Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host
Speaker 1: job in Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and how the tech Area. It is time very
Speaker 1: tech Stuff classic episode. You're actually gonna get a two
Speaker 1: fur in this one because the classic is called The
Speaker 1: Decline of Google Plus, which originally published on August twelve,
Speaker 1: two thousand and fifteen. However, within this episode there's an
Speaker 1: even older episode about Google Plus that dated all the
Speaker 1: way back in two thousand eleven. Also, interestingly, I talked
Speaker 1: about how everyone was chatting about Google Plus being on
Speaker 1: the decline and possibly being on the verge of obsolescence.
Speaker 1: But as I'll talk about after the episode, that's not
Speaker 1: quite what happened, at least not at that time. But
Speaker 1: let's listen in so in case you somehow have missed
Speaker 1: out on what Google Plus is. It's Google's answer to
Speaker 1: social platforms like Facebook. It's a place where you can
Speaker 1: share with specific circles of people. You can create circles
Speaker 1: based on your relationships, so that you share things with
Speaker 1: specific circles like communities or co workers, family members, or
Speaker 1: even the general public. And it's not limited to just those.
Speaker 1: There was a grand experiment when it first began. But
Speaker 1: here's the thing about experiments, they don't always work out.
Speaker 1: So back in two thousand eleven, the service was still
Speaker 1: in beta and people were clamoring to get in. Uh
Speaker 1: and it had not come out of beta when Chris
Speaker 1: and I did the episode. But since then the service
Speaker 1: opened up. There was this whole brewhaha where it got
Speaker 1: linked to YouTube, caused a real stir with a policy
Speaker 1: about using your official real name rather than a handle,
Speaker 1: which later the company back off of. And also recent
Speaker 1: changes in the product have prompted some journalists to say
Speaker 1: it's in the midst of death throws, so you can
Speaker 1: have your little moment of silence if you like. But
Speaker 1: I'm not ready to call it completely dead just yet.
Speaker 1: I just think of it as mostly dead. All right,
Speaker 1: let's talk about what happened. And I have to mention
Speaker 1: that Google Plus, as of this recording, is not dead.
Speaker 1: And it may be that all those predictions of it
Speaker 1: going away are premature, or it could just be that
Speaker 1: you know what's on borrow time. If you're interested in
Speaker 1: the original episode in which Chris and I talked about
Speaker 1: Google Plus. I'm adding that to the end of this part,
Speaker 1: so I'll talk about what's happened since then, and then
Speaker 1: if you want to go in the time machine, you
Speaker 1: can listen to the second half of the episode and
Speaker 1: Chris and I will talk more about what Google Plus
Speaker 1: was like back before it even came out of beta.
Speaker 1: We were so young back then. You'll get to hear
Speaker 1: how excited we were about the platform and how they
Speaker 1: were planning on it to be a challenge on Facebook,
Speaker 1: and even then I was making the point that it
Speaker 1: had a long way to go if it were to
Speaker 1: ever really be a threat. Meanwhile, Mashable has a really
Speaker 1: great piece on the rise and fall, although maybe I
Speaker 1: would just call it the debut and Fall of Google Plus.
Speaker 1: According to the article, google Plus was largely born out
Speaker 1: of fear. It was fear that motivated Google. It was
Speaker 1: the fear that Facebook would make Google irrelevant or at
Speaker 1: least heard its growth potential. So around it was clear
Speaker 1: that social platforms were really taking off, and people were
Speaker 1: sharing and following links on Facebook left and right. Now
Speaker 1: that meant that more people were skipping what Google considered
Speaker 1: to be an important step, which was where you would
Speaker 1: use Google to perform searches. Since Google depends upon ad revenue,
Speaker 1: you have to remember Google's really an ad company first,
Speaker 1: and then a search engine is just a product that's
Speaker 1: offered to us, and we ultimately are the real products
Speaker 1: of Google. So this was considered to be a bad
Speaker 1: thing if Facebook was going to eat into these numbers,
Speaker 1: and an executive named Vic Gondotra, who was at the
Speaker 1: time a senior vice president at Google, argued that the
Speaker 1: company needed its own social platform. So Google had tried
Speaker 1: some social experiments before. Google Wave was one of those.
Speaker 1: Google Buzz was another. If you're a longtime fan of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, you might know that Chris and I both
Speaker 1: really liked Google Wave a lot. We used it to
Speaker 1: build out our live shows when we were experimenting with
Speaker 1: live streaming with tech Stuff Live. That was several years ago.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. He and I loved it because
Speaker 1: it allowed us to do real time layouts of what
Speaker 1: the show was going to be like and even make
Speaker 1: changes while we were doing a show. But we couldn't
Speaker 1: figure out what anyone else would use it for. It
Speaker 1: was great for what we did, but that's a really
Speaker 1: narrow use case, and none of these social efforts from
Speaker 1: Google had much staying power. They all eventually when way,
Speaker 1: including Google Wave. So the best you could hope for
Speaker 1: was that some of the features that were in these
Speaker 1: products would find their way into other Google products like
Speaker 1: Gmail or something like that. Now, since the Google Plus
Speaker 1: podcast covers the birth of the social network, I thought
Speaker 1: a quick rundown on things that have happened since the
Speaker 1: debut would be useful before I play the old episode first.
Speaker 1: Google Plus launched in the summer of eleven and spent
Speaker 1: about three months in an invite only beta phase. For
Speaker 1: some reason, I got included in that beta test, which
Speaker 1: I loved at the time, and I thought Google Plus
Speaker 1: was interesting. Uh. I love the fact that when it
Speaker 1: was beta, most the other people who were involved were
Speaker 1: either tech entrepreneurs so they were important people who were
Speaker 1: in you know, startup companies or even more established companies,
Speaker 1: or they were tech journalists. So it felt like a
Speaker 1: bunch of my professional peers and friends all had this
Speaker 1: playground to ourselves, and frank we all thought it was
Speaker 1: kind of fun. That was obviously short lived because then
Speaker 1: it opened up to the public and then it sort
Speaker 1: of fell apart um. It opened to the public in
Speaker 1: September two thousand eleven, and despite some early interest, the
Speaker 1: platform really failed to get any real traction. Now, despite
Speaker 1: that early interest, the platform failed to get a lot
Speaker 1: of traction, so people often commented that Google Plus was
Speaker 1: really just a ghost town. In fact, that phrase was
Speaker 1: used a lot to describe Google Plus. Certain communities on
Speaker 1: Google Plus were really active, but they were the exception
Speaker 1: as opposed to the rule. And the truth is a
Speaker 1: lot of people just didn't see the need to migrate
Speaker 1: to Google Plus from other platforms like Twitter or Facebook.
Speaker 1: And unless your friends all go to the new place
Speaker 1: to hang out, it's not so much fun hanging out there.
Speaker 1: So since its launch, we've learned a little bit more
Speaker 1: about what was going on behind the scenes. Before a
Speaker 1: Google unveiled the beta test phase, Google had a building
Speaker 1: set aside for the Google Plus team and the project
Speaker 1: was kept a secret. The CEO was moved into that building,
Speaker 1: so it raised some probably some a little bit of
Speaker 1: drama within Google. According to Mashable, Google Plus at one
Speaker 1: point had about one thousand employees working on the project,
Speaker 1: which is enormous compared to other projects within Google. In
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, Vic Gondotra addressed an audience itself by
Speaker 1: Southwest and said that Google Plus was essentially Google two
Speaker 1: point oh and that it represented a social layer across
Speaker 1: all of Google's services. So, in other words, all those
Speaker 1: other Google products people use, like Gmail or YouTube would
Speaker 1: be held together by the connective tissue that is Google Plus.
