Nice to see more people "get" Google Plus instead of complaining that it is. Inside Google+ — How the Search Giant Plans to Go Social | Epicenter Google, the world’s largest search company, is formally making its pitch to become a major force in social networking. The product it announced Tuesday is called Google+, and observers might wonder whether it’s simply one more social effort by a company that’s had a lousy track record in that field to date.
‘On Facebook I overshare. On Twitter, I undershare. If Google hits that spot in the middle, we can revolutionize social interaction.’ — Shimrit Ben-Yair, product manager in charge of the social graph. Parts of it certainly seem to appear similar to what we’ve seen before. One significant component is a continuous scroll called “the stream” that’s an alternative to Facebook’s news feed — a hub of personalized content. It has a companion called “Sparks,” related to one’s specified interests. The second important app is Circles, an improved way to share information with one’s friends, family, contacts and the public at large. Some think the battle is already lost. Continue reading … First Night With Google Plus: This is Very Cool. 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? The fundamental value proposition is around privacy: it's the opposite of Facebook and Twitter's universal broadcast paradigm. Above: Anil Dash on Plus. 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. 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.
The list, group or Circle creation interface is interesting and really easy to use. The end result? Why Google+ won’t hurt Facebook, but Skype will hate it. Google launched its much awaited and highly anticipated social networking platform today to a limited number of users. Dubbed Google+ (Plus), the service may take its cue from social networking giant Facebook, but in the end it is about the harsh reality of Google saving and enhancing its core franchise — Google Search. It is search (and, by extension, advertising) that made Google a company that has run afoul of the Federal Trade Commission because of its huge size and influence.
At the time of Google’s founding, search was broadly defined as a sifting through a directory of websites. As the web grew, search became all about pages. Google, with its PageRank, came to dominate that evolution of search. Today, search is not just about pages, but also about people and the relevance of information to them.
Google’s senior executives — long dismissive of the idea of importance of social to search — were contrite during their briefing earlier this week. Why? What is Google Plus? What Google plus doesn't have yet. Google+ Project: It’s Social, It’s Bold, It’s Fun, And It Looks Good — Now For The Hard Part. 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+. What is Google+?
Sort of. You see, the truth is that Google really is trying not to make a huge deal out of Google+. How’s that for downplaying it? “We believe online sharing is broken. 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. The first thing Gundotra shows me about Google+, and the first thing you’re likely to interact with, is something called “Circles”.
It’s through Circles that users select and organize contacts into groups for optimal sharing. Gundotra realizes that many social services have tried and failed to get users to create groups. Next, Gundotra showed off a feature called “Sparks”. “Our goal here is to connect people. More: Novaspivack: Google+ seems a bit corpor... Google Yawn.