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Insight1 July 2011

Google+ The Perfect Network

Google has started rolling out Google+ their social network. I am so very excited for this; Digital Clicks has invites too (Check our Facebook page for Invites: http://www.facebook.com/digitalclicks). Google have been very clever with rolling out Plus; Facebook and Skype should be worried, very worried. Lets have a look at the context: At the moment, you pretty much can’t use the internet without having some sort of contact with the internet superpower that is Google, whether you use Gmail as an email client, Google as your primary search engine (which for 83{06e29518e582b1cc2da09f8f2ea316dadc41c520023bcca83a4deb5e6ad0a3c6} of the UK it is) or you have just been on a website that host Google AdSense adverts. In May it is counted that 25{06e29518e582b1cc2da09f8f2ea316dadc41c520023bcca83a4deb5e6ad0a3c6} of Internet users use Chrome for Internet browsing and nearly 50{06e29518e582b1cc2da09f8f2ea316dadc41c520023bcca83a4deb5e6ad0a3c6} of smartphone users have and Android phone. Some way or another you’re using Google, it would be pretty hard not to. With such a firm grip on the potential user base already in comparison to Facebook when they started it will be pretty easy for them to start converting people over to Plus. At the moment it’s on an invite only access. There are a few really great features about Plus that are making me really excited about using this. First off, Circles: When Google created this they wanted to revolutionise the way that we share content online. They said that what was wrong with Facebook and twitter is there is no differential between sharing the wedding photos you’d share with your family and sharing the drunken party photos, of you passed out in a ditch that you wouldn’t necessarily want your grandmother to see. With Circles you create online Social Circles in which you share your content by simply dragging your work Colleagues into ‘Work Colleagues’ or dragging all the friends that you know like Comic books into ‘Comic book Nerds’. Every time you share a link about Comic books you select the relevant circles, and only those people see that link, simple as. That way you’re not bothering everyone with content that they couldn’t care less about. Mobile App: With the mobile app

  • which is currently only available for android, but will be on IOS soon
  • there are a few really good features. Huddle: it’s the IM component to Plus, that enables you to chat in real time with other users and have a group of people in one conversation at the same time. Also, it has a great feature called Instant upload, where any photo or video you take on your phone is automatically uploaded to a private online album ready to share when you go to your computer. Sparks: Basically sparks is your interests, select the things you’re interested in, and it will suggest links and content for you, also it will categorise your friends links based on your Sparks too. Hangouts: This is a great big kick in the nuts for Skype (Microsoft), Hangouts is meant to be like hanging out with your friends, but online. You can create a hangout for your Circles and then those people can jump in and out of a chat session, with voice and video chat capabilities. You can also watch YouTube videos together and share content. It’s not clear whether this will integrate with the mobile app yet, but I’m sure it will at some point. If Google can pull this off well and Plus really takes off, Skype would certainly feel the squeeze. Also with Skype integration into Windows Phone 7 and Hangouts into Android, we could see some really interesting competition in the mobile industrys. If Google manage to capably integrate Plus with all their other services
  • Docs, Picasa, Google Music
  • it is going to be a massive hit. I think it’s quite obvious what Google’s ulterior motive is in all of this: collecting all of your interests, grouping all the people that are interested in similar things together and slowly building up information about you through plus. It’s all for marketing purposes, targeting Ads, but who cares? I don’t, they can have all of my information providing they keep giving us great products.
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