Speaker 1: In Google first did some spring cleaning, uh. It combined
Speaker 1: Google Talk, which some times was also known as Google
Speaker 1: Chat or g Chat, and Google Messenger, which is an
Speaker 1: i AM client that was within Google Plus, and Google Hangouts,
Speaker 1: all under the Hangouts umbrellas, so all of these became
Speaker 1: collectively known as Google Hangouts. Hangouts had previously been known
Speaker 1: as the video chat service that was launched with Google Plus,
Speaker 1: and now that also included text messaging, so really it
Speaker 1: was anyway besides email where you would get in touch
Speaker 1: with other people who had these accounts. Now, Gondatra announced
Speaker 1: at the Google Io event there would be a total
Speaker 1: of forty one updates to the Google Plus service, and
Speaker 1: it included tweaks to photos and videos and how large
Speaker 1: they would be within a Google Plus screen. Also new
Speaker 1: animations that users could use automatic photo enhancements. This was
Speaker 1: kind of fun. I remember taking a picture of a
Speaker 1: snowy landscape, and Google automatically animated snowflakes falling across the picture,
Speaker 1: but there was a lot more of that than just
Speaker 1: those examples. Google also that year made a very controversial
Speaker 1: decision to tie together YouTube and Google Plus accounts that
Speaker 1: people absolutely hated. The integration effort required YouTube users to
Speaker 1: use a Google Plus account to leave comments, and because
Speaker 1: of Google's policies with names on accounts, this meant people
Speaker 1: more often than not, had to post under their actual names,
Speaker 1: and it also prompted owners of YouTube channels to change
Speaker 1: their handle to their true name. Now, the name debacle
Speaker 1: was really a big deal because some people wanted anonymity,
Speaker 1: or as much as it that as they can manage,
Speaker 1: particularly when just using YouTube. Others had an online persona
Speaker 1: that was separate from their real life identity, and making
Speaker 1: the switch would be confusing and perhaps even damaging to
Speaker 1: their online brand. There were plenty of legitimate reasons why
Speaker 1: people didn't like the idea of having to use their
Speaker 1: their birth name or real name, as well as plenty
Speaker 1: of reasons that aren't terribly legitimate, like the desire to
Speaker 1: troll other people while not being held responsible for that action,
Speaker 1: but The move may have been motivated by the ire
Speaker 1: to make YouTube comments a less volatile experience. So in
Speaker 1: other words, if you are attached to your real name,
Speaker 1: maybe you'd be less likely to be a jerk face
Speaker 1: on YouTube. Anyone who has seen a name various comment
Speaker 1: threads on Facebook knows this is not necessarily the case,
Speaker 1: but I guess it was a hope. But it also
Speaker 1: seemed like it was a membership drive to get more
Speaker 1: people to sign up for Google Plus accounts. If you
Speaker 1: wanted to play in the YouTube space, you had to
Speaker 1: have a Google Plus account, so that didn't go over
Speaker 1: so well in two thousand and fourteen. In April, Vic Gundotra,
Speaker 1: the man behind Google Plus, would announce his departure from
Speaker 1: the company, and that prompted a lot of news sites
Speaker 1: to essentially say that Google Plus was dead, although it
Speaker 1: seems to have been continuously shambling on ever since its death,
Speaker 1: so perhaps it's reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated.
Speaker 1: David Besbrus took over as the head of Google Plus
Speaker 1: and promised that the company was committed to support the
Speaker 1: product for a really long time, but six months later
Speaker 1: Google replaced him with Bradley Horowitz, who's another executive at Google.
Speaker 1: Two thousand fifteen current year, Google spins off Photos into
Speaker 1: its own app, so it's no longer wrapped up with
Speaker 1: Google Plus. The photos on Google Plus we're one of
Speaker 1: the big selling points, especially among photographers. It was considered
Speaker 1: to be a superior tool by many two things like
Speaker 1: the Facebook Google or Facebook Photo app. So the Google
Speaker 1: Plus Photos app was considered to be pretty good, and
Speaker 1: the fact that Google is spinning it off from Google
Speaker 1: Plus maybe an indication that Google Plus is kind of
Speaker 1: living on borrowed time. On August first, two thousand fifteen,
Speaker 1: Google shut down the Google Plus version of Photos, switching
Speaker 1: to the independent app instead. The new app is pretty cool,
Speaker 1: contains features like image recognition, which makes image searching really interesting. Uh.
Speaker 1: In other words, Google is using algorithms to automatically to
Speaker 1: text stuff that's within photos. That way, when you search
Speaker 1: for photos, even if they haven't been meta tagged, often
Speaker 1: the image search can give you some pretty good results,
Speaker 1: occasionally can give you some hilariously wrong results. It is
Speaker 1: still a fallible system. Google is also in the process
Speaker 1: of removing the requirement to link Google Plus and YouTube
Speaker 1: accounts together, which is pretty much an admission that the
Speaker 1: initiative was not a good idea. In fact, they pretty
Speaker 1: much said said so in their blog posts. They didn't
Speaker 1: come out and say specifically that YouTube and Google Plus
Speaker 1: integration was a complete mistake, or that making you use
Speaker 1: a quote unquote real name was a real mistake, but
Speaker 1: the implication was there. So soon you'll only need a
Speaker 1: Google account, not a Google Plus account, just a Google
Speaker 1: account to set up a YouTube channel, and that means
Speaker 1: that people won't be able to follow you or search
Speaker 1: you with that just that Google account Google Plus they could,
Speaker 1: but not with just a regular Google account. By the way,
Speaker 1: you should not delete your Google Plus account right away.
Speaker 1: You should hold onto it because Google says if you
Speaker 1: delete your Google Plus account before this whole process is complete,
Speaker 1: it will also delete your YouTube account. So if you
Speaker 1: have YouTube videos online, you don't want to remove your
Speaker 1: Google Plus account yet, wait until this process is finished. Now,
Speaker 1: in general, Google has stopped the more or less forced
Speaker 1: push to make users create Google Plus accounts. It clearly
Speaker 1: wasn't getting the results that it wanted other than irritating
Speaker 1: people who didn't have any interest in Google Plus to
Speaker 1: begin with, which I'm guessing was not an intended consequence.
Speaker 1: In fact, Harowitz said that it was time to talk
Speaker 1: about how Google Plus was pivoting away from its original
Speaker 1: pitch into something new, and this has already been reflected
Speaker 1: in that the social operations within Google had changed its
Speaker 1: name to Google Streams, Photos and Sharing. Now. Generally speaking,
Speaker 1: critics say that Google ailed to address the real problem,
Speaker 1: which was attracting users to the platform in an organic way,
Speaker 1: and instead used force by integrating Google Plus with other services,
Speaker 1: whether you liked it or not, so you had to
Speaker 1: create a Google Plus account if you wanted access to
Speaker 1: these other Google services, and it wasn't so much an
Speaker 1: indication that you thought Google Plus was actually a good
Speaker 1: service itself. They also kept on including lots of features
Speaker 1: that seemed like whenever they thought that there was a
Speaker 1: different way to try and attract people, they would just
Speaker 1: throw random features into Google Plus. This comes from criticism
Speaker 1: within the company itself, and a lot of people said
Speaker 1: those features were often unwanted or no one understood what
Speaker 1: they were for, so no one was using them. Now,
Speaker 1: Google maintains that Google Plus is going to stick around.
Speaker 1: It's just going to be more of a simple social
Speaker 1: platform and less of the centralized point of sharing across
Speaker 1: all of Google services. In other words, it's just gonna
Speaker 1: be a stripped down version of what it was in
Speaker 1: the first place. So Google Plus isn't officially dead. But
Speaker 1: keep in mind Google has been known to pull the
Speaker 1: plug on services after you know, they've died down a bit,
Speaker 1: and only a relatively small user base would be affected.
Speaker 1: So it's possible that in some blog post down in
Speaker 1: the future, there's going to be one of those lists
Speaker 1: of Google services that will no longer be supported, and
Speaker 1: Google Plus may one day show up on that list. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: things like Google Photos and Hangouts exist outside of Google Plus,
Speaker 1: and while they might have been spawned within Google Plus
Speaker 1: to begin with, we now can access those through other tools.
Speaker 1: Like hangouts you can access through Gmail, for example, and
Speaker 1: you can even have live hangouts that are broadcast on YouTube,
Speaker 1: so you can still use those products and they are
Speaker 1: kind of standalone compared to what they were originally as
Speaker 1: a sort of a feature within Google Plus itself. Now,
Speaker 1: with all that being said, we can go back and
Speaker 1: listen to this twenty eleven episode of tech Stuff in
Speaker 1: which Chris and I talked about the very earliest days
Speaker 1: of Google Plus. So if you want to hear what
Speaker 1: our thoughts were on the service back before it was
Speaker 1: open to the public. Stick around, check this out and
Speaker 1: be entertained by the amazing and adaptability for the two
Speaker 1: Yahoo's sitting at this table to chat about a service
Speaker 1: that had not yet debuted. Enjoy. So today we wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about a social network experiment that launched recently.
