Speaker 1: Get in tech with Technology with tex Stuff from hosfors
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland and this is a little bit of a
Speaker 1: solo episode. It's an update as well as at the
Speaker 1: end of this episode, I will play a classic episode
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff, but I've got a lot to talk
Speaker 1: about before we get to the classic episode. And it's
Speaker 1: all about a sad story, something that I got to
Speaker 1: watch from beginning to end in my career as a podcaster.
Speaker 1: So back in July two thousand eleven, Chris Palette, my
Speaker 1: former co host, and I did an episode about Google Plus.
Speaker 1: So in case you somehow have missed out on what
Speaker 1: Google Plus is, it's Google's answer to social platforms like Facebook.
Speaker 1: It's a place where you can share with specific circles
Speaker 1: of people. You can create circles based on your relationships,
Speaker 1: so that you share things with specific circles like communities
Speaker 1: or co workers, family members, or even the general public.
Speaker 1: And it's not limited to just those. It was a
Speaker 1: grand experiment when it first began, but here's the thing
Speaker 1: about experiments, they don't always work out. So back in
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, the service was still in beta, and
Speaker 1: people were clamoring to get in. Uh and it had
Speaker 1: not come out of beta when Chris and I did
Speaker 1: the episode, but since then the service opened up, there
Speaker 1: was this whole brewhaha where it got linked to YouTube
Speaker 1: caused a real stir with a policy about using your
Speaker 1: official real name rather than a handle, which later the
Speaker 1: company backed off of. And also recent changes in the
Speaker 1: product have prompted some journalists to say it's in the
Speaker 1: midst of death throws, so you can have your little
Speaker 1: moment of silence if you like. But I'm not ready
Speaker 1: to call it completely dead just yet. I just think
Speaker 1: of it as mostly dead. All right, Let's talk about
Speaker 1: what happened, And I have to mention that Google Plus,
Speaker 1: as of this recording is not dead, and it may
Speaker 1: be that all those predictions of it going away are premature,
Speaker 1: or it could just be that you know what's on
Speaker 1: borrow time. If you're interested in the original episode in
Speaker 1: which Chris and I talked about Google Plus, I'm adding
Speaker 1: that to the end of this part, so I'll talk
Speaker 1: about what's happened since then, and then if you want
Speaker 1: to go in the time machine, you can listen to
Speaker 1: the second half of the episode. And Chris and I
Speaker 1: will talk more about what Google Plus was like back
Speaker 1: before it even came out of beta. We were so
Speaker 1: young back then. You'll get to hear how excited we
Speaker 1: were about the platform and how they were planning on
Speaker 1: it to be a challenge on Facebook, and even then
Speaker 1: I was making the point that it had a long
Speaker 1: way to go if it were to ever really be
Speaker 1: a threat. Meanwhile, Mashable has a really great piece on
Speaker 1: the rise and fall, although maybe I would just call
Speaker 1: it the debut and fall of Google Plus. According to
Speaker 1: the article, google Plus was largely worn out of fear.
Speaker 1: It was fear that motivated Google. It was the fear
Speaker 1: that Facebook would make Google irrelevant or at least heard
Speaker 1: its growth potential. So around, it was clear that social
Speaker 1: platforms were really taking off, and people were sharing and
Speaker 1: following links on Facebook left and right. Now that meant
Speaker 1: that more people were skipping what Google considered to be
Speaker 1: an important step, which was where you would use Google
Speaker 1: to perform searches. Since Google depends upon ad revenue, you
Speaker 1: have to remember Google's really an ad company first, and
Speaker 1: then a search engine is just a product that's offered
Speaker 1: to us, and we ultimately are the real products of Google.
Speaker 1: So this was considered to be a bad thing if
Speaker 1: Facebook was going to eat into these numbers, and a
Speaker 1: an executive named Vic Gondotra, who was at the time
Speaker 1: a senior vice president at Google, argued that the company
Speaker 1: needed its own social platform. So Google had tried some
Speaker 1: social experiments before. Google Wave was one those, and Google
Speaker 1: Buzz was another. If you're a longtime fan of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: you might know that Chris and I both really liked
Speaker 1: Google Wave a lot. We used it to build out
Speaker 1: our live shows when we were experimenting with live streaming
Speaker 1: with tech Stuff Live. That was several years ago. But
Speaker 1: here's the thing. He and I loved it because it
Speaker 1: allowed us to do real time layouts of what the
Speaker 1: show was going to be like and even make changes
Speaker 1: while we were doing a show, But we couldn't figure
Speaker 1: out what anyone else would use it for. It was
Speaker 1: great for what we did, but that's a really narrow
Speaker 1: use case, and none of these social efforts from Google
Speaker 1: had much staying power. They all eventually went away, including
Speaker 1: Google Wave, So the best you could hope for was
Speaker 1: that some of the features that were in these products
Speaker 1: would find their way into other Google products. Like Gmail
Speaker 1: or something like that. Now, since the Google Plus podcast
Speaker 1: covers the birth of the social network, I thought a
Speaker 1: quick rundown on things that have happened since the debut
Speaker 1: 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 of the other people who were involved
Speaker 1: were either tech entrepreneurs so they were important people who
Speaker 1: were 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 frankly, 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 mash Double, google Plus at
Speaker 1: one point had about one thousand employees working on the project,
Speaker 1: which is an enormous compared to other projects within Google.
Speaker 1: In two thousand twelve, Vic Gondotra addressed an audience itself
Speaker 1: by Southwest and said that Google Plus was essentially Google
Speaker 1: two point oh and that it represented a social layer
Speaker 1: across all of Google's services, So, in other words, all
Speaker 1: those other Google products people use like Gmail or YouTube
Speaker 1: would be held together by the connective tissue that is
Speaker 1: Google Plus. In Google first did some spring cleaning, uh.
Speaker 1: It combined Google Talk, which sometimes was also known as
Speaker 1: Google Chat or g Chat, and Google Messenger, which is
Speaker 1: an i AM client that was within Google Plus, and
Speaker 1: Google Hangouts, all under the Hangouts umbrellas, so all of
Speaker 1: these became collectively known as Google Hangouts. Hangouts had previously
Speaker 1: been known as the video chat service that was launched
Speaker 1: with Google Plus, and now that also included text messaging,
Speaker 1: so really it was anyway besides email al where you
Speaker 1: would get in touch with other people who had these
Speaker 1: accounts now. Gondatra announced at the Google Io event there
Speaker 1: would be a total of forty one updates to the
Speaker 1: Google Plus service, and it included tweaks to photos and
Speaker 1: videos and how large they would be within a Google
Speaker 1: Plus screen. Also new animations that users could use automatic
Speaker 1: photo enhancements. This was kind of fun. I remember taking
Speaker 1: a picture of a snowy landscape and Google automatically animated
Speaker 1: snowflakes falling across the picture. But there was a lot
Speaker 1: more of that than just those examples. Google also that
Speaker 1: year made a very controversial decision to tie together YouTube
Speaker 1: and Google Plus accounts that people absolutely hated. The integration
Speaker 1: effort required YouTube users to use a Google Plus account
Speaker 1: to leave comments, and because of Google's policies with names
Speaker 1: on accounts, this meant people more often than not had
Speaker 1: to post under their actual names, and it also prompted
Speaker 1: owners of YouTube channels to change their handle to their
Speaker 1: true name. Now, the name debacle was really a big
Speaker 1: deal because some people wanted anonymity, or as much as
Speaker 1: it that as they can manage, particularly when just using YouTube.
