Yesterday, Google released a major update to its search engine and drew the collective ire of the Internet. Dubbed “Search, plus Your World,” the change personalizes search results for people who are signed into their Google accounts. According to Google,
“Search has always brought you information from across the web. Now, search gets better by including photos, posts, and more from you and your friends. When signed in with Google+, you’ll find personal results and profiles of people you know or follow. You can even expand your world by discovering people related to your search.”
Oh, the humanity! Critics have expressed hyperbolic alarm at the move, with many framing the release not only as an anti-competitive move with potential antitrust implications, but also as step towards aggravating non-techie, everyday users of Google’s search engine. Competitors such as Twitter even piled on with fake outrage, ostensibly in defense of individual privacy.
U.S. Mobile Apps vs. Web Consumption, Mins/Day
Yes, this is a big change, and Twitter (among others) has reason to fear the move (read: $$). But the bottom line is that Google desperately needs to counter the rise of social networks as competing destinations for ad spending. And don’t even mention Google’s paranoia regarding the likely release of a competing search product from Facebook.
So I ask, People of the Internet, with your brilliant strategic minds and obvious business acumen, what would you have Google do instead?
Would you have tried to make more money with traditional website display ads, relying on the good ol’ web to stave off the rise of mobile apps?
Oops. It seems like that wouldn’t be a good plan (Consult the chart from Flurry above).
Would you have advised Google to focus its efforts — and future profitability — on serving up ads within text-based mobile search results?
Oops. You mean you forgot about the imminent threat from Siri (And Kinect, and all inevitable clones of the two across all mobile platforms)?
OS Share of Smartphone Sales (click for source)
Would you have told Google to leverage the unchecked rise of Android?
Oops. You mean Android actually lost 13 percentage points of U.S. smartphone market share last month, while iOS gained 17%?
So go ahead, dear Brilliant Business Strategists of the Internet, who obviously have an amazing alternative strategic plan up your collective sleeve, lend us your keen insights and sage business advice.
I’ll wait here.
Google+ Page Suspension Notice
Google+ is still a new social channel, and consequently, there is a relative dearth of guidance on how to successfully navigate and stand out on the network. Mistakes will happen, and in fact, may even be probable.
I should know.
You see, my employer’s Google+ Page — the one I created and continue to manage — was recently suspended, forcing me to dig deeper into Google+ and learn some of its nuances. That’s the bad news. The good news is that I’ve learned a lot from the experience, and have decided to share some of the lessons learned here in hopes that others will benefit from the process.
Here then, are some trial-by-fire lessons that I hope prove useful:
1. Leverage both Google+ Direct Connect, and the Google+ Page Verification Process.
Google+ Direct Connect accomplishes a couple of important things. First, it connects Google+ Pages to brand websites via a snippet of code. This code produces a badge to embed on an official website to add a measure of authenticity for a Page. Second, Direct Connect creates a shorthand search operator (“+brandname” — such as “+Angry Birds” or “+Dell“) to enable quick searches of official brand pages — both within Google+ search and via Google’s main search engine. The + shorthand operator even provides a mechanism for re-claiming a brand name that has been high-jacked by clever SEO techniques, as this article points out using Rick Santorum’s Google problem as an example. In combination with Google’s verification process for Google+ Pages, these steps signal to Google that a G+ Page is an official brand account.
Key takeaway: Take the time to send the proper signals to Google that your page is legitimate. This will save you time, effort and possible embarrassment later on.
2. Don’t Fret about Brand Impersonations. These Fears are Overblown.
Almost immediately after Google+ launched Pages for brands, fake profiles — such as this Bank of America spoof– sprung up. This sparked fears among large organizations that Google+ would become a problematic platform that would, (a) require significant monitoring, and (b) place a heavy burden on community managers.
In response, Google pledged that it would monitor Google+, spot fake brand Pages, and suspend them until steps were completed to verify the authenticity of suspect Pages. This approach is what affected my employer’s page.
As a member of the Google+ team explained to me by email, “We do some impersonation sweeps regularly… The best thing you can do to make sure it’s all correct in the future is connect your page to your site,” so that Google “can see a bi-directional link between the two… [which] ensures that you also have control over that website. That tells us it’s the authoritative page for that site.”
Key takeaway: Don’t let fears of “brandjacking” cause you to jump into Google+ before you’re ready. It’s a great idea to get started with Google+ while nearly everyone is a novice and the repercussions of mistakes are minimal. But understand that you have ample time to outline a clear plan for Google+. Nobody is going to steal your brand name.
3. The Google+ Community is Awesome. Leverage Them, and Give Back.
Shortly after learning of our Page suspension, I posted a plea to members of the Google+ community to help identify members of the G+ team who could help expedite the process of reinstating the Page. After a short time, Denis Labelle (whom I’d mistakenly placed into a Circle of Google employees — he now resides in my Most Awesome People in the World Circle), responded with an offer to help share my plight. Denis — along with a handful of other Google+ members — re-shared my post, which quickly caught the attention of the Google+ team and led to a speedy resolution.
The G+ team had also picked up on my original plea for help and was busy working through internal channels to resolve the issue. But Denis’ offer to help was the true catalyst toward quick resolution of the issue. Members of the Google+ community saw Denis’ post, voiced their support, and helped build awareness of the issue.
Key takeaway: The early adopters of Google+ are passionate about the current and future prospects of the network and are extremely engaged and helpful. Now is the time to get engaged on Google+, learn from the community, give back to it, and build an invaluable network that will continue to grow in exciting new directions.
Key takeaway, part two: Denis Labelle is pure awesome. He is not only helpful, but he posts interesting and helpful content to Google+ every day. You should pause right now and go Circle him. I also owe thanks to Chris Vennard, Oscar Fuentes, Raphael Polanco, Yan Tseytlin, Harp Grewal, Kamal Singh and others for their help.