Speaker 1: As of the recording of this podcast, we're recording this
Speaker 1: in July two thousand eleven, and not that long ago,
Speaker 1: Google made a an announcement that ended up taking at
Speaker 1: least the the geek world by storm. Yes, definitely, and
Speaker 1: we've had a few requests, and I think Jonathan and
Speaker 1: I have decided that we'll go ahead and record a
Speaker 1: podcast about it now and off defense before too many
Speaker 1: other people ask us how it works. And also we
Speaker 1: should add that well, first of all, we're talking about
Speaker 1: Google Plus, in case you didn't read the title that
Speaker 1: we're talking about Google Plus, but I want to add
Speaker 1: a disclaimer at the beginning of this podcast, which is
Speaker 1: Google Plus is in a a beta a rapidly expanding
Speaker 1: beta program, uh and could undergo massive changes and short
Speaker 1: amounts of time. So anything we talk about today may
Speaker 1: very well have be different by the time this podcast
Speaker 1: goes live, although I don't I don't imagine things changing
Speaker 1: so significantly that they don't apply at all. But it
Speaker 1: may be that there are some subtleties that we are
Speaker 1: not going to cover because they will have emerged between
Speaker 1: the time we record this in the time it publishes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because frankly, that's that's true of a good two thirds
Speaker 1: of our podcast anytime we don't talk about something in history. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But but with with with something like this in particular,
Speaker 1: when it's in a beta format and a lot of
Speaker 1: people are testing it out. Um, and not only that,
Speaker 1: but the team behind it is listening to feedback and
Speaker 1: incorporating feedback into their changes. You have a rapidly evolving
Speaker 1: service that's going on here. So even though we might
Speaker 1: record something about say Facebook, and sure maybe some things
Speaker 1: will get tweaked in the Facebook uh service between the
Speaker 1: time we record in the time we published, it might
Speaker 1: be minor. But with something like this, where it's truly
Speaker 1: experimental and people are implementing changes at a rapid pace,
Speaker 1: the change it's more noticeable. Yes. That being said, now
Speaker 1: we've got the disclaimer on the way, let's talk about
Speaker 1: Google Plus. Okay, so one of my favorite descriptions of
Speaker 1: Google Plus came courtesy of Molly Wood from c Net,
Speaker 1: who said, google Plus is like you are at this uh,
Speaker 1: this really fancy party, and you're in a V I
Speaker 1: P section of the party, and there are only a
Speaker 1: few people there, and everyone's excited to be there, and
Speaker 1: everyone's talking about being at the party, and that's all
Speaker 1: that's happening. That's that's definitely an exaggeration, and it's also paraphrasing,
Speaker 1: so that's not a direct quote. Molly would put it
Speaker 1: much more succinctly. But and it's it's also changed in
Speaker 1: the last couple of days. Right. But but early on,
Speaker 1: if you were one of the few people who got
Speaker 1: into Google Plus, I was very fortunate in that I
Speaker 1: managed to get invite uh and and joined pretty pretty
Speaker 1: early on. Yeah, it turns out I know a lot
Speaker 1: of people in the tech business. Um. But if you
Speaker 1: if you were in there early on, it felt like
Speaker 1: the people who were there were all these mostly tech
Speaker 1: and geek culture folks. So you had a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are from tech companies, including folks who are
Speaker 1: actually from Google, which makes sense their product, right, you
Speaker 1: had people from other big companies, stuff like Twitter or Facebook,
Speaker 1: even we'll get into that. And then you had a
Speaker 1: lot of tech journalists, so people like Leo Laporte, tom
Speaker 1: merritt Um later on, Molly Wood and Brian Tong have
Speaker 1: seen it. Um I as actor who's a good friend
Speaker 1: of mine. He's he was also on there pretty early on.
Speaker 1: You have these folks who are kind of populating it,
Speaker 1: so it felt like a weird social network. It felt
Speaker 1: like a social network that had been designed specifically for
Speaker 1: this tech geek world. Oh, you also had some geek celebrities,
Speaker 1: and I say geek celebrities, and that geeks like me
Speaker 1: tend to think of them as amazing celebrities. So Felicia
Speaker 1: Day will whe eaten those kind of folks. Um. So
Speaker 1: it kind of felt like a social network built for geeks.
Speaker 1: Now that's gradually changing as more and more people join in,
Speaker 1: and we're starting to slowly skewed toward a more quote
Speaker 1: unquote normal population. I use normal just in the sense
Speaker 1: of average as opposed to geeks are not normal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and I feel compelled to point out that again,
Speaker 1: like a number of topics on this show, this is
Speaker 1: one of those things that has been anticipated for quite
Speaker 1: some time. Um. It's hard to tell a lot of
Speaker 1: these things too. Um, things like the Apple iPad and
Speaker 1: Google Plus and things like this that people say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, Google's working on a social network that's aimed
Speaker 1: to take down Facebook, and they talk about it for
Speaker 1: months and months and sometimes years, and you start going, happened.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like Spotify coming to the United States,
Speaker 1: which also just recently happened, but for for a long time. Uh. Again,
Speaker 1: this is one of those things that I've heard a
Speaker 1: lot of technicalists called tech unicorns. Yeah. These are like
Speaker 1: the white iPhone for a long time was the tech unicorn.
Speaker 1: The iPad was a tech unicorn for a long time.
Speaker 1: These are apples streaming iTunes service, which is still Yeah,
Speaker 1: these are things that everyone quote unquote knows is coming,
Speaker 1: but it hasn't arrived yet, and it maybe years before
Speaker 1: we ever get to it. And so yeah, some of
Speaker 1: these are some of these turned into vaporware, right, tech
Speaker 1: unicorn vaporware. The relationships pretty tight, Yeah, Duke Nukelen forever
Speaker 1: long time tech unicorn. We will withhold commentary on what
Speaker 1: actually eventually published. We'll be back with more of this
Speaker 1: classic episode of tech stuff after this quick break, so
Speaker 1: let's let's kind of talk about sort of the the
Speaker 1: we've talked about why, how people wanted to get in.
Speaker 1: Uh we a lot of people wanted to get in
Speaker 1: and couldn't get in because they didn't have enough invites. Um.
Speaker 1: The the expansion of Google Plus has been pretty impressive
Speaker 1: to watch over time. You wanted to say something, well, no,
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say that they're in between the
Speaker 1: tech unicorn. Um. It's one of those things. And at
Speaker 1: least in my opinion, where Google Plus it was so
Speaker 1: we've heard it for so long, it's like it's hiding
Speaker 1: in plain sight that they just went, oh, here it is,
Speaker 1: and we all kind of went yeah. Google Plus kind
Speaker 1: of launched without a whole lot of fanfare from Google.
Speaker 1: But it turns out Google didn't need to provide fanfare.
Speaker 1: That was provided by that community of users I was
Speaker 1: talking about earlier, because that that that same group of
Speaker 1: early adopters who are passionate about trying stuff out, are
Speaker 1: really passionate about sharing information. So these adopters served as
Speaker 1: the the champions of Google Plus. Google didn't have to
Speaker 1: say it anything. Really, They showed off a demo um,
Speaker 1: they explained the concept and that and they let everyone
Speaker 1: else take over. And really Google didn't just release and watch,
Speaker 1: They released, watched and listened and implemented changes. Which that's
Speaker 1: kind of where I think a lot of the tech
Speaker 1: enthusiasts have really kind of latched onto Google Plus because
Speaker 1: they're like, they're not just giving us this, They're listening
Speaker 1: to what we have to say, and they're taking that
Speaker 1: into consideration. So instead of it being some sort of
Speaker 1: ivory tower where products come out, but it's a one
Speaker 1: way street, right, you know, they're they're providing a service,
Speaker 1: but they're not listening to what we have to say.
Speaker 1: We just take whatever they're giving us. Google is more
Speaker 1: of a two way street, Like you really feel that
Speaker 1: the people at Google are listening. Now. They may not
Speaker 1: incorporate all the changes you think need to be there
Speaker 1: because it doesn't match their vision of what the service
Speaker 1: ultimately will do, but at least they're listening. Yeah. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: you know, all of us have our own preferences and
Speaker 1: choices we want to see in the product, and so
Speaker 1: Google is not going to make all of us happy,
Speaker 1: and you know those of us it does make happy,
Speaker 1: it won't make us completely happy, because well, we'll be
Speaker 1: looking for one particular thing or two particular things and
Speaker 1: maybe you know, that's just a few people, and Google
Speaker 1: is not gonna change it just for a few people.
Speaker 1: But yeah, as soon as it was announced, um, you know,
Speaker 1: the tech enthusiasts latched onto it and and it started spreading.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, um, Google was smart about launching
Speaker 1: it the way they did because they were trying to
Speaker 1: avoid overloading their servers um and so what they were
Speaker 1: doing was they were releasing it to a few people
Speaker 1: at a time. And when I say a few, a
Speaker 1: few to most of us would be you know, ten people,
Speaker 1: but you know, a few to Google was you know
Speaker 1: a few hundreds, a few thousand at a time. And
Speaker 1: uh so people were going crazy the first few days
Speaker 1: after the launch looking for an invite to the service.
Speaker 1: Now it also makes it seem really exclusive. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: of course the more, yeah, the more exclusive something is,
Speaker 1: the more people want to be in that because people
Speaker 1: want to be part of an exclusive group. And uh,
Speaker 1: I mean it's just natural, right you see, you see
Speaker 1: the cool click of kids, and you want to be
Speaker 1: in that click. And once you're in that click, you're
Speaker 1: like this is awesome, And yeah, I don't object to
Speaker 1: us letting in maybe one or two other people who
Speaker 1: are kind of cool, but let's not go crazy and
Speaker 1: let everyone in, because then we don't have a click anymore.
Speaker 1: So uh and we can get into sort of the
Speaker 1: click ish behavior that I've noticed on Google Plus. Not again,
Speaker 1: this is really really early on in Google Plus. I
Speaker 1: don't expect that this will last long. There's going to
Speaker 1: be a big change as more people join um. And also,
Speaker 1: there were reports that within a couple of weeks of
Speaker 1: Google Plus launching, they were already possibly as many as
Speaker 1: ten million people on it. And at the time we're
Speaker 1: recording this podcast, which is again just a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks after Google Plus launched, they expect it to be
Speaker 1: up to twenty million by uh in a in a
Speaker 1: couple of days from the recording of this podcast. So
Speaker 1: if you're looking for let's go ahead and get this
Speaker 1: answer out of the way. If you're looking for Google
Speaker 1: Plus to knock off Facebook right away, it's not going
Speaker 1: to happen because they're talking twenty million people out of
Speaker 1: sift million for Facebook exactly. So the law, the the
Speaker 1: long term answer to that is maybe. But right now,
Speaker 1: you know, there's no threat whatsoever. And I don't think
Speaker 1: Google would claim that Google Plus is meant to replace Facebook.
