The Social of Google+

Bradley Horowitz

Even the best of us fail, and fail often. But success is emblazoned in our DNA, when we get up time and time again, recover well, and press forward. That, in essence, is where Google has been and is now. With Google+, it has learned its lessons and it’s back in the social sphere in a big way.

Here is a Wired Magazine interview of Bradley Horowitz, VP of Products at Google: Inside Google Plus. There is a lot of really good insight to tease out from this conversation, and this article covers the aspects of what we members experience on the site (i.e., social). 

Noisy stream

One of my friends on Google+ posts some stunning, clever photography. Sometimes it’s thought-provoking or make-me-smile messages. Regardless, she’s clearly capturing attention, and prompting friends to comment and engage in dialogue. The problem? Her stuff dominates my Newsfeed. For a handful of weeks, hers were the only things I would see or else I would have to scroll down pretty far to find other posts. I loved her stuff, but grew really annoyed with it. She’s like the vivacious lady at the party who spins great tales and people are enraptured by her. Except that two or three hours later, she hasn’t stopped talking or veered from being the center of attention.

Apparently I’m not the only one with this problem, as Horowitz and his team are addressing this:

The biggest challenge they face is what we call the noisy-stream problem, in which a few active people overwhelm the conversation. We need some tools to either suppress that noise or present the information in a way that it doesn’t dominate.

I wish there was something like the vertical glass panel in The Matrix and The Minority Report, where the operator can move sections here and there with a touch and thereby control different systems and machines. I did something of the sort by shifting her to a different circle. I would normally delete such a friend, but I didn’t want to lose her cool stuff. She just needed to see the downside of too much activity and engagement, and dial it down.

Private stream

Horowitz points out:

We’ve found there is actually twice as much private sharing as there is sharing that’s visible to everyone on the Internet. That’s why sometimes it looks like people sign up and then don’t come back. In fact, they’re sharing with small groups of people that they trust and love. It’s just not publicly visible. So there’s this sort of dark matter that the public can’t see.

In our in-person world, there are friends or colleagues we share certain things with, and things we share only with certain others. Google+ aims to mimic this world with its mechanism of circles. I know Facebook and Twitter allow for this sort of choice and privacy, through the use of lists, but Google+ makes it so easy and quick. Deciding which circle a connection belongs to is a matter of click-drag-drop. With Twitter, on the other hand, I’d have to open two or three windows, and the content on these don’t load very quickly.

In any case, what Horowitz says is a point well taken. Just as we can select which friends we share with and which ones we don’t, they themselves can select or deselect us in their sharing circles. So when a friend seemingly disappears, and stops posting, it may not be that they’ve become comatose in their cyber flats. Instead, it may be that we’ve been kept off their private circle.

Sharing stream

We have so many ways now of communicating that it’s positively dizzying. One time, a friend and I were chatting on BlackBerry Messenger (mobile), on Windows Live Messenger (mobile and PC), and also on Facebook (PC). At the same time. It was a lot of fun just to span across different media and technology. So back-and-forth like this isn’t an issue.

I think this is the kind of sharing that Google+ would like us to be able to do as well, not just back-and-forth but truly together.

Google+ introduces a new means of sharing, and one of the things that people love to share is media. People are already sharing fun media on the service, like animated GIFs. We’re not ready to announce anything now, but I think you can extrapolate and say Google+ is a good way to share mass media as well. That could take the form of people listening or watching something together in Hangouts.

Again, we have mechanisms that allow for this kind of sharing, but for various reasons they’re less than satisfying. For example, Go To webinars are live seminars on the web that people can join together. But I have not been able to attend these. Why? There’s an audio problem, which after talking to friends and trying to fix it several times, is probably an ISP interference issue. I’m able to have a business call on Launch (Microsoft Office Live Meeting), but reviewing documents or slides together is very slow streaming and it results in choppy images. It’s a little better sharing screens on Skype, but again that’s subject to ISP interference where I live. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and you simply can’t do business that way.

I understand that Google+ has special features or ‘apps’ for business people, like myself, but it’s not ready yet. I’ll wait for it. But if Hangouts is even just a notch more satisfying than any of the above, then I’ll be on Google+ more often and my friends and colleagues, too, because I’ll be bringing them on board the ‘gravy train!’

Note: I wrote this article on October 1st 2011 for an old Media & Tech blog.