Google Plus Archive

Another day, another battle of “Google+ is the future” vs. “Google+ is dead”. I am guessing we will see these back-and-forth posts for a long time. This week the hot thing to do on Google+ is to make circles of the same brands everyone else has and then share those circles with your followers who have probably already created the same brand circles.

One of the earliest supporters of Google+ was Edelman EVP Steve Rubel. Steve heads up the Global Strategy and Insights division for the global agency. Steve is a good speaker and I have always found Steve to have interesting insights and enjoyed our in-person conversations. He seemed to post/re-share to Google Plus numerous times every day throughout the earliest days and summer. Then slowly his postings started to become less frequent. If I remember correctly, Steve held multiple internal conferences with his colleagues to educate them about Google+ shortly after launch.

In early September, Edelman announced that they were selected as Twitter’s new PR firm. Did this new client signing influence Steve to spend more time on Twitter than Google Plus? Some of the conversations I had since the announcement seemed to think so but I am not sold on this idea because Steve’s job requires that he understand all of the networks so he can position them properly to Edelman’s staff and, in-turn, clients. Google evangelist Louis Gray noted the new Twitter-Edelman relationship when Rubel shared a post that questioned whether Google+ would be around for the long-term.

On October 20th, Rubel asked if, “Anybody Home” and he received over 20 responses including one from me. There have been no posts from Rubel until one early this morning where he posted the following message:

I have decided not to post here for the time being. I will leave my profile up. Google+ is great. I wish them luck. Really i do. But I have to make choices about where I spend my time and for me that’s Twitter, Facebook and soon Tumblr – where I will be doing more so. It’s where I get the most value for the time invested. So, adios for now. See you on one of those networks. I may change my mind one day, but right now this is my plan. See you online. / Steve

Some have asked me if this is a bad sign for Google+. I am not sure if this should be considered any sort of death sign because I know Steve is crazy busy as it took me quite a while to get on his calendar a couple of years ago. It would be interesting to hear from Steve about how he will position Google+ to his colleagues and to all of Edelman’s clients going forward. I guess I will have to find him on Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr to attempt to get the answer to this very important question.

Developer Daniel Treadwell has created a public blog using the Google+ API. What’s neat about Daniel’s test is that the content is available on the blog as real, raw cotent and HTML – it’s not just a Javascript include.

You can view Daniel’s blog here. The blog correctly links to a Google+ profile when Daniel has tagged a person.

This will eventually mark the fork in the road between Google+ and Facebook.

You can change the ID on Daniel’s blog if you want to see what your stream would look like as a blog. Here’s mine as an example – you can find your ID in the URL on your Google Plus profile page. Of course should this test go live, we probably want to make sure that someone can’t just hack the URL and make a person’s blog look very different – you can imagine the potentially evil possibilities there.

I could see blogger Robert Scoble replacing his WordPress blog with his public Google+ stream once this application is completed. (confirmed: Scoble notes, “I would love to use this on my own blog, which is based on WordPress.”) He goes on to say that he would pay $50-100 for a WordPress extension that has the same functionality.

Perhaps the right solution is similar to how Disqus handles comments – when you use the Disqus comment plugin on a WordPress blog, Disqus saves the comment to Disqus but also back to the source blog so you can remove Disqus and keep all of the comments left on your blog. The Google+ plugin could work the same way allowing you to remove the plugin but keep the content created on Google+.

In addition, considering the amount of resharing that takes place on Google+, I wonder if this type of API usage could become a competitor to Tumblr?

The big Google+ news today wasn’t that the message board service increased their traffic by 1,269%, nope, the big super huge mega news is that you can now share your circles with your circles (see what I did there?). Circles are the apparatus that Google+ uses (most services call them lists) to help you organize your people, friends, friends of friends, required marketing parties, people who are acting as brands, bloggers who you need to circle to help you get press later on, etc.

The truth is that many people will be emotionally joyous or very hurt by their status, or non-status, in a specific circle. For example, let’s say you think you are a person who is a great, news breaking, tech blogger. And one of your popular friends shares her circle called, “Great, News Breaking Tech Bloggers”, you are listed in there and are very excited. Naturally you +1 the thing straight away and re-share the previously shared circle which helps you show off how great and how news breaking you are.

I do wonder how many of the reshares of shared circles come from people who are listed in the circle – somehow I’d bet it will be a very high percentage.

But what about when you are left out of a circle that you think you should be a part of? What do you do? One person I follow on the Google Plus message board noted upon sharing one of her circles, ” If I missed you, leave me a comment so I can consider adding you!!” Oh gee, thanks, let me send you my resume and my linkedin so you can consider adding me to your circle, thank you so much for this consideration!!! I sure hope my Klout score is high enough so she will add me to the circle!

