Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome to text stuff. My name is Chris Poette and
Speaker 1: I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting in a cross from me as always a senior writer,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. Your job's a joke, your broke, your love
Speaker 1: life's d o A. It's nice of you to share
Speaker 1: that with our friends. I thought so. 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 uh, the geek world by storm. Yes, definitely,
Speaker 1: and we've had a few requests, and I think Jonathan
Speaker 1: and I have decided that we'll go ahead and record
Speaker 1: a podcast about it now in self defense before too
Speaker 1: many other people ask us how it works. And also
Speaker 1: we should add that well, first of all, we're talking
Speaker 1: about Google Plus. In case you didn't read the title,
Speaker 1: that we're talking about Google Plus but I want to
Speaker 1: add a disclaimer at the beginning of this podcast, which
Speaker 1: is Google Plus is in a a beta a rapidly
Speaker 1: expanding beta program, uh, and could undergo massive changes and
Speaker 1: short amounts of time. So anything we talked about today
Speaker 1: may very well have be be different by the time
Speaker 1: this podcast goes live, although I don't I don't imagine
Speaker 1: things changing so significantly that they don't apply at all.
Speaker 1: But it may be that there are some subtleties that
Speaker 1: we are not going to cover because they will have
Speaker 1: emerged between the time we record this in the time
Speaker 1: it publishes. Yeah, because frankly, that's that's true of a
Speaker 1: good two thirds of our podcast anytime we don't talk
Speaker 1: about something in history. Yeah. But but with with something
Speaker 1: like this in particular, or when it's in a beta
Speaker 1: format and a lot of people are testing it out. Um.
Speaker 1: And not only that, but the team behind it is
Speaker 1: listening to feedback and incorporating feedback into their changes. You
Speaker 1: have a rapidly evolving service that's going on here. So
Speaker 1: even though we might record something about say Facebook, and
Speaker 1: sure maybe some things will get tweaked in the Facebook
Speaker 1: uh service between the time we record in the time
Speaker 1: we published it might be minor. But with something like this,
Speaker 1: where it's truly experimental and people are implementing changes at
Speaker 1: a rapid pace, the change it's more noticeable. Yes, that
Speaker 1: being said, now that we get the disclaimer on the way,
Speaker 1: let's talk about Google Plus. Okay. So one of my
Speaker 1: favorite descriptions of Google Plus came courtesy of Molly Wood
Speaker 1: from c net, who said, Google Plus is like you
Speaker 1: are at this uh, this really fancy party, and you're
Speaker 1: in a V I P section of the party and
Speaker 1: there are only a few people there, and everyone's excited
Speaker 1: to be there, and everyone's talking about being at the party,
Speaker 1: and that's all that's happening. That's that's definitely an exaggeration,
Speaker 1: and it's also paraphrasing, so that's not a direct quote.
Speaker 1: Molly would put it much more succinctly. But and it's
Speaker 1: it's also changed in the last couple of days. Right.
Speaker 1: But but early on, if you were one of the
Speaker 1: few people who got into Google Plus, I was very
Speaker 1: fortunate and that I managed to get an invite, uh
Speaker 1: and and joined pretty pretty early on. Yeah, it turns
Speaker 1: out I know a lot of people in the tech business. Um.
Speaker 1: But if you if you were in there early on,
Speaker 1: it felt like the people who were there were all
Speaker 1: these mostly tech and geek culture folks. Yeah. So you
Speaker 1: had a lot of people who are from tech companies,
Speaker 1: including folks who are actually from Google, which makes sense,
Speaker 1: it's their product, right. You had people from other big
Speaker 1: companies stuff like Twitter or Facebook, even we'll get into that.
Speaker 1: And then you had a lot of tech journalists, so
Speaker 1: people like Leo Laporte, tom merritt Um later on, Molly
Speaker 1: Wood and Brian Tong have seen it. Um I as
Speaker 1: actor who's a good friend of mine, He's he was
Speaker 1: also on there pretty early on. You had these folks
Speaker 1: who were kind of populating it, so it felt like
Speaker 1: a weird social network. It felt like a social network
Speaker 1: that had been designed specifically for this tech geek world. Oh,
Speaker 1: you also had some geek celebrities, and I say geek
Speaker 1: celebrities in that geeks like me tend to think of
Speaker 1: them as amazing celebrities. So Felicia Day will Wheaten those
Speaker 1: kind of folks. Um, So it kind of felt like
Speaker 1: a 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: to slowly skewed toward a more quote unquote normal population.
Speaker 1: I use normal just in the sense of average as
Speaker 1: opposed to geeks are not normal. Yeah, and and I
Speaker 1: feel compelled to point out that again, like a number
Speaker 1: of topics on this show, this is one of those
Speaker 1: things that has been anticipated for quite some time. Um.
Speaker 1: It's hard to tell a lot of these things too,
Speaker 1: things like the Apple iPad and Google Plus and things
Speaker 1: like this that people say, oh, well, you know, Google's
Speaker 1: working 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, happened, sort of
Speaker 1: like Spotify coming to the United States, which also just
Speaker 1: 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 services, which is still 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 ever. 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 anyway, But so let's let's kind of
Speaker 1: talk about sort of the the we've talked about why,
Speaker 1: how people wanted to get in. Uh we a lot
Speaker 1: of people wanted to get in and couldn't get in
Speaker 1: because they didn't have enough invites. Um. The the expansion
Speaker 1: of Google Plus has been pretty impressive to watch over time.