Speaker 1: Others had an online persona that was separate from their
Speaker 1: real life identity, and making the switch would be confusing
Speaker 1: and perhaps even damaging to their online brand. There were
Speaker 1: plenty of legitimate reasons why people didn't like the idea
Speaker 1: of having to use their their birth name or real name,
Speaker 1: as well as plenty of reasons that aren't terribly legitimate,
Speaker 1: like the desire to troll other people while not being
Speaker 1: held responsible for that action. But the move may have
Speaker 1: been motivated by the desire to make YouTube comments a
Speaker 1: less volatile experience. So in other words, if you are
Speaker 1: attached to your real name, maybe you'd be less likely
Speaker 1: to be a jerk face on YouTube. Anyone who has
Speaker 1: seen a name various comment threads on Facebook knows this
Speaker 1: is not necessarily the case, but I guess it was
Speaker 1: a hope. But it also seemed like it was a
Speaker 1: membership drive to get more people to sign up for
Speaker 1: Google Plus accounts. If you wanted to play in the
Speaker 1: YouTube space, you had to have a Google Plus account,
Speaker 1: so that didn't go over so well. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and fourteen, in April, Vic Gundotra, the man behind Google Plus,
Speaker 1: would announce his departure from the company, and that prompted
Speaker 1: a lot of news sites to essentially say that Google
Speaker 1: Plus was dead, although it seems to have been continuously
Speaker 1: shambling on ever since its death, so perhaps it's reports
Speaker 1: of its death have been greatly exaggerated. David Besbrus took
Speaker 1: over as the head of Google Plus and promised that
Speaker 1: the company was committed to support the product for a
Speaker 1: really long time, but six months later Google replaced him
Speaker 1: with Bradley Horowitz, who's another executive at Google. Two thousand
Speaker 1: fifteen current year, Google spins off photos into its own app,
Speaker 1: so it's no longer wrapped up with Google Plus. The
Speaker 1: photos on Google Plus We're one of the big selling points,
Speaker 1: especially among photographers. It was considered to be a superior
Speaker 1: tool by many two things like the Facebook Google or
Speaker 1: Facebook Photo app. So the Google Plus Photos app was
Speaker 1: considered to be pretty good, and the fact that Google
Speaker 1: is spinning it off from Google Plus maybe an indication
Speaker 1: that Google Plus is kind of living on borrowed time.
Speaker 1: On August first, two thousand fifteen, Google shut down the
Speaker 1: Google Plus version of photos, switching to the independent app instead.
Speaker 1: The new app is pretty cool and contains features like
Speaker 1: image recognition, which makes image searching really interesting. Uh. In
Speaker 1: other words, Google is using algorithms to automatically detect stuff
Speaker 1: that's within photos, so that way, when you search for photos,
Speaker 1: even if they haven't been meta tagged, often the image
Speaker 1: search can give you some pretty good results. Occasionally can
Speaker 1: give you some hilariously wrong results. It is still a
Speaker 1: fallible system. Google is also in the process of removing
Speaker 1: the requirement to link Google Plus and YouTube accounts together,
Speaker 1: which is pretty much an admission that the initiative was
Speaker 1: not a good idea. In fact, they pretty much said
Speaker 1: said so in their blog posts. They didn't come out
Speaker 1: and say specifically that YouTube and Google Plus integration was
Speaker 1: a complete mistake, or that making you use a quote
Speaker 1: unquote real name was a real mistake, but the implication
Speaker 1: was there. So soon you'll only need a Google account,
Speaker 1: not a Google Plus account, just a Google account to
Speaker 1: set up a YouTube channel, and that means that people
Speaker 1: won't be able to follow you or search you with
Speaker 1: that just that Google account Google Plus, they could, but
Speaker 1: 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 failed 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 ins own 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 a round. Check this out
Speaker 1: and be entertained by the amazing and adaptability for the
Speaker 1: two Yahoo's sitting at this table to chat about a
Speaker 1: service that had not yet debuted. Enjoy, So today we
Speaker 1: wanted 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 in self 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, we're
Speaker 1: talking about Google Plus. But I want to add a
Speaker 1: disclaimer at the beginning of this podcast, which is Google
Speaker 1: Plus is in a a beta a rapidly expanding beta program,
Speaker 1: uh and could undergo massive changes and short amounts of time.
Speaker 1: So anything we talked about today may very well have
Speaker 1: be different by the time this podcast goes live, although
Speaker 1: I don't I don't imagine things changing so significantly that
Speaker 1: they don't apply at all, but it may be that
Speaker 1: there are some subtleties that we are not going to
Speaker 1: cover because they will have emerged between the time we
Speaker 1: record this in the time it publishes. Because frankly, that's
Speaker 1: that's true of a good two thirds of our podcast
Speaker 1: anytime we don't talk about something in history. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: but with with something like this in particular, when it's
Speaker 1: in a beta format and a lot of people are
Speaker 1: testing it out. Um, and not only that, but the
Speaker 1: team behind it is listening to feedback and incorporating feedback
Speaker 1: into their changes. You have a rapidly evolving service that's
Speaker 1: going on here. So even though we might record something
Speaker 1: about say Facebook, and sure maybe some things will get
Speaker 1: weeked in the Facebook uh service between the time we
Speaker 1: recorded the time we published, it might be minor. But
Speaker 1: with something like this, where it's truly experimental and people
Speaker 1: are implementing changes at a rapid pace, the change it's
Speaker 1: more noticeable. Yes. That being said, now that we've got
Speaker 1: the disclaimer on the way, let's talk about Google Plus. Okay,
Speaker 1: So one of my favorite descriptions of Google Plus came
Speaker 1: courtesy of Molly Wood from c Net, who said, google
Speaker 1: Plus is like you are at this, uh, this really
Speaker 1: fancy party and you're in a V I P section
Speaker 1: of the party and there are only a few people there,
Speaker 1: and everyone's excited to be there, and everyone's talking about
Speaker 1: being at the party, and that's all that's happening. That's
Speaker 1: that's definitely an exaggeration, and it's also paraphrasing, so that's
Speaker 1: not a direct quote. Molly would put it much more succinctly.