Google+ Shared Circles are Powerful
4. Tap Into the Power of Shared Circles.
Google+ makes it easy to share the Circles that you’ve created with friends and other G+ connections. This feature is helpful for sharing Circles of subject matter experts or photographers, for example. It’s also useful for curating a list of customer support representatives for your brand, or from brands that you follow. Google+ is a great vehicle for building a list (or even several specially-targeted lists) that can be shared with current and potential customers, partners and suppliers. Stakeholders can then post queries to these support Circles in order to reach several customer support members at once.
A shared Circle, in fact, is what led me to Denis Labelle and the other Google+ members who jumped in to help resolve our Page suspension. Another Google+ member had created and shared a “Members of the Google+ Team” Circle, which I found and added to my own Circles. While Denis and a handful of other members of the Circle were incorrectly identified as Google employees, the Circle did help alert several Googlers to our Page suspension.
Key takeaway: Consider using Shared Circles to make it easy for your target audiences to connect with groups from your organization. It’s also a good idea to seek out Shared Circles that will prove useful to you in a time of crisis. A good starting point is the list of Shared Circles on G+. It’s also advisable to Circle Google+ Your Business. It provides up-to-date information related to G+ that is targeted to brands and Page owners.
Conclusion
Google+ may be the fastest-growing social network in history. And yet, it’s still far from being a mainstream channel for brands and individuals. There are few established paths to success on Google+, and mistakes are inevitable. Use the guidance that I’ve provided above to help your brand to not only avoid a suspension, but to also overcome obstacles that could impede success.
Do you have any Google+ tips? If so, let me know with a comment below!
Google Music has finally shed its “Beta” moniker. At this week’s “These Go To 11” event, Google announced that it has secured licensing deals with EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and over 1000 independent labels, thereby enabling a music store to emerge as a core component of Google’s music locker.
And the reaction from online and social media? Tepid, at best. Predictably, most of the discussion seems to center around what Google Music is not. It’s not freemium subscription service, like Spotify or Rdio. It’s not as polished as iTunes. In short, it’s not the game-changer that many had hoped for.
Collective disappointment?
Some Perspective
But changing the game isn’t really Google’s goal here, is it? Google isn’t really trying to “kill iTunes,” just as Google+ isn’t designed to “kill Facebook” and Google Wallet isn’t a real threat to “kill PayPal.” This simply isn’t Google’s modus operandi. Rather, Google seems intent on launching products in beta, watching them get skewered with criticism in the media, and then evolving them into “good enough” products. Google’s real goal is to be just competitive enough in an array of battles to build out a moat to surround its Search Castle.
Up until now — and even including now, really, as Google hasn’t yet proved that this strategy is a winning one — all efforts to fortify Google’s Search Castle have been largely disconnected. But that’s where Google+ comes in, bringing along the two keys to Google’s castle: (1) data, and (2) Android.
The First Key: Data
Each time a website (or any other object, for that matter) is shared to Google+, a Google Music song is purchased and/or streamed to Google+, or a YouTube video is +1′d, two things are happening in the background.
First, user data is being collected and aggregated to build a more complete individual profile. This data is a prized and saleable asset, of course, as part of Google’s AdWords platform. Second, as information from Google’s products and services is shared to an integration layer (Google+), Google is effectively advertising these services for free on Google+ and encouraging other members of the network to adopt them. Then, as adoption rates rise, more data is poured into the integration layer, thereby buiding a self-reinforcing process and raising the value of Google’s trove of data.
This isn’t a new concept, of course. Facebook has been doing it for years, and they’ve been doing it so effectively that it’s become almost a forgone conclusion that Facebook will release a search engine to rival Google Castle — er, Search — and further siphon away lucrative advertising revenues. So clearly, there is a strategic imperative to get products to market that enable Google to rival the type of data that Facebook is collecting — music preferences, reading habits, social connections, etc.
These products don’t have to be world class, at least not initially. They just need to be of a reasonable enough quality to gain some traction, integrate seamlessly and enable the network effects described above. In other words, lay the groundwork for a larger moat.
Android adoption: faster than iPhone
The Second Key: Android
This is where Android comes into play. Let’s assume the following scenarios hold for the next few years:
- Google Music doesn’t become as slick as iTunes
- Google+ lags behind Facebook as a fun destination for keeping in touch with real friends
- Google’s Zagat is dwarfed by Yelp in terms of the quantity of reviews
- Google Places is never mentioned as a serious competitor to foursquare.
But Google has something that none of those competitors have — the 1-2 punch of world’s fastest-growing mobile operating system (according to this report by Mary Meeker) and the fastest growing social network in history.
Update 11/17/11: TechCrunch is reporting that new devices running Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of Android, are prompting users to register for Google+ and enter their credit card information, in order to enable Android Market purchases via the Android Market.
As the world continues to trend toward mobile information consumption instead of PC-based consumption, Google is uniquely positioned to ride that growth by placing its portfolio of competitive, albeit flawed, products onto a larger and larger share of mobile devices.
Granted, Android’s fragmentation issues have been well-documented, and they pose a problem for Google’s ambitious ploy. The likely remedy involves Google leveraging its acquisition of Motorola Mobility to set an Android standard that embeds its services so deeply into the Android operating system that music, location, photography and other services become a core part of the user experience. In this scenario, Google Music doesn’t have to be better than iTunes or Spotify, it just has to have evolved to the point where, as a “me too” service, it gets the job done while keeping friction to a minimum for end users.
The Long View
So cut Google Music some slack and take the long view here. There’s a bigger picture to consider, one that extends several years into the future and involves not only music, but also commerce, location, mobility and social networking. Only time will tell whether Google’s strategy is a winner, but its moves start to make sense when you begin to arrange them as pieces of a larger puzzle.
What’s your view? Is Google Music a viable component of a broader strategy, or merely a half-baked sign of desperation? Let me know with a comment below!
Google+, the social networking product from Google, has been available for use by individuals for months. But Google+ had been off limits to companies and other organizations (except for a handful of test partners) until last week, when the search giant opened the door for brands with the release of Google+ Pages.
