “Google+ is almost a direct clone of Facebook. While it is an impressive effort, particularly on the discovery side, there appears to be little to drive you from Facebook to it. If emulation is the greatest complement, Google paid Facebook a huge compliment and the quality of Google’s offering is impressive. The problem for Google is that Facebook users seem to be relatively happy. There are concerns with regard to privacy on Facebook, which could play for Google if folks weren’t more concerned with Google’s privacy practices. Much as you likely wouldn’t be interested in an even trade for a house or car that is identical in all ways to the one you have, folks likely won’t switch from Facebook to Google+ in significant numbers. And with social networks, the big value isn’t the product, but the number of your friends that are on it.”
WP: “There are some really great features in the network worth mentioning. For one, the navigation bar, which pushes you alerts on network activity without being too intrusive, and the group video chat function, Hangouts, is way beyond any free video chat service I’ve seen. – But there are problems, too. … Getting me to switch from Facebook is going to rely on whether I can fold G+ into my daily routine. … Overall, Google + was fun to use and has a lot of potential. I could see using it in addition to Facebook, but until Google weaves more of their existing services into G+ and opens it up to include more of the people I want to connect with, it won’t become my main way to socialize online.”
AF: “To be honest, my gut reaction after using Google Plus was initially, ‘Why on earth would anybody switch to this from Facebook?’ – However, when I loaded up Google Finance as I do every morning, I suddenly realized that I was asking the wrong question. The reality is that users won’t have the option of not using Google Plus. – Google already has more users than Facebook, over one billion. They aren’t going to suddenly leave Facebook in droves, they’re just going to spend more time on all the sites in Google’s network. That big notifications box in the top right of all Google sites is the reason why. … No, Google Plus is not a ‘Facebook killer,’ but despite the company’s numerous failed attempts at getting into social media, the new Plus product gives users no other option but to accept the fact that Google is becoming exactly that: social.”
Winer: “It was after seeing how they had inserted this into search that I decided I had made a mistake by opting-in. Remembering that it was impossible to opt-out of Buzz (I still accidentally click on the link from time to time, as a Gmail user, you can’t get rid of it) I figured that it would be similarly impossible to rid myself of Google Plus. … One of my Twitter friends sent me a link to the opt-out page. … I have opted-out. In theory. I’ll let you know if it worked.”
Winer: “I don’t think Google has a choice. Their ‘social’ offerings have been rebuffed repeatedly, and they will continue to be rejected by users, no matter how promising they are, no matter what they are, different from Facebook, a Facebook clone, doesn’t matter. Why? You can’t make revolution with employees. Can’t be done. They don’t know how to do it. … So if I were Larry, I’d make the cloud to end all clouds and price it really cheap for any entrepreneur who’s willing to stake their future on being the next Big One.”
AdAge: “Facebook’s traffic will not suffer. People will keep using Facebook. But when you have a tight little group, you may find Google+ to be just right for sharing with that group. So I think Google+ will catch on with lots of groups — Boy Scout troops, book groups, college cliques, that kind of thing. It may build a nice niche out of these groups, and extend the value of Google Groups in general. It will get people to spend more time on Google. But it won’t replace or even dent Facebook any time soon. – What does this mean for marketers? First – yes, you should keep a close eye on this, and consider advertising on it to the groups that matter to you. If Google+ makes it easy for companies to create brand groups, that’s worth a look (when it happens). – But I think you can safely ignore Google+ for at least 12 months.”
RWW: “Circles are a lot like Facebook’s friend lists, a feature which Facebook has shown less support for and interest in over time. … To continually differentiate itself from Facebook, and keep Circles from becoming an organizational overhead nightmare, Google Plus needs to get smarter, quickly. Google should use its engineering brilliance to build algorithms that do relationship management for you. It should know when you change jobs (you update LinkedIn, for example) and suggest or enact a Circles change to reflect that.”
TNW: “In case you hadn’t noticed by now, demand for access to Google+ is astronomic right now, and when demand for something is exceed supply, the scammers and others looking to make a quick buck will undoubtedly come out to play. – There’s no difference here. Access to Google+ is currently on sale on eBay for prices ranging between $0.99 and $27 by a number of sellers claiming to offer ‘instant delivery’.“
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Gerrit Eicker
Jarvis: “To paraphrase Mark Zuckerberg, it is too soon to know what Google+ is. But I’ve been trying to imagine how it will and won’t be useful to news. … Google+ likely won’t be good for live coverage of breaking events… G+ should be good for collaboration on reporting. … If Google gets its synergistic act together and incorporates Google Docs – and some of the tricks from Wave – into G+, then this could be a very good collaboration tool for communities… G+ will be good for promoting content. … G+’s identities likely won’t be as reliable as Facebook’s, as it is easy to create an account and identity on there are not the social pressures for authenticity. … G+ may be a good place to find photos from news…”
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Gerrit Eicker
AdAge: “Google’s new social network Google+ may never dent Facebook’s dominance, but its entrance into the fray is scrambling the emerging market of startups billing themselves as Facebook alternatives. …They might be fighting an uphill battle if Google+ has staying power after its hype-filled limited release. If nothing else, Google just sucked a lot of oxygen out of the room, and one founder said privately that Google+ is causing a re-think on how to forge ahead. – ‘It’s going to be very hard to be a David,’ said Charlene Li, founder of the Altimeter Group, a social media advisory firm, noting that Google’s existing user base gives it a huge advantage. Conversely, startups will have to start a relationship with people looking for a Facebook alternative from scratch.”