Speaker 1: But and it's it's also changed in the last couple
Speaker 1: of days, right. But but early on, if you were
Speaker 1: one of the few people who got into Google Plus,
Speaker 1: I was very fortunate in that I managed to get
Speaker 1: invite uh and and joined pretty pretty early on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it turns out I know a lot of people in
Speaker 1: the tech business. Um. But if you if you were
Speaker 1: in there early on, it felt like the people who
Speaker 1: were there were all these mostly tech and geek culture folks.
Speaker 1: So you had a lot of people who are from
Speaker 1: tech companies, including folks who are actually from Google, which
Speaker 1: makes sense their product, right. You had people from other
Speaker 1: big companies stuff like Twitter or Facebook even we'll get
Speaker 1: into that. And then you had a lot of tech journalists,
Speaker 1: so people like Leo Laporte, tom merritt Um later on.
Speaker 1: Molly Wood and Brian Tong have seen it. Um, I
Speaker 1: as actor who's a good friend of mine. He's he
Speaker 1: was also on there pretty early on. You had these
Speaker 1: folks who were kind of populating it, so it felt
Speaker 1: like a weird social network. It felt like a social
Speaker 1: network that had been designed specifically for this tech geek world. Oh,
Speaker 1: you also had some geek celebrities, and I say geeks
Speaker 1: reason that geeks like me tend to think of them
Speaker 1: as amazing celebrities. So Felicia Day will weaken those kind
Speaker 1: of folks. Um, So it kind of felt like a
Speaker 1: social network built for geeks. Now that's gradually changing us.
Speaker 1: More and more people join in, and we're starting to
Speaker 1: slowly skewed toward a more quote unquote normal population. I
Speaker 1: use normal just in the sense of average as opposed
Speaker 1: to geeks are not normal. Yeah, and and I feel
Speaker 1: compelled to point out that again, like a number of
Speaker 1: topics on the show, this is one of those things
Speaker 1: that has been anticipated for quite some time. Um. It's
Speaker 1: hard to tell a lot of these things too, things
Speaker 1: like the Apple iPad and Google Plus and things like
Speaker 1: this that people say, oh, well, you know, Google's working
Speaker 1: on a social network that's aimed to take down Facebook,
Speaker 1: and they talk about it for months and months and
Speaker 1: sometimes years, and you start going, yeah, sort of like
Speaker 1: Spotify coming to the Night States, which also just recently happened,
Speaker 1: but for for a long time. Again, this is one
Speaker 1: of those things that I've heard a lot of technicalists
Speaker 1: called tech unicorns. Yeah, these are like the white iPhone
Speaker 1: for a long time was the tech unicorn. The iPad
Speaker 1: was a tech unicorn for a long time. These are
Speaker 1: streaming iTunes service, which is still Yeah, these are things
Speaker 1: that everyone quote unquote knows is coming, but it hasn't
Speaker 1: arrived yet and it maybe years before we ever get
Speaker 1: to it. And soever. Yeah, some of these are some
Speaker 1: of these turned into vaporware, right, tech unicorn vaporware. The
Speaker 1: relationships pretty tight, Yeah, Duke Nukelen forever long time tech unicorn.
Speaker 1: We will withhold commentary on what actually eventually published. 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 know, why 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 we will 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 just for a few people. But yeah,
Speaker 1: as soon as it was announced, um, you know, the
Speaker 1: 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 same service. Now,
Speaker 1: it also makes it seem really exclusive. Yeah, and of
Speaker 1: course the more yeah, the more exclusive something is, the
Speaker 1: more people want to be in that because people want
Speaker 1: to be part of an exclusive group. And uh, I
Speaker 1: mean it's just natural, right you see, you see the
Speaker 1: cool click of kids, and you want to be in
Speaker 1: that click. And once you're in that click, you're like,
Speaker 1: this is awesome. And yeah, I don't object to us
Speaker 1: letting in maybe one or two other people who are
Speaker 1: kind of cool. Well, but let's not go crazy and
Speaker 1: let everyone in, because then we don't have a click anymore. So,
Speaker 1: uh and we can get into sort of the click
Speaker 1: 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 gonna be
Speaker 1: 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 off
Speaker 1: million for Facebook. So the law, the the long term
Speaker 1: answer to that is maybe. But right now, you know,
Speaker 1: there's no threat whatsoever. And I don't think Google would
Speaker 1: claim that Google Plus is meant to replace Facebook. In fact,
Speaker 1: that kind of leads us into what is Google Plus
Speaker 1: because we talked a lot about the the popularity, but
Speaker 1: 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 idea and the lessons
Speaker 1: they learned from that into Google Plus. So Google Plus
Speaker 1: is essentially a social network, though it's not just a
Speaker 1: social network, And the way it works from a user
Speaker 1: perspective is that you will look for people who are
Speaker 1: 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 say, 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 or 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 to I put
Speaker 1: Chris in my friend's circle. Do I put them in
Speaker 1: my acquaintance in the circle, or do I put them
Speaker 1: in my following circle. Chris is not part of my family,
Speaker 1: so I'm not going to put them in there. And
Speaker 1: I'm all right with that. Yeah. And and it's nice
Speaker 1: to note too, 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 certain 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 circles,
Speaker 1: you're mine and yeah, And now that our listeners have
Speaker 1: heard me say this, I imagine a lot of them
Speaker 1: are making jerk faces. I know circles just to put
Speaker 1: me in them. Um. So you've got these circles. Now
Speaker 1: you've decided where this your first let's say it's your
Speaker 1: first person you're following. So I'm going to use Chris
Speaker 1: as my example. I have decided that I want to
Speaker 1: follow Chris. I want to I want to hear what
Speaker 1: Chris has to say. I want to be able to
Speaker 1: see his updates. I want to be able to see
Speaker 1: his photos. Um. I put him in my acquaintances circle.
Speaker 1: All right, So, now, anytime Chris posts and publishes his
Speaker 1: post to either the public, which means everyone can see it,
Speaker 1: Everyone on Google Plus can see it, everyone in the
Speaker 1: in the world can see it. Um. I mean it's
Speaker 1: not restricted to anybody in particular, right right, But now, now,
Speaker 1: if Chris has not put me in a circle, and
Speaker 1: he publishes it in anything other than public, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to see that information. So Chris decides that he
Speaker 1: wants to publish a status update, but he's just gonna
Speaker 1: push it to his friends. I am not in his
Speaker 1: friend's circle. He types in a status update, he sets
Speaker 1: it so that it only publishes to friends he publishes it.
