So, Johnson & Johnson — you’re a male, right? If you’ve tried looping your business into Google+, you may have noticed that it’s not exactly setup for that right now. In case you didn’t, however, Goog’s own Christian Oestlien has a bit of intel he’d like you to know. For now, Google+ remains a consumer-oriented affair, but he did say that there’s a team of engineers toiling away on “an amazing Google+ experience for businesses.” As for features? Mum’s the word, really, but we aretold that it’ll “far exceed the consumer profile in terms of its usefulness to businesses.” The company’s asking for patience while the finishing touches are made, and Google’s going to be testing the waters with a few marketing partners over the next few months. As for when your own LLC can take advantage? “Later this year.”
Google Plus may very well find that its Circle’s feature is the most interesting part of the entire platform. Google Plus will be the new social media platform that attempts to fill in the gaps that other social media platforms have either left out or have not created very well. Those who participate actively in social media have long complained that they need a way to segment their family relationships from their business relationships, and they also want to segment both of those relationships from close platonic relationships and romantic relationships. With frequent media spotlights on employees who have made errors in judgment that have cost them their jobs, people may have become more apt to not connect to others on Facebook. Google Plus and the Circles feature may just be the solution that social media users have been wanting.
Google Plus Facilitates All Types Of Relationships With The Circles Feature
What seems to be very attractive to potential new users of the Google Plus platform is that the Circles feature does not penalize individuals for reaching out to strangers, yet it still protects users from spam-like introductions. The same way that people in real life can choose when and how to interact, the Circles feature of Google Plus allows for the same kind of normal, compartmentalized interactions. A separate feature that is of great interest is Hangout, where strangers can safely meet and plan interactions both virtually and offline. It is assumed that a natural progression from Hangouts could be the Circles Feature. Hangouts can also be used with existing friends to create face to face video chats or to plan live meetings if users happen to be “hanging out” someplace where others might want to join them, like a bookstore or coffee shop. By promoting real, social activity, the applications seem endless.
Google Plus Demo Includes the Circles Feature
For those who are interested in Google Plus, there is a demo of the new platform that includes a brief demo of the Circles feature. There are other demos as well. What is not clear is exactly how all of the sharing takes place in the closed-environment groups that users can pre-determine. Will only the people in a user’s hypothetical “Family Circle” be allowed permissions in a user-defined Spark? What if a user wants to only tell their “Bookstore Circle” that there is a Huddle at their local bookstore? The demo does not show clearly how that will happen, but all bets are for Google Plus. Most believe that Google, the search engine giant and creator of the platform has it all figured out and that the Circles feature – which seems to be the core of the entire Google Plus experience at the moment – will easily interact with all the other features.
In this article, the reader learned that the part of Google Plus that is generating a frenzy of media and user attention is the Circles feature. Potential users hope that the relationship segmenting will be an intuitive part of the platform. Readers have also learned that, while there is a lot of buzz about Google Plus, there are not many definitive or official answers yet. Google is testing Google Plus with a limited number of early users who are helping to create a better experience through good feedback.
I thought I'd type up some notes after an evening of using Google's new social network, Google Plus. This is a really big deal, a super ambitious effort involving scores of engineers over months of near total secrecy. (Though some helpful sources and I scooped the core Circles part of all this three months ago.) The service is really, really well done. Will it be good enough? I have no idea, but I have felt drawn to keep using it all night long.
The fundamental value proposition is around privacy: it's the opposite of Facebook and Twitter's universal broadcast paradigm. Google Plus is based on the Google Circles feature, which lets you share and view content to and from explicitly identified groups of your contacts, and no one else. It's really easy to use and a great feature - but even if you're communicating out in public, the rest of the service is very well designed, too. This is a smart, attractive, very strong social offering from Google. Below are some notes after a few hours of use.
Above: Anil Dash on Plus. Below, Circles curation.
Google Circles to Challenge Facebook Connect
When asked about a Google Plus API, Google's Joseph Smarr said the following tonight on the site itself. "Of course, and we're eager to make the social graph a 'two-way street' where you can use your circles to quickly get up-and-running on a new site, but also make new friends on that site and add them to your circles. Lots of details to work through, but the best way to do it is with good agile partners building cool social experiences. ;)"
That sounds exactly like Facebook Connect, in particular the get up-and-running quickly on a new site part, and makes sense given the degree to which Plus is understood as a challenge to Facebook generally.