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Gerrit Eicker
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Gerrit Eicker
Diaspora Alpha
Diaspora releases set of invites for its alpha: baby steps to identify problems and iterate; http://eicker.at/DiasporaAlpha
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Gerrit Eicker
Diaspora: “Today we’re releasing the first set of invites for the Diaspora alpha at joindiaspora.com. Every week, we’ll invite more people, starting with our Kickstarter backers, and then moving through our mailing list. By taking these baby steps, we’ll be able to quickly identify performance problems and iterate on features as quickly as possible. – We are proud of where Diaspora is right now. In less than five months, we’ve gone from nothing to a great starting point from which the community can keep working.”
TC: “After the money came in, the team sequestered themselves for the Summer to work on the project. Despite some hiccups, they were able to unveil the source of the project in September to mixed reviews. Meanwhile, a user-facing alpha launch was promised for October. That came and went, and they pushed the launch to Thanksgiving. Well, we’re two days away from turkey day, and Diaspora has delivered this time. … But the service is also quick to hedge their bets. ‘It isn’t perfect, but the best way to improve is to get it into your hands and listen closely to your response,’ they note about the aspects idea. They then go on to list five things they know they could do better, including: security, better APIs, better documentation, easier upgrades, and cleaner code. Yeah, that’s quite a few major things.”
Mashable: “Since the initial flurry of interest, we’ve been waiting to see how the project would pan out – and if the guys would give us a clearer picture of what it would look like. Back in September, the Diaspora team released their source code to developers, receiving less than enthusiastic reviews. According to the guys, however, dev feedback has been extremely helpful when it comes to fixing bugs and security holes. … In the meantime, however, we have to wonder if it will succeed. Facebook – despite the previous security crisis – is still going strong, and the alternative social network market is becoming more competitive…”
Gerrit Eicker
iPad Magazines
RWW: How are magazines using the iPad? What is the user experience like? What still needs to be done; http://j.mp/ajQpeI
Google: “Over the past few years, we’ve released a series of blog posts to share the methodology and process behind our search ranking, evaluation and algorithmic changes. Just last month, Ben Gomes, Matt Cutts and I participated in a Churchill Club event where we discussed how search works and where we believe it’s headed in the future. – Beyond our talk and various blog posts, we wanted to give people an even deeper look inside search, so we put together a short video that gives you a sense of the work that goes into the changes and improvements we make to Google almost every day. While an improvement to the algorithm may start with a creative idea, it always goes through a process of rigorous scientific testing. Simply put: if the data from our experiments doesn’t show that we’re helping users, we won’t launch the change. … In the world of search, we’re always striving to deliver the answers you’re looking for. After all, we know you have a choice of a search engine every time you open a browser. As the Internet becomes bigger, richer and more interactive it means that we have to work that much harder to ensure we’re unearthing and displaying the best results for you.”
Google: “Following up on our video on how we make improvements to search, we wanted to share with you a short history of the evolution of search, highlighting some of the most important milestones from the past decade-and a taste of what’s coming next. – Our goal is to get you to the answer you’re looking for faster and faster, creating a nearly seamless connection between your questions and the information you seek. For those of you looking to deepen your understanding of how search has evolved, this video highlights some important trends like universal results, quick answers and the future of search. – For more information, go to Google.com/insidesearch”
SEL: “Google released a short video today highlighting some of its key milestones in search over the past decade. It’s both a fun blast from the past and a worthwhile reminder of how much things have changed over the years. The video is also a nice follow-on to the look under the hood of search that Google released in August.”
TC: “One anecdote centers on the attacks of September 11: in the wake of the attacks, many people were searching for ‘New York Twin Towers’ and related queries as they attempted to get the latest news – only to find that Google’s index didn’t have any relevant news stories because it was weeks old (Danny Sullivan has written more about this failure). Google’s quick-fix was to post links to relevant news articles on its homepage, and its stumble eventually led to the launch of Google News.”
ATD: “So, what would be a hard query that Google wants to answer in the future? Complex questions that take reasoning, says Google Fellow Amit Singhal. ‘In my ideal world, I would be able to walk up to a computer and say, ‘Hey, what is the best time for me to sow seeds in India, given that monsoon was early this year?’‘ Singhal says in the video.”
RWW: “4 Big Trends in the Evolution of Google Search … Univeral Search – Google’s introduction of universal search in 2007 was the beginning of a trend away from separating Web search results by type and toward putting it all in one place. … Google Goes Mobile and Local – Before long, Google was deep into the business of local commerce. With the rise of Android, Google had an end-to-end business of finding location-based results for local businesses, restaurants and destinations. … Google Search and Time – Google has changed the impact of time on search, as well as place. It has tweaked the way timeliness of content appears in search multiple times, and its latest update calculates when a search is probably looking for recent results rather than historical ones. … Google+: Google’s New Identity – Identity is the final piece of the puzzle. Google has personalized results for a while using Web history and sharing data. But with the launch of Google+, Google has introduced a form of social SEO. Social activity is now a fundamental part of how search results appear for users logged into Google’s ubiquitous Web services.“