Speaker 1: I don't know that Chris has done anything to me.
Speaker 1: His his posts still are blank. Now let's say that
Speaker 1: Chris does another one where he decides he wants to
Speaker 1: talk about an article he edited, and he wants this
Speaker 1: he wants the general public to know about this article.
Speaker 1: He sets that status update to public. Suddenly I can
Speaker 1: see that particular stats update because they set it to public,
Speaker 1: so anyone following Chris can see it. Then let's say
Speaker 1: that Chris notices that I'm on Google Plus and he thinks, oh, well,
Speaker 1: Jonathan's there. I should add him. I'll add him to
Speaker 1: my acquaintances circle. Then Chris publishes a status update and
Speaker 1: decides he only wants his acquaintances and friends to see it,
Speaker 1: so he sets it so that this stats update goes
Speaker 1: out to friends and acquaintances, but not the general public.
Speaker 1: I would be able to see that stats update now
Speaker 1: if he had not added me to his acquaintance circle
Speaker 1: or his friends circle. I would not see it. I
Speaker 1: would be unaware that he had updated his status. You
Speaker 1: can get so granular that you can create a stats
Speaker 1: update and directed to specific people. So I could create
Speaker 1: a stats update and just send it to Chris alone
Speaker 1: and that's the only person who sees it. Or I
Speaker 1: could send it to Chris and maybe three or four
Speaker 1: other people. Let's say that it's three or four people
Speaker 1: who are in different circles. They don't really belong all
Speaker 1: on the same circle, but I think they all need
Speaker 1: to see this message. I might just go in and
Speaker 1: manually put in each name, and those are the only
Speaker 1: people who will see that message. Now, there are some
Speaker 1: other things you have to remember, like, uh, there is
Speaker 1: the ability to share posts that other people have published.
Speaker 1: Now if you you can either turn the sharing on
Speaker 1: or off, so you don't have to. If you turn
Speaker 1: it off, that means other people cannot share the same
Speaker 1: message you just posted. If the share is on, your
Speaker 1: message that went out to just your friends or just
Speaker 1: your acquaintances might suddenly become public. So Chris sends out
Speaker 1: a message to just his acquaintances. He has sharing turned on.
Speaker 1: He has not turned that off. I read Chris's post
Speaker 1: and I think, hey, that's awesome. Everyone who follows me
Speaker 1: wants to know that too. I hit share. Suddenly his
Speaker 1: message that just went to his acquaintances are now it's
Speaker 1: now out in the wild. So they attributed to me exactly. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: so people can actually follow it back to Chris now.
Speaker 1: Granted they're only going to be able to see the
Speaker 1: things that Chris is published at that point to the
Speaker 1: public if they go directly to that's the weird thing.
Speaker 1: They might see a shared post like I share your post,
Speaker 1: they see it on my feed, then they follow it
Speaker 1: back to your feed and something that post isn't there
Speaker 1: because it wasn't set to public when it was originally published.
Speaker 1: It gets a little complicated. These are things that the
Speaker 1: Google Plus team. They're looking into this stuff to see
Speaker 1: what makes sense and what doesn't make sense, you know,
Speaker 1: sharing versus private. And because you have the ability to
Speaker 1: turn sharing off, if you are someone who doesn't want
Speaker 1: information to go beyond that group of friends, you can
Speaker 1: always turn it off. Now, granted that doesn't stop your
Speaker 1: friends from say saying that Jonathan said blah blah blah,
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, if I come up and I
Speaker 1: tell Chris a secret, there's nothing stop and Chris from
Speaker 1: going around and telling other people that secret. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I told you. I'm sorry. Gee. Yeah, well let's see
Speaker 1: if you ever get any key line pie from me again.
Speaker 1: So so that's the basics behind circles and sharing. And also,
Speaker 1: if let's say that when you're actually consuming information, you're
Speaker 1: not just that that's sending information out right, publishing information,
Speaker 1: you can also look view your stream. That's what Google
Speaker 1: plus calls your what what Facebook would call the wall,
Speaker 1: right or Twitter would call it the feed. So it's
Speaker 1: the same sort of concept. It's it's the stream of
Speaker 1: information coming from all the people that you put into
Speaker 1: your circles. You can view that bicircle. So if you
Speaker 1: just have it set to the stream, you're looking at
Speaker 1: everything that people you follow are publishing. So all your friends, acquaintances, celebrities.
Speaker 1: You might be following people you know of but you
Speaker 1: don't actually know in real life. All the information gets
Speaker 1: dumped into the stream. If you want to try and
Speaker 1: filter that out, you can view your stream bicircle. So
Speaker 1: I might click friends, and now I'm only going to
Speaker 1: see the updates that my friends have published to their stream,
Speaker 1: and I've cut everything else out. I can even view
Speaker 1: it by incoming incoming. It gets really crazy for people
Speaker 1: like me, and more so for people who are even
Speaker 1: more even more who are actually famous. Because I have,
Speaker 1: as of the recording of this podcast, I have people
Speaker 1: 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 it just becomes a wall of information. Um. But
Speaker 1: assuming that everything they've published as public, if they published
Speaker 1: stuff to their friends or their acquaintances or whatever, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to see that. I'm only going to see
Speaker 1: stuff that in the circles that I've been included in
Speaker 1: and in the public posts. But it means that I
Speaker 1: get a lot more information from a lot more people,
Speaker 1: not just the people I follow right. Um, so in
Speaker 1: a way that can be a lot. Right. So, in
Speaker 1: a way, Google Plus is like Facebook and that you
Speaker 1: can follow specific people, they can follow you back and you.
Speaker 1: In a way, it's like Twitter because in Twitter you
Speaker 1: can follow people and just read what they have to
Speaker 1: say as long as they don't have their profile set
Speaker 1: to private. You can read Twitter posts from people as
Speaker 1: they update. So in Google Plus the same sort of thing.
Speaker 1: You don't have to give permission to someone in order
Speaker 1: for them to follow you. But people say, well, what
Speaker 1: about privacy. That's where the circles come in. That's where
Speaker 1: you can choose which circles see what you have to say.
Speaker 1: If you don't want random people seeing what you have
Speaker 1: to say, you publish it to a specific circle. Um.