Big picture take-away: Google has built an attractive, intuitive, intelligent service that's fun to use and speaks to a deep human need for contextual integrity of communication. There is not just public/private, life is more complex than that. This need, unmet by almost any other social network today, is where Google is aiming to win the hearts of users. The app the company built towards that aim is smooth and pleasing to use.
The list, group or Circle creation interface is interesting and really easy to use. You drag peoples' contact cards into big circles at the bottom of the page and those people are added to that group, or Circle. It's full of fun little animations (try deleting a circle or grabbing multiple contacts) and if there is anything that will make people want to manually organize their contacts, this could be it. This is really important because as I've argued for several years, groups are the secret weapon of the social web. Anything that can increase the percentage of social software users who are actively curating dynamic, topical sources is a net win for the web and for the people who use it. List creation on competing services has been a mixed bag. It's undervalued at Twitter and suffocated on Facebook.
When hovering over a username, you can see a set of Circle titles that can be checked off to add people to groups as well. It is a shame that there aren't any recommendations for people that ought to be grouped together automatically into a common Circle. Google could do that, but perhaps like Face Recognition they worried it would set people aBuzz with eerie privacy concerns.
The ability to toss a contact into a Circle with typing and autocomplete make it even easier to organize contacts.
Photo sharing is really smooth and easy. I don't have an Android phone so I haven't been able to test the Instant Upload feature that's reminiscent if not better than Apple's forthcoming iCloud for photos (or Windows Mobile's existing feature), but the desktop drag and drop uploader is very, very nice. The ability to drag things right into the share box at the top of the newsfeed is nice, too.
Photo viewing is a little less elegant, but it's ok.
The mobile web app is very good, though because of an error right now you can't moderate comments as promised. That's how high the expectations are set though!
The mobile web app makes it easy to check in to locations, though in typical Google style (Plus being a radical departure!) there's not a lot that happens when you check in.
Google Plus One buttons off-site don't flow into Plus one but they probably will in time.
Circles aren't public and at launch can't be. The company says it was concerned about making public/private as clear as possible, but the curation of interesting topical Circles and then subscription to other peoples' Circles has huge potential. Much like Twitter Lists.
The Notification and Comments thread drop-down interface (pictured above) that now sits on top of Plus and every other Google web app, from Search to Gmail to Docs, is really nice. It's ever-present and fully functional. It's a great way to stay engaged with the service and was a very important addition.
The Sparks feature, like a topic-based feed reader for keyword search results, is the least developed part of the site so far. Google Reader is so good, this can't possibly stay so bad for too long. It's not bad, the user experience is pretty good, but the content is sparse and there doesn't seem to be as much quality control as there ought to be in what gets displayed. Too few, mediocre news updates on a topic aren't exciting, but Sparks does make those updates easy to share and discuss.
The end result? So far and on balance, a very compelling experience. Google Plus invites will roll out to users over time, the first stage is being called a Field Test, in which feedback will be collected before expanding participation.
Have you had a chance to use Plus yet? What do you think of it? Can you imagine hundreds of millions of people leaving Facebook for this and sticking with it? That's a very tall order.
There’s no question about it: Google+ genuinely looks good. But, as thousands of people have already noted and joked about, it also really does look a lot like Facebook.
UX designer and consultant UXboyagrees, and put the two interfaces side by side to showcase just how much the entry pages of both services look alike.
Last night, you may have heard talk of a mysterious black bar appearing on the top of Google.com. Or you may have even seen it yourself. No, you weren’t hallucinating. It was a sign of something about to show itself. Something big. Google+.
You see, the truth is that Google really is trying not to make a huge deal out of Google+. That’s not because they don’t have high hopes for it. Or because they don’t think it’s any good. Instead, it’s because what they’re comfortable showing off right now is just step one of a much bigger picture. When I sat down with Gundotra and Horowitz last week, they made this point very clear. In their minds, Google+ is more than a social product, or even a social strategy, it’s an extension of Google itself. Hence, Google+.