Google+ will permeate Google services
Many brands have jumped into Google+ right away to begin communicating and engaging with various Circles of stakeholders. Others, however, have stayed away from Google+, as questions and misconceptions about the product have spread by worth of mouth and through social channels. Most of the concerns about Google+, however, are entirely without merit.
You’ve probably heard them. Hopefully, however, you haven’t let these common fears stop you from getting started with Google+:
1. You can’t transfer ownership of a Google+ brand Page!
While it’s true that Page ownership transfers are not currently allowed, Dennis Troper (a member of the Google+ project team) has already posted an assurance that this feature is in work and coming soon. According to Troper, Google+ will soon provide “multi-admin support, ownership transfer and page analytics.”
2. The inability to cross-post to Google+ and other networks (such as Facebook, Twitter etc.), is a serious liability that will doom Google+.
Wrong.
Question: What would Google+ would look like if it provided an API to support incoming posts (from other networks and tools)?
Answer: A lot like Google Buzz, which accepted posts from other channels and quickly became irrelevant.
Google needs to build a critical mass of daily Google+ users before opening an API to permit incoming posts from other networks, and from tools such as Hootsuite and Tweetdeck. Otherwise, there will be very little incentive for brands to develop a unique G+ presences.
Update: Google has announced that a handful of third-party apps, such as Hootsuite, Buddy Media and Vitrue have been chosen as partners for a pilot program to enable posts to Google+ via social media management systems. It’s worth nothing that these solutions cater to enterprise customers.
3. You need to hurry and reserve your Google+ Page name! Or it will be gone forever!
Fake brand pages — such as this parody of Bank of America – have already sprung up on Google+. However, verification badges will be made available soon distinguish “official” brand accounts from impersonators. This approach follows Twitter’s verification model, and balances freedom of expression against the need to recognize authentic Pages. Launch partners like Angry Birds and Pepsi already have badges to promote the authenticity of their Pages, for example.
Source: Search Engine Land
4. Google+ is a ghost town.
Google claims over 40 million Google+ accounts and boasts an early-stage growth rate that exceeds the rates witnessed by Facebook, Twitter and Myspace. Undoubtedly, however, Google+ doesn’t enjoy an engagement rate anywhere close to Facebook’s 50% daily sign-in rate. And Google has been coy about the number of active daily G+ users.
But a ghost town? Hardly. G+ may currently be dominated by early adopters and geeks (I include myself in both of those groups), but anyone who actually spends a significant amount of time on Google+ knows that the “ghost town” assertion is false.
5. Facebook’s promotion guidelines are too restrictive, but Google+ is a new opportunity!
In fact, Google+ is even more confining. While Facebook’s Guidelines permit administration of promotions via third-party apps, Google does not allow any promotions on Google+. The Google+ Pages Contest and Promotion Policies clearly outlaw them, and instead permit only links to separate websites that host contests and promotions.
6. Google+ is just another social network.
Google+ is much more than just a social networking platform. Instead, in Eric Schmidt’s words, Google+ will be “a social component [to Google's core products] to make them even better.” Most notably, Google+ Pages offer a distinct Search Engine Optimization (SEO) advantage over content from Facebook and Twitter. While Google+ already has limited integration with Google search (You can see +1s from your friends in search results! Yay!), Google+ posts will soon populate search results in near real-time. Compared with content from Facebook and Twitter, which Google is unable to crawl as effectively, Google+ content will offer an SEO advantage over content from competing channels.
Furthermore, as Google continues to weave Google+ into its other products and services (as it already has with YouTube and Google Reader), the service will fetch an ever-increasing set of valuable data for use in ad targeting.
Twitter's early days weren't so rosy
7. Too many features are missing; Google+ just isn’t useful for brands.
Do you remember what Twitter was like in its infancy? No lists. No automatic URL shortening. No auto-completing of @usernames within Tweets. No promoted Tweets for brands. Lots of Fail Whales. In short, it sucked compared with the service that we all know and love today. And let’s not even get started with Facebook. In both cases, users demanded features, and the services matured. Google+ will follow the same path, evolve into an increasingly-valuable platform, and offer first-mover advantages to brands that adopt the service early.
8. Circles make it easy to manage Google+ Pages!
Google+ Circles provide a powerful means for targeting content to specific audiences. Along with Hangouts, they differentiate Google+ from other social networks.
The bad news about Circles is that they don’t scale well. After a person has Circled a Page to express an interest in a brand, a G+ Page owner has to then assess the person and then decide how to categorize them into an appropriate Circle. This quickly becomes a time-consuming task.
This cumbersome process may have driven Google to acquire Katango, a startup that has developed powerful algorithms to sort people into groups automatically. For now, however, human-decision making is still required to sort people into groups for targeted content delivery.
Overcome Your Fears and Get Started with Google+
In summary, don’t let FUD dissuade you from building a presence on Google+, but be sure to know what you’re getting into ahead of starting a brand Page. There are many misconceptions about Google+ that can cause a misalignment between expectations and reality.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on Google+ in the comments section below.
Like a lot of other people — about 4 million, to be precise — I’ve recently upgraded my mobile phone to an iPhone 4S and started enjoying Siri, the personal assistant that is perhaps the smartphone’s most talked-about new feature. Siri has garnered attention for several reasons, including:
- Siri’s ability to understand and translate natural language into useful responses. Limited commands, such as “Get Weather Report” aren’t required. Instead, Siri does an admirable job of interpreting regular speech, such as, “Is it going to cool off next week?”
- The potential for integrating Siri with a wide array of apps once developers are given greater access to Siri’s API. Imagine being able to use Siri to compose tweets, check in to venues, and buy movie tickets — all through natural language as opposed to a limited set of commands. This will happen, and it will be incredibly powerful.
- The application’s human-like sense of humor, which has spawned websites such as Shit That Siri Says. Apple’s engineers have apparently had a lot of fun enhancing Siri after Apple’s 2010 acquisition of Siri Inc.