Speaker 1: In fact, that kind of leads us into what is
Speaker 1: Google Plus because we talked a lot about the the popularity,
Speaker 1: but we haven't really even discussed anything about the actual service.
Speaker 1: There are some similarities to other social networks. In fact,
Speaker 1: there's there are similarities to other Google products. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and you will notice if you have used things like
Speaker 1: Google Buzz or Google Wave, you'll see little similarities here
Speaker 1: and there in Google Plus. And you'll notice like, okay,
Speaker 1: they they've sort of incorporated this I uh and the
Speaker 1: lessons they learned from that into Google Plus. So Google
Speaker 1: Plus is essentially a social network, though it's not just
Speaker 1: a social network. And the way it works from a
Speaker 1: user perspective is that you will look for people who
Speaker 1: are on Google Plus or have yet to join Google Plus,
Speaker 1: people you know or people you know of, and you
Speaker 1: put those people into circles. Now, these circles are categories
Speaker 1: so that you can uh put people into whichever ones
Speaker 1: fit best in your life, so that you can direct
Speaker 1: messages to those people and read messages from those people
Speaker 1: in a way that's more granular than your average Facebook
Speaker 1: user is used to. Yeah. Now, I mean, uh, Facebook
Speaker 1: fans would probably see, but yeah, I can do that
Speaker 1: with Facebook. Well. Um, basically the big difference here, I
Speaker 1: think is that this is like the first thing you
Speaker 1: do when you add a new person to your Google
Speaker 1: Plus account. If you want to, uh start following Jonathan
Speaker 1: for example, Um, you know, the very first thing you say, Okay,
Speaker 1: oh I found him. Now what circles do you want
Speaker 1: to add him to? And you can add people to
Speaker 1: more than one circle, yes, and you can create circles
Speaker 1: you you you start off with some basic circles. I
Speaker 1: believe it's friends, family, acquaintances, and followers are following. So
Speaker 1: I've got let's say, I've got There's there's Chris. And
Speaker 1: then I have to make a decision. Do I put
Speaker 1: Chris in my friend's circle, do I put them in
Speaker 1: my acquaintance's circle, or do I put them in my
Speaker 1: following circle. Chris is not part of my family, so
Speaker 1: I'm not going to put them in there. And I'm
Speaker 1: all right with that. Yeah. And and it's nice to
Speaker 1: note to, especially if you're concerned with issues of privacy.
Speaker 1: The person on the other end, the person that you're
Speaker 1: adding to your circles has no idea what circles to
Speaker 1: which you have added them, Right, So if you put
Speaker 1: them in, like, you could create a circle called jerk faces.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, I know for a fact that
Speaker 1: I'm in that circle. And you could put people in
Speaker 1: the jerk faces I know circle and they're not going
Speaker 1: to know that that's the They know that you've added them,
Speaker 1: but they don't know what circle they are in. So
Speaker 1: I'm probably in a lot of jerk faces I know
Speaker 1: circles and yeah, and now that our listeners have heard
Speaker 1: me say this, I imagine a lot of them are
Speaker 1: making jerk faces I know circles just to put me
Speaker 1: in them. Um, so you've got these circles. Now you've
Speaker 1: decided where this your first let's say it's your first
Speaker 1: person you're following. So I'm going to use Chris as
Speaker 1: my example. I've decided that I want to follow Chris.
Speaker 1: I want to I want to hear what Chris has
Speaker 1: to say. I want to be able to see his updates.
Speaker 1: I want to be able to see his photos. Um,
Speaker 1: I put him in my acquaintances circle. All right, So now,
Speaker 1: anytime Chris posts and publishes his post to either the public,
Speaker 1: which means everyone can see it. Everyone on Google Plus
Speaker 1: can see it, everyone in the in the world can
Speaker 1: see it. Um. I mean it's not restricted to anybody
Speaker 1: in particular, right right. But now, now, if Chris has
Speaker 1: not put me in a circle, and he publishes and
Speaker 1: anything other than public, I'm not going to see that information.
Speaker 1: So Chris decides that he wants to publish a status update,
Speaker 1: but he's just gonna push it to his friends. I
Speaker 1: am not in his friend's circle. He types in his
Speaker 1: status update, he sets it so that it only publishes
Speaker 1: to friends. He publishes it. I don't know that Chris
Speaker 1: has done anything to me. His his posts still are blank.
Speaker 1: Now let's say that Chris does another one where he
Speaker 1: decides he wants to talk about an article he edited,
Speaker 1: and he wants this he wants the general public to
Speaker 1: know about this article. He sets that status update to public.
Speaker 1: Suddenly I can see that particular status update because they
Speaker 1: set it to public, so anyone following Chris can see it.
Speaker 1: Then let's say that Chris notices that I'm on Google
Speaker 1: Plus and he thinks, oh, well, Jonathan's there, I should
Speaker 1: add him I'll add him to my acquaintances circle. Then
Speaker 1: Chris publishes a status update and decides he only wants
Speaker 1: his acquaintances and friends to see it, so he sets
Speaker 1: it so that this status update goes out to friends
Speaker 1: and acquaintances, but not the general public. I would be
Speaker 1: able to see that stats update. Now, if he had
Speaker 1: not added me to his acquaintance circle or his friends circle,
Speaker 1: I would not see it. I would be unaware that
Speaker 1: he had updated his status. You can get so granular
Speaker 1: that you can create a stats update and directed to
Speaker 1: specific people. So I could create a stats update and
Speaker 1: just send it to Chris alone, and that's the only
Speaker 1: person who sees it. Or I could send it to
Speaker 1: Chris and maybe three or four other people. Let's say
Speaker 1: that it's three or four people who are in different circles.
Speaker 1: They don't really belong all on the same circle, but
Speaker 1: I think they all need to see this message. I
Speaker 1: might just go in and manually put in each name,
Speaker 1: and those are the only people who will see that message. Now,
Speaker 1: there are some other things you have to remember, like, uh,
Speaker 1: there is the ability to share posts that other people
Speaker 1: have published. Now, if you you can either turn the
Speaker 1: sharing on or off, so you don't have to. If
Speaker 1: you turn it off, that means other people cannot share
Speaker 1: the same message you just posted. If the share is
Speaker 1: on your message that went out to just your friends
Speaker 1: or just your acquaintances might suddenly become public. Right, So
Speaker 1: Chris sends out a message to just his acquaintances. He
Speaker 1: has sharing turned on, he has not turned that off.
Speaker 1: I read Chris's post, and I think, hey, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: Everyone who follows me wants to know that too. I
Speaker 1: hit share. Suddenly his message that just went to his
Speaker 1: acquaintances are now it's now out in the wild, So
Speaker 1: they're attributed to me exactly. Yes, yes, so people can
Speaker 1: actually follow it back to Chris. Now, granted they're only
Speaker 1: going to be able to see the things that Chris
Speaker 1: has published at that point to the public if they
Speaker 1: go directly to that's the weird thing. They might see
Speaker 1: a shared post like I share your post, they see
Speaker 1: it on my feed, then they follow it back to
Speaker 1: your feed and something that post isn't there because it
Speaker 1: wasn't set to public when it was originally published. It
Speaker 1: gets a little complicated. These are things that the Google
Speaker 1: Plus team. They're looking into this stuff to see what
Speaker 1: makes sense and what doesn't make sense, you know, sharing
Speaker 1: versus private. And because you have the ability to turn
Speaker 1: sharing off, if you are someone who doesn't want information
Speaker 1: to go beyond that group of friends, you can always
Speaker 1: turn it off. Now, granted, that doesn't stop your friends
Speaker 1: from say saying that Jonathan said blah blah blah. Right,
Speaker 1: and there's always you know, copy and paste, right, So yeah,
Speaker 1: there are ways around it. But that's the same for
Speaker 1: any social network. I sort of count on my friends
Speaker 1: to be lazy enough where they won't I can't share this, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And and really, I mean it's just like real life.
Speaker 1: Just like real life, I come up and I tell
Speaker 1: Chris is secret. There's nothing stopping Chris from going around
Speaker 1: and telling other people that's secret. I'm sorry, I told you,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Gee. Yeah, well let's see if you ever
Speaker 1: get any key line pie from me again. So so
Speaker 1: that's the basics behind circles and sharing. And also, if
Speaker 1: let's say that when you're actually consuming information, you're not
Speaker 1: just that that's sending information out right, publishing information. You
Speaker 1: can also look view your stream. That's what Google Plus
Speaker 1: calls your what what Facebook would call the wall, right
Speaker 1: or Twitter, we call it the feed, so it's the
Speaker 1: same sort of concept. It's it's the stream of information
Speaker 1: coming from all the people that you put into your circles.
Speaker 1: You can view that by circle, So if you just
Speaker 1: have it set to the stream, you're looking at everything
Speaker 1: that people you follow are publishing. So all your friends, acquaintances,
Speaker 1: celebrities who might be following people you know of but
Speaker 1: you don't actually know in real life. All the information
Speaker 1: gets dumped into the stream. If you want to try
Speaker 1: and filter that out, you can view your stream by circle.