How’s that for downplaying it?
“We believe online sharing is broken. And even awkward,” Gundotra says. “We think connecting with other people is a basic human need. We do it all the time in real life, but our online tools are rigid. They force us into buckets — or into being completely public,” he continues. “Real life sharing is nuanced and rich. It has been hard to get that into software,” is the last thing he says before diving into a demo of Google+.
What he proceeds to show me is a product that in many ways is so well designed that it doesn’t really even look like a Google product. When I tell Gundotra and Horowitz this, they laugh. “Thank you,” Gundotra says very enthusiastically. Clearly, they’ve put a lot of work into both the UI and UX of Google+.
The first thing Gundotra shows me about Google+, and the first thing you’re likely to interact with, is something called “Circles”. You may recall that talk of this feature leaked out a few months ago — though it wasn’t exactly right. In fact, our story from months prior about a feature of Google +1 (the name of the network at the time which ended up being the name of the button — more on that in a bit) called “Loops” may have been a bit closer. That is, Circles isn’t actually a stand-alone product, it’s a feature of Google+ — an important one. “It’s something core to our product,” Gundotra says.
It’s through Circles that users select and organize contacts into groups for optimal sharing. I know, I know — not more group management. But the truth is that Google has made the process as pleasant as possible. You simply select people from a list of recommended contacts (populated from your Gmail and/or Google Contacts) and drag them into Circles you designate. The UI for all of this is simple and intuitive — it’s so good, that you might even say it’s kind of fun. It beats the pants off of the method for creating a group within Facebook.
Gundotra realizes that many social services have tried and failed to get users to create groups. But he believes they’ll succeed with Circles because he says they’re using software in the correct way to mimic the real world. More importantly, “you’re rewarded for doing this,” he says. How so? A big feature of Google+ is the toolbar that exists across the top of all Google sites (yes, the aforementioned black one). Once your Circles are set, sharing with any of them from any Google site is simple thanks to this toolbar.
Speaking of this black toolbar, which was codenamed the “Sandbar” as Google was working on it, Horowitz explains that it arose from the fact that sharing models on different sites are all different. The toolbar is an attempt to unify them. This toolbar will exist across all Google properties (though it may take some time to fully roll out). And down the road, you can imagine browser extensions, mobile versions, etc. But again, we’re on step one here.
Next, Gundotra showed off a feature called “Sparks”. He was quick to note that even though it’s a search box, this is not some sort of new search engine. Instead, he calls is a “sharing engine”. “Great content leads to great conversations,” he says. With Sparks, you enter an interest you have and Google goes out and finds elements on the web that they think you’ll care about. These can be links to blog posts, videos, books — anything that Google searches for. If you find something you like, you can click on an item to add it to your interest list (where it will stay for you to quickly refer to anytime you want). Or you can see what others are liking and talking about globally in the “Featured interests” area.
“Our goal here is to connect people. And everyone has a camera in their pocket,” Gundotra says as he shows me “Instant Upload”. This feature of Google+ relies on the use of an Android devices to take photos or shoot video. From a new app, you’ll do either of these things and the content will automatically be uploaded to Google+ in the background and stored in a private album (which you can share with one click later).
Another feature of Google+ is called “Huddle”. It’s essentially a group messaging app that works across Android, iPhone, and SMS to allow you to communicate with the people in certain Circles. When I asked why they wouldn’t just use Disco, the group messaging app that the Slide team within Google built, Horowitz would only smile and pretend that he didn’t know what I was talking about.
Finally, there’s a feature called “Hangouts”. “Everyone has high-speed networks these days, but how many use group video chat?,” Gundotra asks. “Not a lot.” He notes that while there are technical challenges, and some cost money, the biggest problem is that it’s socially awkward to video chat with someone. The Google+ team set out to fix this by thinking about neighbors sitting out on porches. If your neighbor is sitting there, you know that they’ll likely be interested in striking up a conversation. In fact, it would be rude for you to walk by and not say anything.