Siri, will it be cold this week?
Clearly, consumers are captivated not only by Siri’s current capabilities, but also by its potential to tie apps together through voice. And after several days of using Siri, I am too.
But do you know what data point jumps out to me as a far more important fact? The number of times I’ve used Google search since my first use of Siri = Zero.
That’s right. The idea of launching my mobile web browser, typing words into a text box (on a small screen, no less), and clicking a button to initiate a search suddenly feels about as antiquated as file/folder structures do in Microsoft Windows in comparison with touch-based app experiences. Just as Apple took on Microsoft by re-inventing (or at least perfecting) the process for storing and retrieving data, they’re taking on Google by attacking the search giant’s bread and butter. Why type the words “Best Mexican food Phoenix” into a text box when I can simply say, “Siri, I want a burrito?”
A few caveats that favor Android
If a humble end user like me can recognize this potential disruption to Google’s crown jewel, then Larry Page and company almost certainly do. They’ll counterpunch, and in fact, may have an upper hand for a few reasons:
Android adoption: faster than iPhone
- From a growth perspective, Android is far outpacing the iPhone (which you can learn more about in Mary Meeker’s amazing Presentation on Internet Trends, which I’ve embedded below). This may blunt the impact of Apple’s attack on Google Search.
- Android phones have had solid, if unspectacular, voice-based functionality for years now.
- Competitors (which can be acquired) will undoubtedly emerge to offer a competing level of Artificial Intelligence. For example, Iris (yes, that’s “Siri” spelled backwards) has already sprung up — with similar functionality — as the result of a mere eight-hour hackathon project.
Undoubtedly, however, Apple has changed the future of search with Siri. And if one company has proved that it can re-imagine an existing process, provide a user experience that promotes its rapid adoption, and turn the process into “the new normal,” it’s Apple. Siri is an outright assault on Google’s position as the dominant player in search, and this assault will become even more effective when Siri’s API permits interactivity with popular apps such as Yelp and foursquare.
So sorry Andy Rubin, but you’re wrong.
Like 20 million or so others over the past month, I’ve been getting to know Google+, the new social project from Google. I’ve created a handful of Circles, sought out people to follow, and pondered the future ramifications for brands (including my employer).
All very interesting, to be sure. I’m a sucker for new social networks, apps, and shiny new toys. So while it’s been easy for me to embrace Google+, shrug off the network’s controversies, and generally have a good experience, something else has happened that hasn’t been quite so easy for me to process.
I’ve started to re-evaluate the meaning of friendship.
You see, friendship always used to be born out of shared experiences in the physical realm. You grew up and played together on the same street, attended school together, or otherwise met and formed lasting bonds over recurring in-person events. When I take a look at my Facebook feed, most of the friends whom I see there meet this definition. We’ve met, broken bread, shared drinks, and have often laughed together over stories from past events.
A Small Circle... Of Trust
But when I take a look at my Friends circle within Google+, I notice something peculiar: most of my Facebook friends aren’t there. It’s not because they haven’t made the jump to Google+, however. No, a large number of them are there… it’s just that they exist in different circles with names such as “Work,” or “High School,” or even the new equivalent of the first circle from Dante’s Inferno: “Acquaintances.”
And my Friends circle? Well frankly, it has very little correlation with the number of hours that I’ve spent IRL with the people who reside there.
To be sure, shared in-person experiences are manifest in my Friends circle. College roommates are there, as are a few grad school classmates and parents whose kids play sports with my children. But they’re in the minority alongside people whom, on average, I’ve met in person fewer than three times apiece (yes, I did the math).
Think about that for a second.
I trust these people with my important thoughts and personal details more than I trust the kid who grew up two houses down from me, the people who knew me when I had gleaming silver braces on my teeth, and even some family members.
To me, this signals that the criteria which constitute friendships are evolving. As geographic ties decrease in importance, the basis for friendships in the digital age now center around two different factors: (1) trust, and (2) shared interest graphs.
While trust has always been a key element of valued relationships, shared digital venues — centered around interests — have been increasing in importance relative to shared physical venues for years. This isn’t a new phenomenon, but Google+ amplifies it by forcing you to think about the people with whom you feel most comfortable sharing.
And yes, I know what you’re thinking. Right about now you’re whispering something along the lines of, “Nice work, Einstein, you’ve uncovered that people enjoy the company of others who share their interests.”
But that’s not it at all.
It’s not that I’m disinterested in receiving status updates via social networks from people with whom I’ve spent a lot of time. Instead, what’s happening is that I feel more comfortable sharing “the real me” with people whom I’ve hardly — and in some cases, never — met.
Not in my Friends circle
Why? Simply put, the alignment of interest graphs — the “the expansion and contraction of social networks around common interests and events,” according to Brian Solis — is increasingly the basis for trust in our lives. The more time we spend with people in social networking hangouts conversing over public and personal topics, the more we value the relationships within those communities. For me, shared passions such as social media, fantasy football, and technology form a background for more engaging, more trusting dialogues with others, even when our conversations stray from those topics and into personal matters.
The fact that my personal discussions now occur more often with people whose photos I recognize from Twitter, Facebook and Google+ — but have never seen in yearbooks or picture frames — is of little consequence.
I have Google+ to thank for this latest bout of introspection, and I bet I’m not alone in feeling this way.
In fact, I bet that if you take a good look at the one Google+ circle that you really trust above all others (whatever you call it), and compare it to your Facebook feed, then you might find the same thing.
Take a look, and let me know what you think.
Research in Motion (RIM), maker of the the popular BlackBerry line of phones, is battling through tough times. The company’s stock price is down approximately 80 percent over 3 years in the face of intense competition from Apple’s iPhone and other smartphones running Google’s Android operating system. And just last week, the company released disappointing first quarter financial results, which included decreases in both net income and earnings per share compared with the first quarter of 2010.