Speaker 1: So I might click friends and now I'm only going
Speaker 1: to see the updates that my friends have published to
Speaker 1: their stream, and I've cut everything else out. I can
Speaker 1: even view it by incoming incoming. It gets really crazy
Speaker 1: for people like me, and more so for people who
Speaker 1: are even more even more who are actually famous. Because
Speaker 1: I have as the recording of this podcast, I have
Speaker 1: people following me. If I choose incoming, I see their updates,
Speaker 1: so I'm not following them. But by hitting incoming, I'm
Speaker 1: seeing everyone who's following me. I'm seeing their updates. So
Speaker 1: suddenly just becomes a wall of information. Um but assuming
Speaker 1: that everything they've published as public if they published stuff
Speaker 1: to their friends or their acquaintances or whatever. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to see that. I'm only going to see stuff
Speaker 1: that in the circles that I've been included in and
Speaker 1: in the public posts. But it means that I get
Speaker 1: a lot more information from a lot more people, not
Speaker 1: just the people I follow. Right, that can be a
Speaker 1: lot We've got more to say in this classic episode
Speaker 1: of tech stuff after these quick messages. So in a way,
Speaker 1: Google Plus is like Facebook and that you can follow
Speaker 1: specific people, they can follow you back and you. In
Speaker 1: a way, it's like Twitter because in Twitter you can
Speaker 1: follow people and just read what they have to say
Speaker 1: as long as they don't have a profile set to private.
Speaker 1: You can read Twitter posts from people as they update.
Speaker 1: So in Google Plus the same sort of thing. You
Speaker 1: don't have to give permission to someone in order for
Speaker 1: them to follow you. But people say, well what about privacy.
Speaker 1: That's where the circles come in. That's where you can
Speaker 1: choose which circles see what you have to say. If
Speaker 1: you don't want random people seeing what you have to say,
Speaker 1: you publish it to a specific circle, right right, Um,
Speaker 1: And I mean people compare this product to Twitter and
Speaker 1: Facebook all the time. I've seen a constant stream of that. However,
Speaker 1: I think it's most like at least the ones I've tried.
Speaker 1: Most like another service that caught on for a little
Speaker 1: while and Facebook acquired it and is sort of languished
Speaker 1: under Facebook's control, and that's called friend Feed. If you've
Speaker 1: ever been to friend feed dot com. Um, it's very
Speaker 1: very similar, and um it's it's the more too. I mean,
Speaker 1: the the feed is somewhat similar to the wall on
Speaker 1: on Facebook, but you can um like and unlike and
Speaker 1: make long comments to it, very much in the style
Speaker 1: of friend feed, more so than than Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: But it's it's closer probably to Facebook or friend Feed
Speaker 1: than it is to Twitter. Now, I mean there is
Speaker 1: some uh you know that it looks a little bit
Speaker 1: more like Twitter. I mean, just the visual element of it,
Speaker 1: I would say, um, but there are some other advantages
Speaker 1: to using Google Plus that there aren't um, and that's
Speaker 1: probably I think of that more as the integration with Android. Um.
Speaker 1: For example, you know, Jonathan and I both have Android smartphones,
Speaker 1: and we can set Google Plus to automatically post every
Speaker 1: photo we take with our phones to Google Plus. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's such a good idea. You can
Speaker 1: set your privacy, you can such your privacy so that
Speaker 1: people don't automatically see those photos. So so if you
Speaker 1: if you had it where every photo you take is
Speaker 1: automatically published, uh publicly to your Google Plus account, that
Speaker 1: seems like a bad idea. Yeah, I mean even if
Speaker 1: even if we let's take let's take out the bad
Speaker 1: behavior aspect, right, so bad behavior, that would be a
Speaker 1: bad idea because suddenly you're publicly showing everyone bad behavior.
Speaker 1: So let's say, you know, being intoxicated or being acting
Speaker 1: irresponsibly in some way, and you're like, oh, let's take
Speaker 1: a picture of this. Well, yeah, that's a bad idea.
Speaker 1: But let's say it's just a bad photo, like your
Speaker 1: fingers in the frame. You know, you don't want that
Speaker 1: publishing because you're like, come on, that's just a I'd
Speaker 1: rather take that photo again. So you can set your
Speaker 1: privacy setting so that those photos don't automatically go to everybody,
Speaker 1: you know. I actually do have instant published turned on
Speaker 1: right now because I wanted to try it out, and
Speaker 1: it's pretty neat. I didn't realize that every picture I
Speaker 1: take on my phone is instantly published not just the
Speaker 1: ones I do through the app, but through anything so
Speaker 1: gets put like I've taken photos to upload to Twitter
Speaker 1: and twit pick. It also has gone to my Google
Speaker 1: Plus account. Now I don't have it publishing publicly, so
Speaker 1: at least people aren't being flooded by pictures of me
Speaker 1: trying to take a photo of one thing and like, no,
Speaker 1: that's not right either. Let me change the lighting a
Speaker 1: little bit and take three more of these. But you
Speaker 1: could do that, yep. And um, that isn't to say
Speaker 1: that that won't that functionality won't come to other phones.
Speaker 1: Now there is a Google Plus app. Actually there was
Speaker 1: a Google Plus app for Android, I would say just
Speaker 1: about immediately since I heard about it, I looked for it.
Speaker 1: Now it was the launch, the launch on the web,
Speaker 1: and the launch on the phone. In fact, the launch
Speaker 1: on the phone gave some people a work around to
Speaker 1: getting into Google Plus. Early on, they installed the Google
Speaker 1: Plus app on their phone and found that they could
Speaker 1: bypass the invite system, and once they try to activate
Speaker 1: the app on their phone, it gave them an invite,
Speaker 1: and there was another workaround that got you into Google Plus. Um,
Speaker 1: but those have been patched since then. But they've also
Speaker 1: started opening it up to more people too. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: I have hundreds of invites right now, and I just
Speaker 1: keep getting more, and I'm running out of people who
Speaker 1: I know would be interested in it, and well and
Speaker 1: the personally and the invite system is not entirely intuitive. No,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not. It's not the easiest thing in
Speaker 1: the world. Like when you see the invite system, it's
Speaker 1: it's easy to get a little confused by it. Uh.
Speaker 1: I guess we can talk a little bit about some
Speaker 1: of the other features of Google Plus well before we
Speaker 1: get too far away from the Android app. We have
Speaker 1: heard that there is going to be an iOS app
Speaker 1: that's the operating system for the Apple I stuff. As
Speaker 1: the recording of this podcast, it's been submitted but not
Speaker 1: yet approved. Yeah, so there. I don't know if the
Speaker 1: automatic photo feature will work with those phones, I you know,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if there will be something coming
Speaker 1: for Windows Phone or or web os. Um we'll see. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but like a lot of BlackBerry, like a lot of
Speaker 1: services and probably that we're seeing launch these days. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's really effective if you subscribe to a particular ecosystem.
Speaker 1: In this case, Google's so using Google Plus on Google
Speaker 1: Chrome and having an Android phone. It works. I mean
Speaker 1: it works really seamlessly because all those products are coming
Speaker 1: from the same company. But when you start mixing and matching,
Speaker 1: your experience may vary. Yeah, there's another feature, um and
Speaker 1: uh that that Jonathan and I tried out pretty much immediately,
Speaker 1: and that's called the huddle. Yes, this is this relates
Speaker 1: to UH two phones. Yes, so a huddle is like
Speaker 1: having a group messaging system on phones. So everyone who
Speaker 1: is in a huddle needs to have uh a phone
Speaker 1: number attached to their Google Plus account, or they have
Speaker 1: to have the the Google Plus app installed on their
Speaker 1: their phones. Um. And what you do is you set
Speaker 1: it up and you can send out a message. Let's
Speaker 1: say that I want to have get together after work
Speaker 1: one day and just hang out of the restaurant, have
Speaker 1: some appetizers and talk about what's been going on in
Speaker 1: the company. There might be three or four people I
Speaker 1: want to invite, so I add all of them to
Speaker 1: my Google Plus huddle and I send out a message.
Speaker 1: That message will go to all of those people, and
Speaker 1: then all of those people can respond to that message
Speaker 1: and everyone can see each other's responses. It becomes kind
Speaker 1: of like a chat room via text message, but only
Speaker 1: among that group of people. And again this is functionality
Speaker 1: that reminds me of Google Wave and also other services
Speaker 1: like Beluga. There are group messaging services Beluga, there are
Speaker 1: other group messaging services. Chris, give me a look, and
Speaker 1: I can tell you wanted to do the bulbous bouffont Beluga,
Speaker 1: which my wife hates UM, but the yeah, there there
Speaker 1: are other messaging services group messaging services that are doing
Speaker 1: this right now. In fact, a lot of them were
Speaker 1: launching around south By Southwest and we're making a big,
Speaker 1: big splash there. Google Huddle is kind of Google's version
Speaker 1: of this. Now, that was one of the work of
Speaker 1: ounds too. If you added someone to a Google Huddle,
Speaker 1: then in order for them to be able to use
Speaker 1: the huddle, they were given a link to log into
Speaker 1: Google Plus and that's how they ended up getting accounts
Speaker 1: even though they didn't have an official invite UM and
Speaker 1: the invitations at that point had been closed. And yet
Speaker 1: a lot of people found that workaround. Again, that's been
Speaker 1: patched since the uh since since it first happened. Took
Speaker 1: a couple of days before Google caught on, or maybe
Speaker 1: they caught on, but they let it happen anyway because
Speaker 1: they're like, well, this is letting the population base expand,
Speaker 1: but it's not expanding at a rate that's outside of
Speaker 1: our comfort zone. Yeah yeah um. And then there's hangouts. Yea,
Speaker 1: hangouts are awesome. I haven't tried to hang out yet.