Continue reading “New CN Offering: Google+ Circle Exclusion Representation Service” »

Last night I was out clubbing in Austin…trying to get my mack on (I do a mean cabbage patch) and finally find the future Mrs. Stern. While I was standing at the bar, (no I didn’t find an iPhone 5) I noticed a piece of paper on the bar that looked interesting so I grabbed it. Turns out it appears the paper seems to be a job posting for a position with a “newly-launched” social network message board. It feels like a job posting for Google+ Suggested Users but I have been unable to confirm. Unfortunately the bartender told me he spilled Milwaukee’s Best on the paper so some parts are unreadable and my scanner is dead so I can’t post an image. Here’s what I was able to put together from the paper…

Job Title: Elite Users Wanted for (word missing) — a Newly-Launched Social Network

Job Description: Are you looking to grow your fan base on a (word missing) network?

This position is perfect for you if you have more than 100,000 followers on Twitter. (partially missing word)ogle is looking for people (or cats, dogs and other non-perishables as long as you meet the 100k+ requirement) to join our (something)+ social network. You don’t need a (something)+ account to apply and even if you don’t have a real name, we will still take you as long as you have more than 100,000 Twitter followers.

Please note that we do not actually care how you obtained your 100,000 Twitter followers – if you were given them as freebies because you are on the Twitter suggested user list, if you bought them on Canal Street, or if you worked really hard and earned them.

Continue reading “Is This a Google+ Job Posting?” »

A couple of days ago, I created a fun, fake joke post about how you could attend my seminar on how to become a Google+ expert. Most thought it was real (no idea why) and some were very upset and/or angry that I would offer a course for a social network that has been live for less than a month, has already been notified changes are coming and is only used by social media experts to talk about social media experts and Google+. Of course once they realized that it was a  joke, everyone had a good laugh.

But apparently one person saw a gold rush and decided to actually offer a one-hour course so soon post launch — that person? Chris Brogan. Before I continue, let me say that while I have never met Chris, he does come across as genuine. I’d place him second in terms of being able to round up the sheeps – and unlike the person I’d put first, Chris appears to have built his following organically which is awesome. He’s also been one of the few people to be able to post paid affiliate links into his streams without huge backlash. My issue isn’t that he is offering this course, but rather that he should have waited at least six months for the network to balance itself.

Chris is offering a one-hour session for $50 on, “How To Learn Google+ for Business and Networking”. He plans to teach attendees the following:

• Profile tips and tricks.
• Organizing people in circles.
• Finding the good stuff.
• How to post engaging material.
• Keeping up with comments.
• Making the most of your time.

Funny enough some of his agenda items match mine – and the others on his list are very general. He is also going to offer a Q&A session for an hour after the learning takes place.

Continue reading “Srsly? My Google+ Seminar Was a Joke, Apparently This One’s For Reals” »

Two years ago I created a history of online experts – everything from the early “html experts” to the more modern “social media experts” and everything in between. Sadly I’ve been up way late at night recently and have seen television infomercials that can help you become an eBay expert, Facebook expert and even how to make buckets of cash pushing products on Twitter.

Since the launch of the new Google+ social network and subsequent explosion in users (apparently the count is going up faster than the U.S. debt), I realized that it would make sense for someone like myself to offer a Google+ Expert Course. You see I was one of the earliest users, I have an avatar and I understand the difference between share, like, vote +1 and comment.

UPDATE: The first city has sold out – we filled up the 50,000 seat arena in just two days. Stay tuned for the second city launch or join the waitlist (there’s a $100 waitlist fee)

The Google+ Expert Course will be offered in 4 cities in 2011 – the city list will be announced shortly as I want to make sure we secure a space that can hold at least 50,000-100,000 in each city. The course will also be offered as a “hangout” on Google+ for the 10 people who can get in before space fills up.

Continue reading “Launching The Google+ Expert Training Course! Limited Availability – Register Today!” »

Well the holidays came early this year for early adopters with the clinical field test trial of Google+ (or is it Google Plus?). I like to think of myself as an early adopter who acts like a normal and frankly so far Google+ seems a lot like Friendfeed.

There is a video feature which will be a huge hit in the adult sector once/if G+ makes it past the e-adopter set. Last night I watched Robert Scoble eat some fried chicken while he and 10 others talked about some technology – I can certainly see why this is the future now.

In all seriousness, I find the interface a bit confusing in terms of where to find updates and if they auto-refresh in real-time but I am sure I will get it at some point. The nice thing I hear about Google+ is that there is no much richness in terms of all the apps and friends and stuff that you may never want to leave!

Of course next week Facebook is apparently launching some video tool so look forward to posts that explain why G+ is dead.

Continue reading “Comprehensive List of Dead Companies/Technologies Due to Google+” »