And I haven’t even gotten to the bad news yet.
The trash: Is this where the BlackBerry is headed?
“But RIM Owns the Enterprise Market”
That’s the refrain that you’ll hear from most people in corporate IT during a discussion of RIM’s woes. And to some extent, it’s true (though the overall market share trend line is disturbing). However, BlackBerry’s position as the standard phone for major corporate customers is in jeopardy for a handful of reasons.
First, developers are bailing out on the platform
Apps are perhaps the most significant driver of growth for the smartphones and tablets. Unfortunately for BlackBerry, many of the top application developers don’t even bother developing for the platform. Sure, Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter are there, but many of the more interesting new apps are available only on iPhone and Android devices (such as group messaging and photo-sharing apps).
Worse yet, there are signs that an exodus from the platform began long ago. One of the most high-profile cases occurred earlier this week when Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur announced that his company would discontinue its support for BlackBerry. As an added kick in the shorts to RIM, he then touted the potential of Windows Phone 7 as the best third option for a smartphone (behind the iPhone and Android devices, of course) in this video interview.
Second, commercial trends are driving enterprise policies
It’s no secret that the “consumerization of IT” is underway, with executive leaders demanding IT support for popular smartphones and tablets. Many organizations are responding by implementing “bring your own device” policies that permit employees to access corporate data from personal devices.
Guess which company stands to lose the most as this trend gains steam? It’s not Apple. Or Google. Or Microsoft.
Third, short product release cycles pose an unrelenting challenge
Since the release of the original iPhone in 2007, Apple has released a new version of the smartphone every year. And like clockwork, the iPhone 5 (or potentially, the iPhone 4S) is likely to be released in September of this year. Apple’s release cycle prevents the type of product stagnation that could slow the iPhone’s growth.
On top of that, roughly eighty-three (yes, 83) Android-based phones have been released since early 2010. Let me say that again: eighty-three Android phones in less than two years. While Apple differentiates its products for the high-end segment of the market by featuring simplicity, an “it just works” experience and an abundance of apps, Google is content to fortify its castle by partnering with an array of hardware manufacturers and service providers to gobble up market share among value-conscious consumers.
The relentless innovation from both Apple and Google hurt RIM by offering little time for the manufacturer to change consumer perceptions of its brand. Even an inspiring, radically innovative new product from RIM will have precious little time to resonate with consumers (and more importantly, business leaders) before another shiny new offering from Apple or Google pulls away the spotlight.
Fourth, the the iPad’s penetration into the enterprise has changed the game
While the iPad is commonly perceived as a consumer-focused device, between 65-80% of Fortune 100 companies have adopted the iPad for business use, according to reports. This phenomenon brings with it enhanced affinity for all iOS devices.
By contrast, BlackBerry’s release of the Playbook has been a disaster. RIM recently reduced its sales forecast to a range of 800,000 to 900,000 units in 2011, down from a projection of 2.4 million. Really — who wants a tablet that has to be tethered to a phone?
Another brand disaster (Image: Infrogmation)
Living on the Edge
The truth is, all technology companies are just one misread of the market’s direction away from their demise. Blockbuster, for example, didn’t pivot quickly enough in response to challenges from Netflix and Redbox. Google, in former CEO Eric Schmidt’s own words, “screwed up” by failing to react to the rise of social networking (hence Facebook’s ascension as a rival advertising powerhouse). And Nokia reacted slowly as consumer preferences shifted away from feature phones to smartphones (at least in developed markets).
Like Nokia, which has turned to Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform in a fight for survival, RIM may soon be forced to embrace a rival in order to stop its free fall. Already, speculation has resurfaced regarding a potential acquisition by Microsoft.
So will RIM will choose to resurrect its BlackBerry brand through new products, a sale, or a partnership? I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know this: RIM is in serious trouble, and it’s worse than you think. With developers fleeing the BlackBerry platform, consumer preferences driving corporate buying patterns, and product release cycles offering little hope for a sustained impact from new products, the story of RIM’s continued decline will be told through its sinking stock price.
Lately, I’ve become deeply troubled when I pay for items at most stores. And no, it’s not because I’ve run out of money due to poor budgeting. Nor am I suffering from kleptomania. Instead, I’ve simply grown tired of the ridiculous process that accompanies most in-store payments.
Help Me, NFC-Kenobi -- You're My Only Hope
I mean seriously, what’s the deal with having to play a game of 20 Questions when making credit/debit transactions at most stores, gas stations and other venues? Are all of those questions necessary in return for the privilege of spending my hard-earned money? For example:
- Debit or credit?
- Would I like cash back?
- Do I want the entire transaction on one card, or do I want to split it among multiple cards (ahem, Target)?
- Will I confirm the total amount?
- Would I like a receipt for my transaction?
All I want to do is swipe my card. That’s it. No additional steps required. At worst, I’d like to make a quick card swipe and then answer one prompt to confirm the payment, similar to the process that Starbucks has put in place for its payment solution for mobile devices, Starbucks Card Mobile. Of course, the payment scenarios covered in the questions above need to be accounted for, but they should be subordinate to a quick-pay process.
Hopefully, the hour of a less-maddening, wide-scale payment process is at hand. Major players — from credit card companies like Visa and MasterCard, to mobile operating system manufacturers like Apple, Google and Microsoft — are all building solutions using Near Field Communication technology that will position mobile smartphones to someday replace wallets for many consumers. If you’re not familiar with NFC, then you can check out quick primers on how it can change our daily lives and why you should care about it.
But while I’m excited about NFC (which I’ve written about before), I’m left to wonder about whether it will truly ease my pain. Porting the standard payment process from wallets to mobile phones won’t cut it. Instead, for NFC to gain quick traction as a mainstream payment option, it needs to improve the payment experience for consumers through:
- Simplicity. See above. Hint: No more games of 20 Questions.