Speaker 1: I've tried it and it is It is addicting. So
Speaker 1: a hangout is a video chat session. You can start
Speaker 1: a hang out with specific people if you want to,
Speaker 1: or you can start a hangout and just make it
Speaker 1: public where anyone who follows you will see the hangout
Speaker 1: and can join. And I hang out is you need
Speaker 1: a webcam and a microphone and speakers. Nor for this
Speaker 1: work says you can hear people, they can hear you,
Speaker 1: and they can see you, and up to ten people
Speaker 1: total can be in a hangout at one time, so
Speaker 1: it's you and nine other people max. And the video
Speaker 1: switching is very clever. It switches to whomever is speaking
Speaker 1: at the time. So if everyone's quiet and I'm talking,
Speaker 1: then the main video will be me as I'm chatting.
Speaker 1: As someone else starts to talk, the video will switch
Speaker 1: to that person and uh the focus changes to them.
Speaker 1: And if two people are talking, whomever is the loudest
Speaker 1: will have their video featured as the central video, and
Speaker 1: so you'll actually see uh if in a full hangout,
Speaker 1: you'll see one main screen of the person who's talking,
Speaker 1: and then you'll see the other nine miniaturized like thumbnail
Speaker 1: sized screens below, and it's all moving, you know, like
Speaker 1: you're seeing video from all those feeds at one time.
Speaker 1: It can get a little buggy depending upon people's um
Speaker 1: data transfer rates. You know, if you're if you're on
Speaker 1: a slow UH, if you're not really on a high
Speaker 1: speed broadband connection, you're gonna have some problems with this.
Speaker 1: There'll be some lag. UM I was. I was having
Speaker 1: some really bad lag when I was doing it because
Speaker 1: I think there were a couple of different uh choking
Speaker 1: points in the in the data transfer. So I would
Speaker 1: say something and then about three or four seconds later,
Speaker 1: I would hear myself say it. So I'm responding to
Speaker 1: something that someone is saying right now, but then three
Speaker 1: or four seconds later there I'm starting to hear it.
Speaker 1: So there'd be a gap between when I'm talking when
Speaker 1: they're talking, so you know, they might stop ask me
Speaker 1: a question and stop, I don't answer, then they started
Speaker 1: asking if I'm there, and that's when my answer is
Speaker 1: starting to hit and I got a little muddled. But
Speaker 1: on a fast connection, it's pretty cool. Yeah. And then
Speaker 1: of course, right after all this happened, Facebook had an amazing,
Speaker 1: awesome announcement. Yeah, they're video chat, which is uh partnership
Speaker 1: with Skype and allows you one on one video chat
Speaker 1: with another person on Facebook. It's a difference system, right
Speaker 1: Like you can use a hangout and just talk to
Speaker 1: one person if you want to, but you can also
Speaker 1: talk to a group of people, whereas with Facebook video
Speaker 1: chat right now, as a little recording of this podcast,
Speaker 1: it's a one on one scenario. So um, Facebook may
Speaker 1: not necessarily see Google Plus as an immediate competitor, but
Speaker 1: you can bet that the company will be watching Google
Speaker 1: Plus to see what features are added next. I mean, uh,
Speaker 1: and I don't think Google Plus is what Google would
Speaker 1: consider a finished product even you know, assuming that the
Speaker 1: features are all robust, they open the floodgates and anyone
Speaker 1: can join. You have two million people on there. I
Speaker 1: think they will continue to add new features and new functionality.
Speaker 1: For example, something that I don't know expect might be
Speaker 1: a strong word, but seriously, wouldn't be surprised if it happened.
Speaker 1: Would be games, which has been a huge driver of
Speaker 1: traffic to Facebook. Adding adding other kinds of in uh
Speaker 1: insight apps like that I think would would not be
Speaker 1: a shock at all. Just opening up an a p
Speaker 1: I would be pretty And you already of starting to
Speaker 1: see some extensions for for Google Chrome that are specifically
Speaker 1: designed for Google Plus, things like allowing you to reply
Speaker 1: specifically to the person who posts. We didn't talk about that.
Speaker 1: When you do post, people can leave comments on that post,
Speaker 1: just like in Facebook on a wall wall post or Twitter,
Speaker 1: people can reply, can plus one the comment Yeah, plus
Speaker 1: one is kind of like voting up or a comment
Speaker 1: or saying that you know, I really like this, so
Speaker 1: I'm adding a plus one to it. It changes the
Speaker 1: way it displays on other people's streams. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: we should. We should mention that quickly. Like in Twitter,
Speaker 1: you can reply to someone and in general, only you
Speaker 1: and the other person are really seeing that conversation unless
Speaker 1: other people are following both of you. Right, so if
Speaker 1: I reply to Chris, people only Chris and I would
Speaker 1: see that reply unless other people are following both of us. Uh.
Speaker 1: Now with Google Plus it's more like Facebook and that
Speaker 1: I can make a comment and then someone else can
Speaker 1: comment on that. Anyone following me can comment on that
Speaker 1: if I've made it public and then or and you
Speaker 1: can disable comments as well if you don't want people
Speaker 1: commenting on something, um and then other folks can comment
Speaker 1: and it becomes a discussion. In fact, I've had a
Speaker 1: few discussions like that pop up on Google Plus recently.
Speaker 1: I said, wouldn't it be cool to use the hangout
Speaker 1: feature to have a D and D game where everyone
Speaker 1: in the hangout is playing D and D. You have
Speaker 1: one person being the dungeon master and everyone else is
Speaker 1: playing a character. And you could do that. You could
Speaker 1: have people from other states log in and play the
Speaker 1: game at the same time. So or any other game
Speaker 1: for that matter. Yeah, you could really do that with
Speaker 1: any game, although once you started getting into things like
Speaker 1: board games or whatever, it gets a little more complex.
Speaker 1: Some games you wouldn't be able to do, like like poker,
Speaker 1: because how are you going to deal with all those
Speaker 1: cards in You know, you have to have a video
Speaker 1: poker game going at the same time, which makes them
Speaker 1: a little more complicated anyway. Yeah, any any role playing
Speaker 1: type game like that. Yeah, board games you could do too,
Speaker 1: if everyone had a copy of the board game. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you had to All right, you have to move
Speaker 1: me forward three squares? Is everyone on Baltic Avenue? Good?
Speaker 1: Next turn. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of this
Speaker 1: tex Stuff Classic episode right after we take this break.
Speaker 1: Another feature we should talk about very quickly is Sparks.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Sparks. Sparks is kind of like Google Reader
Speaker 1: in a way. You tell Google Plus what what topics
Speaker 1: you are interested in, and then Google Plus kind of
Speaker 1: cultivates a news feed based on whatever interests you've told
Speaker 1: it apply to you. So, for example, I've said technology,
Speaker 1: if I go to my Sparks Technology UH feed, then
Speaker 1: I will see news articles that are related to technology
Speaker 1: within Sparks. Um. That's kind of an feature that people
Speaker 1: have noticed and said, well, you know, it's it's just
Speaker 1: not fully baked yet. So that's something I expect that
Speaker 1: we'll see more uh evolution in in the near future
Speaker 1: for Google Plus. Yeah. I think the idea behind the
Speaker 1: name Sparks is it's supposed to spark a conversation. So
Speaker 1: you see a cool story, you post it to your stream,
Speaker 1: and then you and your friends have a conversation with it,
Speaker 1: and I it does that, but you know it's I
Speaker 1: in looking through the sparks that I've added to my picks.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, if you if you add one, say you
Speaker 1: add technology to your Google Plus account, you'll see it
Speaker 1: on the left hand navigation. Um, along with you know
Speaker 1: things like your you know lists for your circles and
Speaker 1: you know the other the other features people who are
Speaker 1: available for Google Chat that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so um so it's available to you whenever. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I just want to go in there. I just find
Speaker 1: a few stories and it's not really a very long list.
