More now on the Google+ search controversy. You know, the one where Google is giving their social network higher billing than others (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) in their search results. Yes, its a big problem.

Here we have a former Googler pointing out just how much Google has changed to even consider a move like this (link):

When the former Googler worked at Google (through a couple of years ago), doing something like this would have been “unthinkable,” the former Googler says. Realizing that Google is now willing to do it, the former Googler says, was a “sad day.”

And then we have the head honcho basically telling anyone that isn’t on board with this new direction can take a hike (link):

“This is the path we’re headed down – a single unified, ‘beautiful’ product across everything,” Page said, according to PandoDaily. “If you don’t get that, then you should probably work somewhere else.

I’d say that’s a pretty firm line drawn in the sand.

I hope you know what you’re doing, Mr. Page.

According to Jack Dorsey (you know, one of the guys that invented Twitter), Twitter isn’t actually social.

What about “social”? Not so much, Dorsey said. Twitter is a way to learn about what your friends are doing, but more than that it’s a way to learn about what other people who are relevant to you, from all over the world, are doing.

“We definitely see social as just one part of what people do on Twitter,” Dorsey said. “We think of it as an information utility and a communications network.”

Why does that sound familiar? Oh yeah, I said that in March of 2010 and people were freaking out. Turns out people are kinda passionate about what you do and don’t call a social network.

Google+ has been getting a lot of attention lately, and for good reason. They’re growing fairly fast and in the middle of an interesting new controversy.

Engauge put together a fantastic point of view on Google+, if I do say so myself.

Download the pdf and let me know what you think!

In case you’ve missed it, there has been a ton of talk about Google’s new search policy, which many think will skew their search results to promote Google+ over Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. The way it reads now, I have to agree that it seems like they’ve stepped a little over that line. You can read M.G.’s take on it and he’s been banging on it for the past week so scroll around his site for more details. Also, here is Twitter’s response.  And Google’s response to Twitter. It’s very soap opera-y.

My guess is they’ll pull back, realizing that the integrity of their results is as key to their survival as anything else. However if they decide to make a stand on this point and fight it out, we could be looking at the beginning of the end of their search dominance.

Either way, Google’s getting a lot of criticism right now for monopolistic policies and going against their “do no evil” mantra.

So I thought it was a nice touch when I fired up Google Chrome today and I got this message. Maybe they aren’t so evil after all ;)

Apparently Warner Brothers has launched a photo sharing website. It’s called Out My Window.
 
Um, why is that again?
 
We’re talking about a very, very crowded space. Instagram and Pinterest are blowing up. Flickr is still hanging around and Facebook is still the leading photo sharing site. Seems like every day a new photo enhancement / sharing app or site is popping up.
 
I don’t get it, but maybe I’m missing something here. 

I was passed this article by @gumboshowjoe entitled, “Witnessing half a decade on Twitter“. In it, Owyang discusses the past five years on Twitter and where he thinks the platform is going.

My general assessment of Twitter at this point is, it is what it is.  Meaning, I don’t think its going to go away but I also don’t think its going to do much more.  It’ll be integrated a little more, but it won’t be bigger than sms for teens, won’t be bigger than Facebook for most of the US/world, won’t be bigger than email for the working person…it’ll be a nice tool for specific people and specific reasons (news, etc.).

It’s a huge success and it changed the world. Not trying to minimize it by any means.

I just think, it is what it is.

Path is a new(ish) mobile only social network that describes itself as the smart journal that helps you share life with the ones you love. You can only have 150 friends. And I’m loving it.  
One awkward thing about this post is that typically I write about a service and want people to “friend” me so we can play with it together. In this case, I’m going to use Path the way it was intended, which is to connect with only the people in my life that I have a close relationship with. Don’t worry, we still have Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Tumblr, etc. ;) 
 
Oh, and why did I “draw” the reasons I like it? I do that sometimes as its a creative way for me to lay out my thoughts on something. Like this. Also sometimes I do it because the guy next to me on the plane is oblivious to the fact that has arms are hanging way over the side of the arm rest, so far in fact hat I can’t even use my right arm to type. 
 
Anyways, if you find yourself loving Path like I am, I’d love to know why. Here are my reasons: 

You can now leave people location-based gifts using a service called Clingle. Are you kidding, that’s freaking cool!