Speaker 1: And I mean people compare this product to Twitter and
Speaker 1: Facebook all the time. Um, I've seen a constant stream
Speaker 1: of that. However, I think it's most like at least
Speaker 1: the ones I've tried. Most like another service that caught
Speaker 1: on for a little while and Facebook acquired it and
Speaker 1: it's sort of languished under Facebook's control, and that's called
Speaker 1: friend Feed. If you've ever been to friend feed dot com. Um,
Speaker 1: it's very very similar and um, it's it's similar to
Speaker 1: I mean, the the feed is somewhat similar to the
Speaker 1: wall on on Facebook, but you can um like and
Speaker 1: unlike and make long comments to it. Very much in
Speaker 1: the style of friend feed, more so than than Facebook
Speaker 1: or Twitter. But it's it's closer probably to Facebook or
Speaker 1: friend feed than it is to Twitter. Now, I mean
Speaker 1: there is some uh you know that it looks a
Speaker 1: little bit more like Twitter. I mean, just the visual
Speaker 1: element of it, I would say, um, but there are
Speaker 1: some other advantages to using Google Plus that there aren't um,
Speaker 1: And that's probably I think of that more as the
Speaker 1: integration with Android. UM. For example, you know, Jonathan and
Speaker 1: I both have Android smartphones, and we can set Google
Speaker 1: Plus to automatically post every photo we take with our
Speaker 1: phones to Google Plus. I don't think that's such a
Speaker 1: good idea. Well, you can set your privacy, you can
Speaker 1: set your privacy so that people don't automatically see those photos.
Speaker 1: So so if you if you had it where every
Speaker 1: photo you take is automatically published, uh publicly to your
Speaker 1: Google Plus account, that seems like a bad idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, even if even if we let's take let's
Speaker 1: take out the bad behavior aspect, right, So bad behavior
Speaker 1: that would be a bad idea because suddenly you're publicly
Speaker 1: showing everyone bad behavior. So let's say, you know, being
Speaker 1: intoxicated or being acting irresponsibly in some way, and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: let's take a picture of this that well that yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a bad idea. But let's say it's just a
Speaker 1: bad photo, like your fingers in the frame. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't want that publishing because they're like, come on,
Speaker 1: that's just a I'd rather take that photo again, so
Speaker 1: you can set your privacy setting so that those photos
Speaker 1: don't automatically go to everybody, you know. I actually do
Speaker 1: have instant Published turned on right now because I wanted
Speaker 1: to try it out, and it's pretty neat. I didn't
Speaker 1: realize that every picture I take on my phone is
Speaker 1: instantly published, not just the ones I do through the app,
Speaker 1: but through anything. Yeah, so it gets like I've taken
Speaker 1: photos to upload to Twitter and Twitter pick. It also
Speaker 1: has gone to my Google Plus account. Now I don't
Speaker 1: have it publishing publicly, so at least people aren't being
Speaker 1: flooded by pictures of me trying to take a photo
Speaker 1: of one thing and like, no, that's not right either.
Speaker 1: Let me change the lighting a little bit and take
Speaker 1: three more of these. But you could do that. Yep.
Speaker 1: And um, that isn't to say that that won't that
Speaker 1: functionality won't come to other phones. Now there is a
Speaker 1: Google Plus app. Actually, there was a Google Plus app
Speaker 1: for Android, I would say just about immediately since I
Speaker 1: heard about it, I looked for it. There it was
Speaker 1: the launch, the launch on the web, and the launch
Speaker 1: on the phone. In fact, the launch on the phone
Speaker 1: gave some people work around to getting into Google Plus.
Speaker 1: Early on, they installed the Google Plus app on their
Speaker 1: phone and found that they could bypass the invite system,
Speaker 1: and once they try to activate the app on their phone,
Speaker 1: it gave them an invite. And there was another workaround
Speaker 1: that got you into Google Plus. Um, but those have
Speaker 1: been patched since then. But they've also started opening it
Speaker 1: up to more people too. So I mean, I have
Speaker 1: hundreds of invites right now, and I just keep getting more,
Speaker 1: and I'm running out of people who I know would
Speaker 1: be interested in it, and well, and the personally and
Speaker 1: the invite system is not entirely intuitive, No, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's not. It's not the easiest thing in the world.
Speaker 1: Like when you see the invite system, it's it's easy
Speaker 1: to get a little confused by it. Uh. I guess
Speaker 1: we can talk a little bit about some of the
Speaker 1: other features of Google Plus. Well, before we get too
Speaker 1: far away from the the Android app. We have heard
Speaker 1: that there is going to be an iOS app that's
Speaker 1: the operating system for the Apple I stuff. As of
Speaker 1: the recording of this podcast, it's been submitted, but not
Speaker 1: yet a roofed. Yeah, so there. I don't know if
Speaker 1: the automatic photo feature will work with those phones, I
Speaker 1: you know, and I don't know if there will be
Speaker 1: something coming for Windows Phone or or web os. Um,
Speaker 1: we'll see. Yeah, but like a lot of BlackBerry, like
Speaker 1: a lot of services and products that we're seeing launch
Speaker 1: these days. Uh, it's really effective if you subscribe to
Speaker 1: a particular ecosystem in this case Google's, so using Google
Speaker 1: Plus on Google Chrome and having an Android phone, it works.
Speaker 1: I mean, it works really seamlessly because all those products
Speaker 1: are coming from the same company. But when you start
Speaker 1: mixing and matching, your experience may vary. Yeah. Now there's
Speaker 1: another feature, um and uh that that Jonathan and I
Speaker 1: tried out pretty much immediately, and that's called the huddle. Yes, Um,
Speaker 1: this is this relates to UH two phones. Yes, So
Speaker 1: a huddle is like having a group messaging system on phones.
Speaker 1: So everyone who is in a huddle needs to have
Speaker 1: uh a phone number attached to their Google Plus account
Speaker 1: or they have to have the the Google Plus app
Speaker 1: installed on their their phones. Um. And what you do
Speaker 1: is you set it up and you can send out
Speaker 1: a message. Let's say that I want to have get
Speaker 1: together after work one day and just hang out of
Speaker 1: the restaurant and have some appetizers and talk about what's
Speaker 1: been going on in the company. There might be three
Speaker 1: or four people I want to invite, so I add
Speaker 1: all of them to my Google Plus huddle and I
Speaker 1: send out a message. That message will go to all
Speaker 1: of those people, and then all of those people can
Speaker 1: respond to that message and everyone can see each other's responses.
Speaker 1: It becomes kind of like a chat room via text message,
Speaker 1: but only among that group of people. And again this
Speaker 1: is functionality that reminds me of Google Wave and also
Speaker 1: other services like Beluga. There are group messaging services Beluga,
Speaker 1: there are other group messaging services. Chris, give me a
Speaker 1: look and I can tell you wanted to do the
Speaker 1: Bulbous bouffont Beluga, which my wife hates. Um. But the yeah,
Speaker 1: there there are other messaging services group messaging services that
Speaker 1: are doing this right now. In fact, a lot of
Speaker 1: them were launching around south By Southwest and we're making
Speaker 1: a big, big splash there. Google Huddle is kind of
Speaker 1: Google's version of this. Now, that was one of the
Speaker 1: workarounds 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. Yep,
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: hangout is a video chat session. You can start a
Speaker 1: hangout with specific people if you want to, or you
Speaker 1: can start a hangout and just make it public where
Speaker 1: anyone who follows you will see the hangout and can join.