- Password flexibility. Entering a password for every payment is untenable. Consumers should be able to choose from a range of timeout intervals to prevent frequent password re-entry (though Apple recently tightened controls in this area).
- E-receipts. If you’ve bought anything at an Apple Store lately, you’re familiar with the standard — and wonderfully convenient — option of receiving a purchase receipt by email instead of in paper form. Manufacturers of NFC hardware and software should relegate paper receipts to a secondary, optional function, requiring an extra 1-2 screen taps.
- Security. Consumer confidence will be a key driver of NFC adoption. Scare tactics — such as Verifone’s alarmist letter demanding a recall of Square credit card readers — are are almost inevitable as companies battle for share in the emerging mobile payments market. But these tactics won’t slow NFC adoption if the payment options from the top providers prove stable and secure early on.
- Multi-Account Support. I’m not backtracking from my assertion that a quick-pay process is a matter of paramount importance, but NFC payment services need to support multiple bank, credit and online (i.e. PayPal) accounts.
Are these things really too much too ask? If anyone from Visa, Apple, Google, etc. needs help understanding the key requirements for NFC payments, then I’ll be happy to answer their questions. By now I’m used to answering a lot of them. I have tolerance for about 20.
What do you think it will take for NFC to gain acceptance as a mainstream payment option? Let me know with a comment below!
Note: This article originally appeared on Social Media Today
Change is constant, and trends related to social media and technology are no exception. In this edition of the social media “virtual roundtable,” a handful of strategic thinkers cover topics pertaining to Google, Quora, mobile applications and social media planning. The featured participants for this edition are:
- Lauren Conner, a social media analyst for the automotive industry specializing in online community strategy and management.
- Annie Janssen, the co-creator of Story of My Life Cards and social media girl for a snack foods company.
- Clark Dever, a national speaker on social media for small business owners and the web strategist for Vuzix Corporation.
- Shane Barnhill, a digital strategist, blogger, and founder of the Uptick Sports prediction market.
- Heather Herr, a social media strategist, recovering architecture student, and occasional runner with a bad (or maybe it’s good) habit of signing up for the latest beta release social site whenever she has too much free time on her hands.
Left to right: Conner, Janssen, Dever, Barnhill, Herr
Note: if you would like to be part of a future roundtable discussion, send a reply on Twitter @shanebarnhill.
Let’s start with Google, which recently announced +1, the search giant’s answer to the increasingly ubiquitous Facebook Like button. Do you think +1 will be part of a successful social strategy for Google, or do you think it is doomed to fail just as past social initiatives from Google (Buzz, Wave) have failed?
Conner: Similar to Facebook’s ‘Like’ button, the Google +1 feature is designed to allow you to highlight the search results you found most useful or relevant. The question is ‘Will the Google +1 have as much success as the Facebook ‘Like’ button?’ The Facebook ‘Like’ button is successful mainly because it reaches out to the large network of people we have connected with on Facebook. The average Google user is probably unlikely to have such a significant social network through Google’s Gmail service and the network built with Gmail is likely to be much different than that of a Facebook network. My Gmail network is made up of the people I email on occasion (ie. my insurance broker, my grandma in New Jersey, my accountant, my dog trainer, etc.) whereas my Facebook consists of friends, family and acquaintances I interact with fairly frequently. I don’t need my accountant to know that my search on local organic grocers resulted in a great link to a neighborhood co-op. Beyond that, I don’t want my search affected by my insurance broker’s preferences. I appreciate Google’s attempt to stick to what they know and what they are good at, search results, but this feature looks like a desperate attempt to be more like Facebook.
Janssen: I think overall Google will see more success since Larry Page took over as CEO earlier this year. However, I’m still unsure of how he’ll help their social initiatives as a guy who doesn’t even have a Facebook or Twitter account. In a recent article in Fast Company, Jason Shellen, who spent four years as a business-development exec at Google and now works at AOL, said “There’s an EQ – an emotional intelligence – around social software, and it just might be out of Google’s reach.” However, I think this is a safe step for Google in their attempt to be more social. They’re not creating a network, just building off of consumers’ existing networks. With “likes” perhaps soon replacing links, I think this is a great idea that has a lot of potential to catch on.
Dever: There’s two ways to success in markets, be first or be the best. Google has tried several times to come late and be the best, but have failed. I don’t think that +1 will suffer that same fate, but I don’t foresee it rising to be the market leader. I think that its integration with search will add enough value to users’ lives that the project wont be killed, but I don’t believe it will become the de facto “like” button. It will end up being just another piece of social debris that aggregates at the bottom of blog posts.
Barnhill: From a strategic standpoint, I see enormous potential for Google +1 for several reasons (which I’ve detailed previously). First, +1 is a lead generation vehicle, because in order to endorse links, a searcher must first create an account with Google, which provide leads to whom Google can market its products and services. Second, +1 will provide a new data source to protect Google’s flagship search asset. The quality of Google’s search results have recently come under fire, and +1 feedback will undoubtedly be used to improve search quality by serving up results that your respected contacts have previously vetted. Third, +1 clicks will help Google serve more relevant advertisements, both through explicit feedback (as users +1 ads that they find useful) and implicit means (as Google’s inventory of +1 data on individual web searchers allows them to deliver more personalized ads). Fourth, the +1 system will almost certainly expand beyond search and into Google’s other digital assets (YouTube videos, Android apps, Google Places and as buttons embedded across websites), thereby its utility for web surfers and also helping Google draw more complete profiles of the consumers who are being targeted for advertisements. In summary, +1 will augment Google’s core competencies in search and advertising.
Herr: Assuming it is adopted by users, I think the strength in +1 lies in it’s potential to improve search results quality, not in true social influence. +1 scores are cumulative. It may provide a general rating of social proof, but it’s weakness is that it does not identify if any up-votes came from people you know and trust. Google’s prior move of integrating their “results from your social circle” into results, displaying the avatar and name of the person who has shared that link is more effective at influencing click-through. Searchers make an immediate assumption about the quality of the link based on who shared it.