Speaker 1: It's not very compelling yet. Uh, the idea is there,
Speaker 1: I mean the I I see nothing wrong with the idea,
Speaker 1: and I think they need to add something. And I
Speaker 1: think this is Google's bonds to the trend of people
Speaker 1: getting information and news through stuff like Facebook. Like their
Speaker 1: friends shares an article that's that that their friend thought
Speaker 1: was really cool, and then you see it on Facebook
Speaker 1: and you're like huh, and you click on the link
Speaker 1: and you read the article and you're like, yeah, that
Speaker 1: was interesting. Google's kind of taking that and trying to
Speaker 1: incorporate it. Directly into the social experience, so that you
Speaker 1: aren't you know you aren't. You don't have to move
Speaker 1: very far away from Google in order to do it. Also,
Speaker 1: we should mention that Google Plus has a notifications bar
Speaker 1: that tells you when people have interacted with your your
Speaker 1: Google Plus account in some way, maybe that they started
Speaker 1: to follow you, and maybe that they left a message
Speaker 1: for you. They they've mentioned you in a comment, they've
Speaker 1: applied to one of your status is. Uh. The cool
Speaker 1: thing is, if you're on any Google site, so including
Speaker 1: Google dot com just the web browser, if you're signed
Speaker 1: into Google, that notification bar is at the top of
Speaker 1: your screen and you can actually look at those notifications
Speaker 1: in real time on that that page and respond to
Speaker 1: them without are actually traveling to your Google Plus account.
Speaker 1: So I might be on Google dot com doing research
Speaker 1: for an article and I see a notification thing pop up,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, come, I wonder what's going on? Click
Speaker 1: on it. See that someone's commented on one of my pages.
Speaker 1: I want to comment back. I can type in a
Speaker 1: comment on that notifications page and send it back without
Speaker 1: ever actually going to my Google Plus uh profile. Right,
Speaker 1: and um, we also need to talk really briefly at
Speaker 1: least about photo albums. Okay, I was going to add
Speaker 1: to about about that that you can also turn on
Speaker 1: email if you really want you and that I get
Speaker 1: a bad idea if you have a lot of followers,
Speaker 1: because you will start getting but you could you can
Speaker 1: do the same thing as you would with Twitter or
Speaker 1: or Facebook and say yes, I want to know, send
Speaker 1: me an email every time, or or text message every
Speaker 1: time someone you know fill in the blank. It's pretty
Speaker 1: much everything sends me a message, gives me a plus one.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a laundry and choose. You can choose
Speaker 1: which ones give you alerts and which ones don't. And
Speaker 1: uh for for an average user, it may make sense
Speaker 1: to have email notifications turned on for me because I
Speaker 1: have people following me. It would be it would overwhelm
Speaker 1: my email. Yeah I would. And I learned very quickly,
Speaker 1: like day two of Google Plus, to turn all that
Speaker 1: off for me. Um. And And you know, I know
Speaker 1: that there are people who are far more popular than I,
Speaker 1: and I can only imagine what their email would have
Speaker 1: looked like, like like Veronica Belmont or Felicia Day or Will Wheaton.
Speaker 1: You know, some of these people who have way more
Speaker 1: visibility than I do. I'm sure their accounts would have
Speaker 1: been overwhelmed in a second. But yeah, please go into
Speaker 1: photo albums. I do have one other thing I want
Speaker 1: to mention before we finish. Okay, so yeah, photo albums
Speaker 1: are using Picasa, Google's photo web photo album service as
Speaker 1: the foundation. Although Picasa will undergo a name change pretty soon.
Speaker 1: I think that's gonna be Google Plus Photos or something
Speaker 1: like that. So, but it's it's the same service, so Picasa. Normally,
Speaker 1: if you sign up for a Picasa account, which really
Speaker 1: you can do if you have a Google account your
Speaker 1: you can create a Picassa account. You are normally given
Speaker 1: one gigabyte of storage space for photos, which is not
Speaker 1: really that much um. But with Google Plus, if you
Speaker 1: upload photos through Google Plus, it will automatically resize your
Speaker 1: photos so that the longest edge of your photo is
Speaker 1: two thousand, forty eight pixels long, all right, will automatically
Speaker 1: resize it. So whatever the long st edges gets reduced
Speaker 1: to that size and at that resolution, it does not
Speaker 1: count against your one gigabyte of storage space. So if
Speaker 1: you upload through Google Plus, you effectively have unlimited digital
Speaker 1: photos storage. I tested this and I have a photo
Speaker 1: album on my profile that has one thousand photos in it.
Speaker 1: That's the maximum number of photos you can have in
Speaker 1: a photo album. Now, you can have unlimited photo albums
Speaker 1: in Google Plus, so you're not limited that way. It's
Speaker 1: just that each individual photo album can only have a
Speaker 1: thousand files in it. And uh I recently took a
Speaker 1: vacation in Europe, and so I have a thousand photos
Speaker 1: from my vacation in Europe in that photo album. And
Speaker 1: I probably have about two thousand more photos I need
Speaker 1: to upload from that vacation, so they'll be the most impressive.
Speaker 1: There'll be at least three photo albums of my vacation
Speaker 1: photos on Google Plus. Now you've got to keep in
Speaker 1: mind it's gonna be a lower resolution than your original file, assuming,
Speaker 1: of course, you took it with a decent digital camera.
Speaker 1: Uh So, the photo that you get on Google Plus
Speaker 1: is not going to be suitable for printing out, for example,
Speaker 1: or enlarging. Um So you will need to find some
Speaker 1: other method of storage if you want to keep the
Speaker 1: photo at the original resolution. Um The thing I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about was your Google profile. Yes, if you want.
Speaker 1: If this sounds interesting to you, you don't already have
Speaker 1: a profile on Google Plus. You'll need a Google account
Speaker 1: and this is you know, the account works for everything
Speaker 1: from Google Plus to Google Docs and all the other things. Um,
Speaker 1: if you already have a profile and you've been and
Speaker 1: keeping it private, UM, that's going to change one way
Speaker 1: or the other by July thirty one. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: exactly when this is going to publish. This may put
Speaker 1: some of you at a really tight deadline. UM. I
Speaker 1: don't think a lot of people know this, but Google
Speaker 1: has plans right now, as if they're recording this podcast,
Speaker 1: to delete any profile that is not public by July
Speaker 1: thirty one. And you have to have a name attached
Speaker 1: to your profile. So yeah, so you can just create
Speaker 1: profiles like multiple profiles and not have an identity associated
Speaker 1: with that profile right now. It doesn't necessarily have to
Speaker 1: be your exact name. However, people I have heard reports
Speaker 1: that people with made up names have been questioned by Google,
Speaker 1: um as they might on on Facebook. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: they they want to make sure I guess that a
Speaker 1: real human is behind it and they're not fooling around.
Speaker 1: But uh yeah, I mean this this might cause some
Speaker 1: issues because I know one of the people things that
Speaker 1: people complain about about Facebook is that, you know, hey,
Speaker 1: I want to I want to keep this between my
Speaker 1: close friends, the people I know in real life, and
Speaker 1: my family. You know, I don't want it to be
Speaker 1: out there for everybody to see. And this is no
Speaker 1: longer going to be an option. The thing is, maybe
Speaker 1: you say, well, I've had a Google account for ten
Speaker 1: years now, I have Google account's been around that long anyway, Um,
Speaker 1: I've had a Google account for some time now, and
Speaker 1: you know, I, you know, I guess I'll change my
Speaker 1: name on Google Plus. What if you do that, it
Speaker 1: changes it across your entire profile. Um, So if you
Speaker 1: want to rename your Google profile Horatio, your Google Plus
Speaker 1: profile Horatio T. Wiggle Bottom, then people who you send
Speaker 1: email to on Gmail will also see that and they
Speaker 1: may not realize that that's you, and then and they
Speaker 1: make fun of you. Yes, it's not necessarily so that's
Speaker 1: the That's the thing. I don't know. Uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: sort of unclear to me whether they mean, you know,
Speaker 1: we will delete your profile, meaning we will delete your
Speaker 1: entire Google account, or whether they mean there will be
Speaker 1: nothing public about this account at all. The the the
Speaker 1: what they call the profile itself is what they're just
Speaker 1: talking about. And that's still unclear to me as of
Speaker 1: right this minute. But yeah, I have the feeling they're
Speaker 1: talking about the entire account and and I mean the
Speaker 1: whole point of this is it's a you know, to
Speaker 1: let you connect with other people. So sure, keeping it
Speaker 1: private means that no one can connect with you. Yes,
Speaker 1: but this this is happening regardless of whether you have
Speaker 1: a Google Plus account or not. Right, So yeah, but
Speaker 1: that's because the Google Plus is on the foundation of
Speaker 1: that profile exactly. So it's it's force that to happen.
Speaker 1: The profile is the bottom of the pyramid is the problem.
Speaker 1: So um yeah, so it's it's that's a concern some
Speaker 1: people have, um, a concern I have. And again this
Speaker 1: is not necessarily the concern of the average user, but
Speaker 1: it is for people like Chris and myself and for
Speaker 1: people more notable than us. Is that people can create
Speaker 1: um the you know, fake accounts or or accounts, uh,
Speaker 1: accounts claiming to be people and it's not really that person. Well,
Speaker 1: you know. One of the big things is, uh, this
Speaker 1: first couple of weeks of Google Plus was that Mark Zuckerberg,
Speaker 1: the founder of Facebook, at a Google Plus profile, and
Speaker 1: they were pretty sure it was him because it was
Speaker 1: a photo no one had actually seen of him before,
Speaker 1: and the people he had in his circles were Facebook executives.