Speaker 1: And a hangout is you need a webcam and a
Speaker 1: microphone and speakers in order for this to work. Says
Speaker 1: you can hear people, they can hear you, and they
Speaker 1: can see you, and up to ten people total can
Speaker 1: be in a hangout at one time, so it's you
Speaker 1: and nine other people max. And the video switching is
Speaker 1: very clever. It switches to whomever is speaking at the time.
Speaker 1: So if everyone's quiet and I'm talking, then the main
Speaker 1: video will be me as I'm chatting. As someone else
Speaker 1: starts to talk, the video will switch to that person
Speaker 1: and UH the focus changes to them. And if two
Speaker 1: people are talking, whomever is the loudest will have their
Speaker 1: video featured as the central video, and so you'll actually
Speaker 1: see uh. If in a full hangout, you'll see one
Speaker 1: main screen of the person who's talking, and then you'll
Speaker 1: see the other nine miniaturized like thumbnail sized screens below.
Speaker 1: And it's all moving, you know, like you're seeing video
Speaker 1: from all those feeds at one time. You can get
Speaker 1: a little buggy depending upon people's UM data transfer rates.
Speaker 1: You know, if you if you're on a slow UH,
Speaker 1: if you're not really on a high speed broadband connection,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have some problems with this. There'll be some lag. UM.
Speaker 1: I was. I was having some really bad lag when
Speaker 1: I was doing it because I think there were a
Speaker 1: couple of different UH choking points in the in the
Speaker 1: data transfer. So I would say something and then about
Speaker 1: three or four seconds later, I would hear myself say it.
Speaker 1: So I'm responding to something that someone is saying right now,
Speaker 1: but then three or four seconds later there I'm starting
Speaker 1: to hear it. So there'd be a gap between when
Speaker 1: I'm talking when they're talking, so you know, they might
Speaker 1: stop ask me a question, stop, I don't answer. Then
Speaker 1: they started asking if I'm there, and that's when my
Speaker 1: answer is starting to hit and I got a little muddled.
Speaker 1: But on a fast connection, it's pretty cool. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then of course, right after all this happened, Facebook had
Speaker 1: an amazing awesome announcement. Yeah, their video chat, which is
Speaker 1: UH partnership with Skype and allows you one on one
Speaker 1: video chat with another person. On Facebook. It's a difference system,
Speaker 1: right Like you can use a hangout and just talk
Speaker 1: to one person if you want to, but you can
Speaker 1: also talk to a group of people, whereas with Facebook
Speaker 1: video chat right now as the 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 hundred million people on there.
Speaker 1: I think they will continue to add new features and
Speaker 1: new functionality. For example, something that I I don't know
Speaker 1: expect might be a strong word, but seriously wouldn't be
Speaker 1: surprised if it happened would be games, which has been
Speaker 1: a huge driver of traffic to Facebook. Adding adding other
Speaker 1: kinds of in uh insight apps like that I think
Speaker 1: would would not be a shock at all. Just opening
Speaker 1: up an a p I would be pretty and you
Speaker 1: already have starting to see some extensions for for Google
Speaker 1: Chrome that are specifically designed for Google Plus, things like
Speaker 1: allowing you to reply specifically to the person who posts.
Speaker 1: We didn't talk about that. When you do post, people
Speaker 1: can leave comments on that post, just like in Facebook,
Speaker 1: on a wall wall post or Twitter, people can reply.
Speaker 1: You can plus one the comment Yeah, plus one is
Speaker 1: kind of like voting up or a comment or saying
Speaker 1: that you know, I really like this, so I'm adding
Speaker 1: a plus one to it. It changes the way it
Speaker 1: displays on other people's streams. Um, but yeah, we should
Speaker 1: We should mention that quickly. Like in Twitter, you can
Speaker 1: reply to someone and in general only you and the
Speaker 1: other person are really seeing that conversation, unless other people
Speaker 1: are following both of you. Right, so if I reply
Speaker 1: to Chris, people only Chris and I would see that
Speaker 1: 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 of one
Speaker 1: person being the dungeon master and everyone else is playing
Speaker 1: a character. And you could do that. You could have
Speaker 1: people from other states log in and play the game
Speaker 1: all 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 start getting into things like
Speaker 1: board games or whatever, it gets a little more complex.
Speaker 1: Some games you would 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'd have to have a video
Speaker 1: poker game going at the same time, which makes it a
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 have to all right, you have to move
Speaker 1: me forward three squares? Is everyone on Baltic Avenue? Good?
Speaker 1: Next turn. Another feature we should talk about very quickly
Speaker 1: is sparks. Oh yeah, sparks. Sparks is kind of like
Speaker 1: Google Reader in a way. You tell Google Plus what
Speaker 1: what topics you are interested in, and then Google Plus
Speaker 1: kind of cultivates a news feed based on whatever interests
Speaker 1: you've told it apply to you. So, for example, I've
Speaker 1: said technology, if I go to my Sparks technology uh feed,
Speaker 1: then I will see news articles that are related to
Speaker 1: technology within sparks. Um. That's kind of an feature that
Speaker 1: people have noticed and said, well, you know it's it's
Speaker 1: just not fully baked yet. So that's something I expect
Speaker 1: that we'll see more uh evolution in in the near
Speaker 1: future for Google Plus. Yeah. I think the idea behind
Speaker 1: the name Sparks is it's supposed to spark a conversation.
Speaker 1: So you see a cool story, you post it to
Speaker 1: your stream, and then you and your friends have a
Speaker 1: conversation with it. And I it does that, but you
Speaker 1: know it's I in looking through the sparks that I've
Speaker 1: added to my picks. Oh yeah, if you if you
Speaker 1: add one, say you add technology to your Google Plus account,
Speaker 1: you'll see it on the left hand navigation um, along
Speaker 1: with you know things like your you know lists for
Speaker 1: your circles and you know the other the other features
Speaker 1: people who are available for Google Chat that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, so,
Speaker 1: um so it's available to you whenever. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I just when I 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 response 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 ever 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, I wonder what's going on? Click on it.