I could leave my wife a $25 gift certificate at Starbucks next time she goes there.

I could surprise my dad with a $50 Home Depot gift certificate next time he goes shopping at his favorite Depot.

I could leave $500 bail money at the local police department for my favorite politician.

This is a really exciting idea and I can’t wait to see if Clingle is able to get it to take off in the US. Good luck guys.

Google+ very well might be the next great thing. I’m really bad at predicting those kinds of things. When I first heard about Twitter, I thought it was crazy (come on, admit, so did you). I also thought FriendFeed was going to be amazing (kinda was until Facebook bought it). So I’m no expert in predictions, let’s start with that.

And I’m not dogging Google+ overall, if you get value out of it then I think that’s great. I’m also not a Facebook fanboy (should we be calling that a faceboy?), so its not like I’m a homer for Facebook being the perfect utopia of social goodness. In fact, I’m a huge Google fan. True, I’m an Apple fanboy at heart but I’m also a Google homer. In fact, I switched my phone service to Sprint just so I could use Google Voice.

But no matter how I look at Circles, I just can’t understand why anyone would think it is such a great feature.

True, I ranted about my angst over Google+ Circles before, so perhaps this is a bit of a re-post, but after seeing the latest commercial and continuing to hear people that love Google+ talk about how they love Circles, I have to ask again…why?

I feel like I’m on an island here as I haven’t heard anyone really agree with me about Circles being a flawed concept that, the bigger your circles get, the more useless they will become. MG Siegler seems to be on the same track as me, so there’s one person I’ve found.

Did Google make their way of grouping your friends easier to find than Facebook’s exact same feature? Sure, they absolutely did.

Did they make it fun for about five seconds by letting you drag and drop your friends into a circle? Yep, its a big barrel of fun until you get to your 15th friend and you look at your 200 other friends and realize…this is gonna be painful.

Circles, or however you group your friends, HAS to be dynamic and fluid, not manual. If you’ve spent any time at all putting your friends in Circles you’ve realized this, whether you want to admit it or not. You get to your 80th friend and you’ve got your 6 tidy Circles and then you realize that your 80th friend is also a huge New England Patriots fan and wouldn’t it be great to be able to run a Google+ Hangout during the Patriots game with all your friends who are Patriots fans? So you create a new Circle called, “Tom Brady is our hero”, but then realize, there are at least five other people I’ve already put into Circles that are also Patriots fans. So then you have to go back through all your previous 80 friends to figure out which ones are Patriots fans to put them into that new Circle.

Things change. People change. What happens when several of those friends stop being Patriots fans and become (GASP) Jets fans? You have to manually go and remember that they switched over to the dark side and move them out of the Patriots Circle.

This can happen if people move cities (you might have an “Atlanta” Circle so you can talk about snow storms that never happened), if people move jobs or career tracks, if people get married…all depends on your Circles. Unless you make your Circles so vague that they have almost no meaning.

The entire basis for Circles is flawed. Here’s the dumb part. Nobody, not even Facebook, knows more about us than Google. Google knows what I tweet. Google knows what I search for. Google knows what I blog about.

I personally can’t even imagine trying to take my several hundred friends/connections and figure out how to group them all into a bunch of Circles, not to mention the staff I’d have to hire to constantly check to see if they should still be in those Circles. I quit after about 40 as I realized that the Circle, “Atlanta entrepreneurs”, would change so often that it wouldn’t be worth keeping up with it.

If someone has reasons why I’m missing the point, I’d love to hear them. Honestly, I feel like I’m missing something as so many people think Circles is amazing.

Image from Duct Tape Marketing

I often wonder how we’ll be remembered in this digital age, where more and more of us share our experiences on platforms like Facebook and Twitter instead of diaries/journals and actual printed photo albums.

Recently my wife and I took our four-year old on a trip to Chattanooga, TN, and of course we took a ton of video and photos, sharing a bunch on Facebook and emailing/texting photos to our family members. A few weeks after we got back, my wife handed me a printed photo album of our trip that she had created. As our family huddled around flipping through that book, I realized that not everything is better in a digital format.

But most things still are :)