Next topic: What’s the most overlooked component of social/digital media success that you’d advise newcomers to focus on?
Conner: I’ve had the opportunity to speak with a good number of people trying to break into the social media field of business. Upon diving into their experience with social media in their personal life and where they see opportunities for businesses to use it to their advantage one thing always stumps them. Twitter. It surprises me the number of people who think they know social media but haven’t gone beyond the profile setup and customary “I joined Twitter!” tweet. For companies, Twitter isn’t a platform to announce what’s for lunch or that you have a fever. Twitter is a great way to break away from the confines of branding (to a certain extent) and share a human side of the company. Companies should use Twitter to interact with its customers one-on-one, share community involvement, conduct market research, augment customer service, etc. As of March 2011, an average of 460,000 are set up each day. Some of those people are bound to be your customers, or future customers. Get out there and tweet with them!
Janssen: There are a lot of very important aspects, but honestly, I believe that this exact type of roundtable forum is often one of the most overlooked – but most important – for newcomers. I notice a lot of new companies and brands making the mistake of talking only about themselves – what they think, what they know, and what’s new with them. While it’s crucial to be an expert in your field, no one likes to talk to someone who only talks about themselves the whole time. This sounds very simple, but it’s the basis of good social interaction. I would encourage companies to reach out to their existing fans for their opinions whether it’s through polls, surveys, roundtables or guest blog posts. Everyone who participates will want to share it with their network and all of a sudden there’s much more potential for the information to go viral.
Dever: Building relationships, that’s the key to the kingdom. You have to personify your brand and make people feel that you are their friend. It doesn’t matter how many people you have following you if they aren’t engaged. Speak to them, answer their questions, introduce them to one another, play games with them. It’s simultaneously the easiest and hardest part of SMM.
Barnhill: It’s important to start small by piloting social media projects and then basing larger initiatives on the results of those efforts. This is especially true in larger, complex organizations. It’s very tempting to aim for a comprehensive strategy when you’re just getting started, without allowing for sufficient experimentation. Of course, early lessons learned need to augment business goals and be consistent with your brand message. Just be certain to document them while testing the waters so that you have data to show which tactics are driving results, and which are not.
Herr: Reciprocity. It sounds so soft, but think about it this way – our social networks have become so congested with brands, business, and professionals that plug their messaging, that we’re forced to ask ourselves “what am I getting out of this relationship” with each new follow. We’ve all become takers or pushers or both. People who genuinely like you (or your brand), and whom you genuinely like in return will be your best allies. Relationships aren’t net zero – their net sum, with people on both sides finding value.
Now for a fun one: What is your favorite mobile application that most people probably either don’t know about or haven’t tried yet?
Conner: Look at your keys… or perhaps your wallet… feeling overwhelmed by the number of grocery store club cards, reward key cards, shoe store membership cards? My wallet and my keychain looked like a rolodex of my brand preferences and they were starting to get unmanageable. The Key Ring app, available on your iPhone, Android or Windows phone, helps organize all of those membership cards on your mobile device. No need to carry the cards, just scan and store them in your phone. Sounds pretty basic but recent updates to this app have upgraded the use of the virtual rewards cards by including coupons, offers and discounts. It seems they even have a partnership with CellFire, “the premier destination for valuable savings on groceries, shopping, restaurants, and entertainment.” On a recent trip to the beauty store I presented my iPhone with the barcode for that store to the cashier and received the card’s standard discount along with a $5.00 off coupon available only through the Key Ring app.
Janssen: I haven’t seen many people using Google Voice, but I decided to start using it when I recently lost my phone and wanted to text my friends while I was waiting for my new phone. Now I’m hooked. All you have to do is set up a Google Voice phone number, and you can text from your computer for free. I use the Google Voice app on my Droid so that I can have my voicemails transcribed to text. And if you haven’t used cab4me to call a cab, I would recommend it. It makes calling a cab ten times easier.
Dever: LayAR – Augmented Reality applications are going to be huge in the mobile marketplace. Layar is the current front runner in this marketplace and gives developers the ability to build their own “layars” on the framework.
Barnhill: I have been playing around with Viddy over the past few days, and I really enjoy it. Viddy — like Socialcam — does for video what Instagram does for photos. It provides a method for adding a mood element to short video clips through filtering effects. Each video can then be shared to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (with Foursquare and Tumblr listed as “coming soon” by the app). The business case for Viddy is still unclear to me at this point, but given that brands have adopted Instagram and PicPlz for curating photo streams, Viddy represents a similar use case. But for personal purposes, the app is a lot of fun.
Herr: Instagram, without question! Rather than photo sharing, I’d call it more of a photo journalism or photo storytelling application. The filters are exceptional, and lend an oldness and nostalgia to pictures. The story that each person is documenting is different – it might be family, food, signage, or urban decay – but I feel the pictures that people share with Instagram are different than what they tend to share elsewhere. Also, it’s fascinating to watch how businesses who adopted early are using it to share content. I’d recommend checking out NPR, Red Bull (client) and Dan Rubin.
World of Quora
Lastly, let’s turn to Quora. Much has been made about whether Quora, the fast-growing Q&A website, can sustain its fast rate of growth without losing its reputation as a quality source of information; and in fact, this infographic from KISSmetrics shows a recent decline in unique visitors. What do you think: Can Quora continue to grow and maintain its quality? If so, how?
Janssen: I haven’t used Quora much but I have noticed a decline in the chatter about it in my own Twitter feed. My suggestion for Quora would definitely be to integrate video into the answers. With YouTube having around 180 million unique visitors a day, I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t integrate video into their answers.
Dever: Unfortunately, Quora runs the risk of becoming just another “experts exchange.” Its original appeal was its tight knit community that was built around the start-up, VC, tech evangelists social networks. I’ve already seen a marked decrease in quality of answers over the past months, which is when it appeared to hit “the tipping point” and expanded beyond it’s original exclusivity. I believe that y-combinator’s “hacker news” will probably regain some market share as the portal of choice for that community.