Speaker 1: See that someone's commented on one of my pages. I
Speaker 1: want to comment back. I can type in a comment
Speaker 1: on that notifications page and send it back without ever
Speaker 1: actually going to my Google Plus uh profile. Right, and um,
Speaker 1: we also need to talk really briefly at least about
Speaker 1: photo albums. Okay. I was going to add to about
Speaker 1: about that that you can also turn on email if
Speaker 1: you really want you and that again a bad idea
Speaker 1: if you have a lot of followers, because you will
Speaker 1: start getting but you could you can do the same
Speaker 1: thing as you would with Twitter or or Facebook and
Speaker 1: say yes, I want to know, send me an email
Speaker 1: every time or or text message every time someone you
Speaker 1: know fill in the blank. It's pretty much everything sends
Speaker 1: me a message gives me a plus one. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a laundry choose. You can choose which ones give
Speaker 1: you alerts in which ones don't. And uh. For for
Speaker 1: an average user, it may make sense to have email
Speaker 1: notifications turned on for me because I have people following me.
Speaker 1: It would be it would overwhelm my email. Yeah, I would.
Speaker 1: And I learned very quickly, like day two of Google Plus,
Speaker 1: to turn all that off for me. Um And and
Speaker 1: you know, I know that there are people who are
Speaker 1: far more popular than I, and I can only imagine
Speaker 1: what their email would have looked like, like like Veronica Belmont
Speaker 1: or Felicia Day or Will Wheaton, you know, some of
Speaker 1: these people who have way more visibility than I do.
Speaker 1: I'm sure their accounts would have been overwhelmed in a second.
Speaker 1: But yeah, please go into photo albums. I do have
Speaker 1: one other thing I want to mention before we finish. Okay,
Speaker 1: So yeah, photo albums are using picasa, Google's photo web
Speaker 1: photo album service as the foundation, although Picasa will undergo
Speaker 1: a name change pretty soon. I think that's gonna be
Speaker 1: Google Plus Photos or something like that. So but it's
Speaker 1: it's the same service. So pocas said, normally, if you
Speaker 1: sign up for a picassa account, which really you can do.
Speaker 1: If you have a Google account your you can create
Speaker 1: a picassa account. You are normally given one gigabyte of
Speaker 1: storage space for photos, which is not really that much um.
Speaker 1: But with Google Plus, if you upload photos through Google Plus,
Speaker 1: it will automatically resize your photos so that the longest
Speaker 1: edge of your photo is two thousand, forty eight pixels long,
Speaker 1: all right, will automatically resize it. So whatever the longest
Speaker 1: edges gets reduced to that size, and at that resolution,
Speaker 1: it does not count against your one gigabyte of storage space.
Speaker 1: So if you upload through Google Plus, you effectively have
Speaker 1: unlimited digital photos storage. I tested this and I have
Speaker 1: a photo album on my profile that has one thousand
Speaker 1: photos in it. That's the maximum number of photos you
Speaker 1: can have in a photo album. Now you can have
Speaker 1: unlimited photo albums in Google Plus, so you're not limited
Speaker 1: that way. It's just that each individual photo album can
Speaker 1: only have a thousand files in it. And uh, I
Speaker 1: recently took a vacation in Europe, and so I have
Speaker 1: a thousand photos from my vacation in Europe in that
Speaker 1: photo album. And I probably have about two thousand more
Speaker 1: photos I need to upload from that vacation so they'll
Speaker 1: be most impressive. There'll be at least three photo albums
Speaker 1: of my vacation photos on Google Plus. Now you've gotta
Speaker 1: keep in mind it's gonna be a lower resolution than
Speaker 1: your original file, assuming, of course, you took it with
Speaker 1: a decent digital camera. Uh So the photo that you
Speaker 1: get on Google Plus is not going to be suitable
Speaker 1: for printing out, for example, or enlarging. Um, So you
Speaker 1: will need to find some other method of storage if
Speaker 1: you want to to keep the photo at the original resolution. UM.
Speaker 1: The thing I wanted to talk about was your Google profile. Yes,
Speaker 1: if you want. If this sounds interesting to you, you
Speaker 1: don't already have a profile on Google Plus. You'll need
Speaker 1: a Google account, and this is you know, the account
Speaker 1: works for everything from Google Plus to Google Docs and
Speaker 1: all the other things. Um. If you already have of
Speaker 1: a profile and you've been keeping it private, UM, that's
Speaker 1: going to change one way or the other by July
Speaker 1: thirty one. I'm not sure exactly when this is going
Speaker 1: to publish. This may put some of you in a
Speaker 1: really tight deadline. UM. I don't think a lot of
Speaker 1: people know this, but Google has plans right now, as
Speaker 1: of their recording this podcast, to delete any profile that
Speaker 1: is not public by July thirty one. And you have
Speaker 1: to have a name attached to your profile, so so
Speaker 1: you can't just create profiles like multiple profiles and not
Speaker 1: have an identity associated with that profile. Right now, it
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily have to be your exact name. However, people
Speaker 1: I have heard reports that people with made up names
Speaker 1: have been questioned by Google, um as they might on
Speaker 1: on Facebook. Um, you know, they they want to make
Speaker 1: sure I guess that a real human is behind it
Speaker 1: and they're not fooling around. But uh yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: this this might cause some issues because I know one
Speaker 1: of the people things that people complain about about Facebook
Speaker 1: is that you know, hey, I want to I want
Speaker 1: to keep this between my close friends, the people I
Speaker 1: know in real life, and my family. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't want it to be out there for everybody to see.
Speaker 1: And this is no longer going to be an option.
Speaker 1: The thing is, maybe you say, well, I've had a
Speaker 1: Google account for ten years now. I have Google account's
Speaker 1: been around him that long anyway, Um, I've had a
Speaker 1: Google account for some time now, and you know, I,
Speaker 1: you know, I guess I'll change my name on Google Plus.
Speaker 1: What if you do that, it changes it across your
Speaker 1: entire profile. Um so if you want to rename your
Speaker 1: Google profile Horatio, your Google Plus profile Horatio T. Wiggle Bottom,
Speaker 1: then people who you send email to on Gmail will
Speaker 1: also see that, and they may not realize that that's you,
Speaker 1: and then and they make fun of you. Yes, not necessarily,
Speaker 1: So that's the That's the thing. I don't know. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's sort of unclear to me whether they mean,
Speaker 1: you know, we will delete your profile, meaning we will
Speaker 1: delete your entire Google account, or whether they mean there
Speaker 1: will be nothing public about this account at all. The
Speaker 1: the the what they call the profile itself, it's what
Speaker 1: they're just talking about. And that's still unclear to me
Speaker 1: as of right this minute. But I have the feeling
Speaker 1: they're talking about the entire account. And then, and I mean,
Speaker 1: the whole point of this is it's a you know,
Speaker 1: to let you connect with other people. So sure, keeping
Speaker 1: it 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. So yeah, but that's
Speaker 1: because the Google Plus is on the foundation of that
Speaker 1: profile exactly. So it's it's forced that to happen. The
Speaker 1: 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, it's a concern I have. And again
Speaker 1: this is not necessarily the concern of the average user,
Speaker 1: but it is for people like Chris and myself and
Speaker 1: for people more notable than us. Is that people and
Speaker 1: create 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 think you said no
Speaker 1: one wanted to do that, good thing. It was really
Speaker 1: easy to find yes, Um, but uh and I've also
Speaker 1: heard reports as of today that he may have actually
Speaker 1: deleted that account, but um, there are also dozens of
Speaker 1: other Mark Zuckerberg's on there now. Yes, and I know that,
Speaker 1: like Neil Gaiman, he had a Google Plus account for
Speaker 1: a while and then he made the conscious decision to
Speaker 1: to to cut it out. He said it was too
Speaker 1: much noise and it didn't work for him, so he left.