Speaker 1: And then thousands of people followed him. Yes, as a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, he was at one point, I don't
Speaker 1: know if he still is, uh, the most followed person
Speaker 1: on Facebook. I heard a report that he actually left
Speaker 1: he tightened up his privacy settings. Really, Mark Zuckerberg, you
Speaker 1: tightened up your privacy settings. I thought you said no
Speaker 1: one wanted to do that. Good thing. It was really
Speaker 1: easy to find, yes, Um, but and I've also heard
Speaker 1: reports as of today that he may have actually deleted
Speaker 1: that account. But there are also dozens of other Mark
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg's on there now. Yes, and I know that, like
Speaker 1: Neil Gaiman, he had a Google Plus account for a while,
Speaker 1: and then he made the conscious decision to to cut
Speaker 1: it out. He said it was too much noise and
Speaker 1: it didn't work for him, so he left. And then, um,
Speaker 1: he got irritated because he started getting lots of emails
Speaker 1: from people trying to add him into circles. But because
Speaker 1: he had left Google Plus, he was getting those invites
Speaker 1: through email. As opposed through Google Plus. So he deleted
Speaker 1: his account and then got deluged by email. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's the thing I was saying is that there should
Speaker 1: be our Hopefully there will be some point a way
Speaker 1: to verify that you are who you say you are,
Speaker 1: kind of like Twitter has verified accounts. It would be
Speaker 1: nice to have a verified account through Google Plus. Because
Speaker 1: I noticed last night that I had a quote unquote
Speaker 1: celebrity following me named Selina Gomez. Uh yeah, so uh
Speaker 1: the Beeb's main squeeze and um, and so I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: why is the Beeb's main squeeze following me? And so
Speaker 1: I decided to do a little investigative work and noticed
Speaker 1: that it was not truly her. People who had gone
Speaker 1: into a hang out with this person said, no, this
Speaker 1: isn't really silly to go as it's a it's a
Speaker 1: fake account from a fan, which you know, whether you
Speaker 1: believe that's ethical or unethical is beside the point. The
Speaker 1: point being that you know, you kind of want to
Speaker 1: know the people you're talking to are the people that
Speaker 1: you think they are, right. You don't want to be misled.
Speaker 1: You may have a genuine interest in following someone who
Speaker 1: is either a celebrity or other notable figure. But uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't mind the fact that they're not
Speaker 1: following you. You just want to get that information. Let's
Speaker 1: say it's a politician or it's someone, uh like a
Speaker 1: notable authority in a particular field that you're interested in.
Speaker 1: You don't want to be following a fan of that
Speaker 1: person because you're not actually getting the information you wanted.
Speaker 1: So that's that's an issue with Google Plus. As of
Speaker 1: the recording of this podcast. Yeah, there there are apparently
Speaker 1: corporate accounts on the way. So yeah, right now, when
Speaker 1: that happens, there will be a house stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com account, yeah, tech stuff account, and I applied for
Speaker 1: a tech stuff account, yeah, yesterday, So we'll see see
Speaker 1: if that happens. I haven't received any information back about
Speaker 1: that yet, but that's that's coming, you know. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: right now, it's supposed to just be people. That's why
Speaker 1: Google Plus was designed to do. And they said, you know,
Speaker 1: we understand there are corporations that want to use this
Speaker 1: as a way of connecting with their customers, um, their partners, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But it's just not designed for that. They're working on
Speaker 1: that right now. They being the Google Plus team. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think I think that they have the Google has
Speaker 1: done a much better job with this than it did
Speaker 1: with Wave and and definitely Buzz and definitely or Cut.
Speaker 1: Um is it a Facebook killer? Well, I can't stand
Speaker 1: the Blank killer thing. I think it can definitely grow
Speaker 1: into a Facebook rival and that will be good. I
Speaker 1: think the competition will be good for Facebook. They don't
Speaker 1: really have at this point a serious competitor. My Space
Speaker 1: was probably the last one, and it's at least a
Speaker 1: serious competitor and most the world. I there are a
Speaker 1: few places where things like or Cut are actually I
Speaker 1: do yeah, but um but yeah, I mean worldwide. Uh,
Speaker 1: Facebook is still a pretty big um nat juggernaut. Y
Speaker 1: million users is huge. Yeah. Yeah, So I think I
Speaker 1: think that given time and some added features and some refinement,
Speaker 1: I think Google Plus is off to a very good start. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it may very well just be a complementary service.
Speaker 1: It may never be one that replaces Facebook, because that
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily what it was intended to do. It may
Speaker 1: be that you go to Facebook for certain kinds of
Speaker 1: interaction and you go to Google Plus for other kinds
Speaker 1: of interaction, and there's nothing wrong with that. No, I
Speaker 1: don't think so. Um, we'll see. I know there are
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are talking about the fact
Speaker 1: that they're going to just drop Facebook. In fact, I've
Speaker 1: seen a lot of people who have changed their profile
Speaker 1: pictures to say I have moved and have the g
Speaker 1: Plus logo in there, which is cute. Oh and I
Speaker 1: was gonna say about the clicks behavior. Let's finish off
Speaker 1: with this because we are running along. But the clicks
Speaker 1: behavior on Google Plus ice all a lot of people,
Speaker 1: and I assume most of it was joking about how
Speaker 1: you know, because they joined early, they thought it would
Speaker 1: be cool to have a Google Plus badge to show
Speaker 1: that you were one of the original Google Plus beta
Speaker 1: testers before it went public, and that this would set
Speaker 1: you apart. And uh, I happened to be of the
Speaker 1: I mean, I jokingly said that would be awesome, but
Speaker 1: I honestly think that would be a bad idea because
Speaker 1: it would discourage people. It would it would encourage a
Speaker 1: sense of clickishness and saying like I'm superior to you
Speaker 1: because I managed to get an invite to this social network, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, getting an invite to a social network
Speaker 1: doesn't mean anything. It just means you've gotta invite or
Speaker 1: a work around, which means you know, equally nothing. Um.
Speaker 1: So I would say that that's kind of would discourage
Speaker 1: new people from coming in because they're like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this is like a closed off club. And also right
Speaker 1: now it's more or less a boys club according to UH.
Speaker 1: To mash double um, there was a a survey done
Speaker 1: to see or a kind of an estimation done to
Speaker 1: see how many men versus women are on Google Plus. Um.
Speaker 1: For a while, it looked like women made up about
Speaker 1: ten of the entire Google Plus population, and when you
Speaker 1: think we're potentially over ten million users, that's significant. According
Speaker 1: to Social Statistics, that percentage is now closer to UH
Speaker 1: seventy three point seven percent, So there are more females
Speaker 1: on Google Plus than there were before, but still it's
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly a male population. So we'll all have to see.
Speaker 1: For Google Plus to really survive, we're gonna have to
Speaker 1: see that expand beyond just the dudes. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: we are wrapping this up. Like we said, there's probably
Speaker 1: a billion other things we could say about Google Plus
Speaker 1: right now, not to mention the fact that by the
Speaker 1: time this publishes things may have changed. Uh, if you
Speaker 1: guys have the ability to access it, search us out,
Speaker 1: or at least search me out. Chris. Chris is really
Speaker 1: good at at at maintaining a nice low profile. I
Speaker 1: am one of those people that prefers to keep my
Speaker 1: so full networking down to people actually know in real life.
Speaker 1: And I certainly mean no offense to any of our listeners. No,
Speaker 1: it's there's nothing wrong with that. I I am a
Speaker 1: very extroverted kind of guy who I'm like, look at me.
Speaker 1: So it's just really different personalities. None of us noticed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't tell by the way I dominate every single conversation. Um,
Speaker 1: anyway you can. You can search up, search us out,
Speaker 1: feel free, and you know, depending on how long it
Speaker 1: is from the time we published this, we may be
Speaker 1: active on it, or we may have given up on
Speaker 1: Google Plus. And that was the two for one classic
Speaker 1: episode of the decline of Google Plus and also the
Speaker 1: very beginning of Google Plus. As it would turn out,
Speaker 1: Google Plus would not die in two thousand and fifteen.
Speaker 1: It's stuck around a few more years. In fact, it
Speaker 1: was still a thing as late as April two thousand nineteen.
Speaker 1: That's when Google officially shut it down and it joined
Speaker 1: the likes of many other Google products that the company
Speaker 1: would launch and then subsequently abandoned later on. So we
Speaker 1: take off our hats to Google Plus we hardly knew.
Speaker 1: Ye Um, I don't know that I would recommend going
Speaker 1: to Google Plus over other social networks, largely because Google
Speaker 1: has some of the same issues with the harvesting of
Speaker 1: personal data that I take issue with on other social
Speaker 1: network platforms. So um, I'm not certain that I would
Speaker 1: even say it would have been a good alternative to Facebook. Uh.
Speaker 1: These days, I'm pretty much off all the social media networks,
Speaker 1: with the exception of Twitter for tech Stuff. Don't really
Speaker 1: use it personally anymore, but still use it for tex stuff.
Speaker 1: So with that in mind, if you have any suggestions
Speaker 1: for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: you can reach out to me on Twitter. The handle
Speaker 1: for the show is tech Stuff H s W and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is
Speaker 1: an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.