Barnhill: I do think Quora can grow while maintaining quality, despite the challenges associated with mainstream adoption. But I think there are two primary threats. First, there is clear demand for tighter, more-focused communities that revolve around niche interests and problems. LawPivot, for example, is making a name for itself (and drawing investment) by focusing exclusively on providing legal advice to tech companies and startups. Stack Overflow, meanwhile, continues to provide value to programmers as a collaborative platform. Second, Quora requires a lot more commitment than users of many social platforms may be willing to invest. By comparison, services like Twitter and Facebook – which admittedly serve a very different purpose than Quora – thrive partially due to expectations of simplicity and brevity. For example, while I still browse through Quora, the focus on longer, in-depth answers to questions requires more time than I’m willing to commit on a regular basis. So yes, while I expect Quora to grow, I think it faces some challenges that will likely lead to a flatter growth curve.
Herr: The answer to that question really depends on user’s root motivation and Quora’s own intentions. As an application grows, change is inevitable. Founders are faced with a choice: adapt to usage behaviors or stick to their core vision. These aren’t mutually exclusive, but they can be. As Quora grows, they will see a shift in their user base from web-based professionals and aficionados, to a larger population that’s harder to wrap up in a pretty package. The content on Quora will change accordingly. Look at Yahoo! Questions now – it’s a place to get your question answered by other users, but it’s not where you go to have an intelligent discussion on how technology is shaping our lives. For these types of questions, look to the Q&A platform being launched by TED. They’ve built a brand around the caliber of content that makes up a TED Talk that will serve as both launchpad and quality control for their Q&A feature.
Thanks for reading! If you would like to be part of a future roundtable discussion, send a reply on Twitter @shanebarnhill.
Last September, Google’s Chairman (and then CEO) Eric Schmidt sought to diffuse rising expectations of a new social network from the search giant by declaring that Google’s social strategy involved adding “social layers” to its existing products and services. According to Schmidt, a standalone social network was not part of Google’s plans. Recent events, however, suggest a shift in strategy and hint at a new social network that would position Google to compete more directly with Facebook.
Recent Moves are Telling
Consider these recent developments, if you will:
- CEO Larry Page reorganized Google into six core product areas and named Vic Gundotra to the position of SVP of Social, putting social media on equal footing with Google’s search, advertising and mobile (i.e. Android) businesses.
- Page has also made the move of tying 25% of employee bonuses to the company’s success in social networking.
- Google’s Slide team — which operates as an independent unit – has jumped into the group messaging space with a Disco, an iPhone application that is not available on Google’s Android OS.
- Hotpot, Google’s recommendation engine, has been folded into Google Places.
- Google also recently announced +1, the search giant’s answer to the increasingly ubiquitous Facebook Like button.
Image Credit: Valerie Everett/Flickr
Next, consider that Google already has the standalone components — or at least the technology — for a potential social ecosystem to compete with established social networking leaders. Google Latitude competes with Foursquare for check-ins. Google Buzz competes with Twitter, if only in theory. Blogger competes with platforms such as Tumblr and WordPress. Orkut even manages to compete with Facebook in a couple of international markets. And of course, don’t forget Google’s crown jewel of a potential integrated social offering: YouTube.
Testing the Waters
However, this portfolio of social and mobile products remains an unfocused, fragmented experience for users. Why confuse users by making them think they’ll need to check into a restaurant on Latitude and then exit the app in order to leave a review through the revamped Places offering? This makes no sense as a sustainable, long-term approach. So what gives?
What appears to be happening — and right under our noses, at that — is that Google is testing out disparate pieces of a larger puzzle; a puzzle that, for the short term, will remain a jumbled collection of parts. Page’s reorganization of Google into several autonomous units that are free to innovate independently and without strict oversight from Google’s operating committee reflects a go-forward approach where independent puzzle pieces remain unlinked in the near future.
The Social Pieces Connect
But certainly, connecting Google’s digital assets makes sense over the long term. But that’s the key: the long term. Because Social Is Too Important For Google To Screw Up With A Big Launch Circus, Google will seek to avoid the type of hype that accompanied Google Buzz’s release, which launched to much fanfare but was immediately criticized over privacy concerns and lack of utility. Instead, consider how the Places/HotPot merger was announced: casually via Google’s blog, without a marketing blitz and major press coverage to trumpet the change.
So here is how I believe this situation will play itself out: Google will continue to quietly release new social products. Then, gradually, these products will be tied together — through product mergers and cross-posting options — until only a small set of them remain.
A Social Layer Emerges
At this point, a unifying “social layer” will indeed emerge, one that will integrate all of Google’s products seamlessly. This layer will integrate your check-ins and restaurant reviews from Places/Latitude, your video preferences from YouTube, your activity from Google +1 and your photos from Picasa. It will understand which friendships are most important to you, based on the history of your Gmail account and your group texts from Disco. And it will do it all within one app that connects you to contacts from all of these services, while facilitating easy sharing to other social platforms such as Twitter and Tumblr.
Throw a few innovative features into this new integrated offering that are not available separately (Perhaps Instagram-style filtering for your YouTube videos, similar to Viddy), and BANG, you’ve got a killer new social network. Under this scenario, consumers could choose to use single puzzle pieces (i.e. only Gmail and YouTube) or opt into a unified experience for “all things Google.”
So there you have it: my hypothesis for Google’s social strategy. The company is surreptitiously testing modules of its eventual social network in plain view, for everyone to see. Google’s recent actions certainly point toward this direction. This plodding, pragmatic plan represents the best approach for Google to evolve into a social networking power that can compete with Facebook for valuable ad revenues while steering clear of the unattainable expectations that would come with a “big bang” release. If it doesn’t pan out, then Google can always pin its hopes on a big win by Paul Ceglia.
So do you think I’m on the mark here? Or am I completely crazy? Let me know with a comment below!