Speaker 1: And then, um, he got irritated because he started getting
Speaker 1: lots of emails from people trying to add him into circles.
Speaker 1: But because he had left Google Plus, he was getting
Speaker 1: those invites through email as opposed through Google Plus. So
Speaker 1: he deleted his account and then got deluged by email. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: There's the thing I was saying is that there should be,
Speaker 1: or hopefully there will be, some point a way to
Speaker 1: verify that you are who you say you are, kind
Speaker 1: of like Twitter has verified accounts. It would be nice
Speaker 1: to have a verified account through Google Plus. Because I
Speaker 1: noticed last night that I had a quote unquote celebrity
Speaker 1: following me named Selina Gomez. Uh yeah, so uh the
Speaker 1: Beeb's main squeeze and um, and so I'm thinking, why
Speaker 1: is the Beeb's main squeeze following me? And so I
Speaker 1: decided to do a little investigative work and noticed that
Speaker 1: it was not truly her. People who had gone into
Speaker 1: a hangout with this person said, no, this isn't really
Speaker 1: silly to come as it's a it's a fake account
Speaker 1: from a fan, which, you know, whether you believe that's
Speaker 1: ethical or unethical is beside the point. The point being
Speaker 1: that you know, you kind of want to know the
Speaker 1: people you're talking to are the people that you think
Speaker 1: they are, right, You don't want to be misled. You
Speaker 1: may have a genuine interest in following someone who is
Speaker 1: either a celebrity or other notable figure, but uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you don't mind the fact that they're not following you.
Speaker 1: You just want to get that information. Let's say it's
Speaker 1: a politician or it's someone, uh like a notable authority
Speaker 1: in a particular field that you're interested in. You don't
Speaker 1: want to be following a fan of that person because
Speaker 1: you're not actually getting the information you wanted. So that's
Speaker 1: that's an issue with Google Plus. As of the recording
Speaker 1: of this podcast. Yeah, there there are apparently corporate accounts
Speaker 1: on the way. So yeah, right now, when that happens,
Speaker 1: there will be a house stuff works dot com account, Yeah,
Speaker 1: tech stuff account, And I applied for a tech stuff account, yeah, yesterday,
Speaker 1: So we'll see if that happens. I haven't received any
Speaker 1: information back about that yet, but that's that's coming, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because right now, it's supposed to just be people. That's
Speaker 1: what Google Plus was designed to do. And they said,
Speaker 1: you know, we understand there are corporations that want to
Speaker 1: use this as a way of connecting with their customers, um,
Speaker 1: their partners, etcetera. But it's just not designed for that.
Speaker 1: They're working on that right now, they being the Google
Speaker 1: Plus team. Yeah. I think I think that they have
Speaker 1: the Google has done a much better job with this
Speaker 1: than it did with Wave and and definitely buzz and
Speaker 1: definitely work. Um is it a Facebook killer? Well, I
Speaker 1: can't stand the Blank killer thing. I think it can
Speaker 1: definitely grow into a Facebook rival and that will be good.
Speaker 1: I think the competition will be good for Facebook. They
Speaker 1: don't really have at this point a serious competitor. My
Speaker 1: Space was probably the last one, and it's at least
Speaker 1: a serious competitor and most of the world. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: there are a few places where things like were cut
Speaker 1: are actually yeah, but um but yeah, I mean worldwide. Uh,
Speaker 1: Facebook is still a pretty big um nat juggernaut yesty
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 clickish
Speaker 1: behavior on Google Plus. I saw 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: The so I would say that that's kind of would
Speaker 1: discourage 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 kind of an estimation done to see
Speaker 1: how many men versus women are on Google Plus. Um,
Speaker 1: for a while, it like women made up about ten
Speaker 1: of the entire Google Plus population, and when you think
Speaker 1: we're potentially over ten million users, that's significant. According to
Speaker 1: Social Statistics, that percentage is now closer to uh seventy
Speaker 1: three point seven percent, So there are more females on
Speaker 1: Google Plus than there were before, but still it's overwhelmingly
Speaker 1: a male population. So we'll all have to see. For
Speaker 1: Google Plus to really survive, we're gonna have to see
Speaker 1: that expand beyond just the dudes. Yeah, alright, we are
Speaker 1: wrapping this up. Like we said, there's probably a billion
Speaker 1: other things we could say about Google Plus right now,
Speaker 1: not to mention the fact that by the time this
Speaker 1: publishes things may have changed. Uh. If you guys have
Speaker 1: the ability to access it, search us out, or at
Speaker 1: least search me out. Chris. Chris is really good at
Speaker 1: at at maintaining a nice low profile. I am one
Speaker 1: those people that prefers to keep my social networking down
Speaker 1: to people actually know in real life. And I certainly
Speaker 1: mean no offense to any of our listeners. No, it's
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah, 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 personality. None of us have noticed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know you can't tell by the way I dominate
Speaker 1: every single conversation. Um, anyway you can. You can search up,
Speaker 1: search us out, feel free and uh you know. Depending
Speaker 1: on how long it is from the time we publish this,
Speaker 1: we may be active on it, or we may have
Speaker 1: given up on Google Plus because it's still early days.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've seen a lot of Google products get
Speaker 1: initial positive response only to kind of fade away over time.
Speaker 1: So we'll see if this is one of those. I
Speaker 1: hope you guys like that episode, that classic throwback. Remember,
Speaker 1: if you guys have any suggestions for future topics for
Speaker 1: me to cover or even guests I should have on
Speaker 1: the show, either as a host or an interview subject,
Speaker 1: you should let me know. Send me an email the
Speaker 1: addresses tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or
Speaker 1: drop me a line on Tumblr, Twitter or on Facebook
Speaker 1: to handle it. All three is tech stuff hs W,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon for more
Speaker 1: on this embass into other topics because it has to
Speaker 1: have works dot Com