With that in mind, Google+ Hangout attempts to solve the social problem of video chat by making it easy for you to let others know that you’re interested in chatting. And if you’re already chatting with a Circle, everyone else in that Circle will get an alert to come hang out. This works for up to 10 people. And seeing it in action is a bit magical. Gundotra starts a Hangout with some co-workers and as they join, conversations start between multiple people. But the Google+ system is smart enough to focus on who is controlling the conversation in any given minute. This makes the conversation easy to watch. It was almost as if an editor is working behind the scenes, cutting between people.
Even cooler is that you can share a piece of content, like a YouTube clip, and everyone in the Hangout can watch it together while talking about it. It sounds a bit cheesy, but it’s really pretty great.
After the rundown of all of these features, Google+ may sound a bit convoluted. But the key to the project is the attempt to unify everything. This is done via the toolbar (which features a drop-down showing you all of your relevant Google+ activity), but also on the mobile apps (again, Android and iPhone), and, of course, on the web. The Google+ site is the main stream on which you’ll find everything. From here, you can easily switch between all of your Circles, share content with any of them, start a Hangout, look up Sparks, etc.
All of the information flowing through the system does so in real time. As something is shared with you, it appears at the top of your stream. It’s a bit like FriendFeed, in this regard (which I love).
You’ll also find a link to your Google+ Profile, which will replace your old Google Profile if you have Google+ enabled. On this profile you’ll find not only a stream of everything you’ve shared across Google+, but also your +1 content. That’s likely important. While there has been plenty of speculation (by myself and others) that the +1 Button is already a dud, the larger picture is still a bit hidden. While Gundotra and Horowitz declined to specifically talk about it too much, you’ll see a +1 button on all Google+ content — the +1 Button clearly ties deeply into all of this. It is going to be their Facebook “Like” button.
All of this sounds great so far, but what about the downsides? Whether they’ll admit it or not, Google is making a bold and perhaps risky move by attempting to attack social from scratch. What if they flop again?
From the little that I’ve seen so far, Google+ is by far the best effort in social that Google has put out there yet. But traction will be contingent upon everyone convincing their contacts to regularly use it. Even for something with the scale of Google, that’s not the easiest thing in the world — as we’ve seen with Wave and Buzz. There will need to be compelling reasons to share on Google+ instead of Facebook and/or Twitter — or, at the very least, along with all of those other networks. The toolbar and interesting communication tools are the most compelling reasons right now, but there will need to be more of them. And fast.
Speaking of Buzz, one thing that strikes me about Google+ is that it seems a bit like Google Buzz done right. When I asked if Google+ would be the official death of Buzz, Horowitz declined to say, but did note that it was still being decided how those pieces will play together.
And that could be a bigger issue for Google. With much of Google+, they’re simply creating a new layer rather than utilizing Google’s existing services. For example, when you upload pictures to Google+, they don’t just go to Picasa (though they do go there as well), they also reside on Google+. On one hand, that will confuse some users. On the other, it’s quite refreshing to see Google attempt to start fresh with this new project.
What about Twitter, Facebook, or other social integration? Horowitz wouldn’t go into too much detail as it sounds like tie-ins are still being discussed. As I understand it, right now, Google+ will largely be a stand-alone network with some low-level third-party social network integration.
So when can you try Google+? Here’s the thing that will be a kick in the pants to some users: Google is beginning to roll it out today, but it will only be a very limited field trial. You can submit your email address here to be entered into the system and notified as roll-outs continue, but Google says that they have no set time table for a full rollout. Again, this is phase one of what Google hopes to do with Google+, so they’re taking it slow.
“It’s not about one particular project, it’s about Google getting better. We know this is going to take us a considerable amount of time. But we want to make Google better by connecting you with your relationships and interests,” Gundotra reiterates. He declined to state how big the team within Google currently working on the project is, but says that it’s a “decent sized team”.
“Today’s web is about people. To organize the world’s data, you have to understand people,” Gundotra concludes, noting that newly crowned CEO Larry Page has been heavily involved in this project from the get-go.
I thought I'd type up some notes after an evening of using Google's new social network, 
Last night, you may have heard talk of a mysterious black bar appearing on the top of Google.com. Or you may have even seen it yourself. No, you weren’t hallucinating. It was a sign of something about to show itself. Something big. 