Speaker 1: You want to say something, well, no, I was just
Speaker 1: gonna say that they're in between the tech unicorn. Um.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things. And at least in my opinion,
Speaker 1: where Google Plus it was so we've heard it for
Speaker 1: so long, it's like it's hiding in plain sight that
Speaker 1: they just went, oh, here it is, and we all
Speaker 1: kind of went. Google Plus kind of launched without a
Speaker 1: whole lot of fanfare from Google. But it turns out
Speaker 1: Google didn't need to provide fanfare that was provided by
Speaker 1: that community of users I was talking about earlier, because
Speaker 1: that that that same group of early adopters who are
Speaker 1: passionate about trying stuff out, are really passionate about sharing information.
Speaker 1: So these adopters served as the the champions of Google Plus.
Speaker 1: Google didn't have to say it anything. Really, they showed
Speaker 1: off a demo um, they explained the concept and that,
Speaker 1: and they let everyone else take over. And really, Google
Speaker 1: didn't just release and watch. They released, watched and listened
Speaker 1: and implemented changes. Which that's kind of where I think
Speaker 1: a lot of the tech enthusiasts have really kind of
Speaker 1: latched onto Google Plus because they're like, they're not just
Speaker 1: giving us this, They're listening to what we have to
Speaker 1: say and they're taking that into consideration. So instead of
Speaker 1: it being some sort of ivory tower where products come out,
Speaker 1: but it's a one way street, right, you know, they're
Speaker 1: they're providing a service, but they're not listening to what
Speaker 1: we have to say. We just take whatever they're giving us.
Speaker 1: Google is more of a two way street. Like you
Speaker 1: really feel that the people at Google are listening. Now,
Speaker 1: they may not incorporate all the changes you think need
Speaker 1: to be there because it doesn't match their vision of
Speaker 1: what this service 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 this new 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 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, but let's not go crazy and let
Speaker 1: 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 gonna be
Speaker 1: a big change as more people join. And also there
Speaker 1: were reports that within a couple of weeks of Google
Speaker 1: Plus launching, they were already possibly as many as ten
Speaker 1: million people on it. And at the time we're recording
Speaker 1: this podcast, which is again just a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: after Google Plus launched, they expect it to be up
Speaker 1: to twenty million by uh, in a in a couple
Speaker 1: of days from the recording of this podcast. So if
Speaker 1: you're looking for let's go ahead and get this answer
Speaker 1: out of the way. If you're looking for Google Plus
Speaker 1: to knock off Facebook, right away, it's not going to
Speaker 1: happen because they're talking twenty million people out of seven
Speaker 1: fifty million for Facebook. So the law, the the long
Speaker 1: term 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 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 to 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 start off with some basic circles. I believe
Speaker 1: it's friends, family, acquaintances, and followers are following. So I've
Speaker 1: got let's say, I've got There's there's Chris, And then
Speaker 1: I have to make a decision do I put Chris
Speaker 1: in my friend's circle, do I put them in my
Speaker 1: acquaintances circle, or do I put them in my following circle.
Speaker 1: Chris is not part of my family, so I'm not
Speaker 1: going to put them in there, and I'm all right
Speaker 1: with that. Uh yeah, And and it's nice to note too,
Speaker 1: especially if you're concerned with issues of privacy. The person
Speaker 1: on the other end, the person that you're adding to
Speaker 1: your circles, has no idea what circles to which you
Speaker 1: have added them, right, So if you put them in, like,
Speaker 1: you could create a circle called jerk faces. I know,
Speaker 1: I know, I know for a fact that I'm in
Speaker 1: that certain and you could put people in the jerk
Speaker 1: faces I know circle and they're not gonna know that
Speaker 1: that's the They know that you've added them, yes, but
Speaker 1: they don't know what circle they are in. So I'm
Speaker 1: probably in a lot of jerk faces I know circles
Speaker 1: and yeah, and now that our listeners have heard me
Speaker 1: say this, I imagine a lot of them are making
Speaker 1: jerk faces I know circles just to put me in them. Um,
Speaker 1: So you've got these circles. Now you've decided where this
Speaker 1: your first let's say it's your first person you're following.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to use Chris as my example. I've
Speaker 1: decided that I want to follow Chris. I want to
Speaker 1: I want to hear what Chris has to say, I
Speaker 1: want to be able to see his updates. I want
Speaker 1: to be able to see his photos. Um, I put
Speaker 1: him in my acquaintances circle. All right. So now, anytime
Speaker 1: 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 now. Now, if Chris has not
Speaker 1: put me in a circle, and he publishes it in
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 going to push it to his friends.
Speaker 1: I am not in his friend's circle. He types in
Speaker 1: his status update, he sets it so that it only
Speaker 1: publishes to friends he publishes it. I don't know that
Speaker 1: Chris has done anything to me. His his posts still
Speaker 1: are blank. Now let's say that Chris does another one
Speaker 1: where he decides he wants to talk about an article
Speaker 1: he edited, and he wants this he wants the general
Speaker 1: public to know about this article. He sets that status
Speaker 1: update to public. Suddenly I can see that particular stats
Speaker 1: update because he set it to public. So anyone following
Speaker 1: Chris can see it. Then let's say that Chris notices
Speaker 1: 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 set us update
Speaker 1: and decides he only wants his acquaintances and friends to
Speaker 1: see it, so he sets it so that this stats
Speaker 1: update goes up to friends and acquaintances, but not the
Speaker 1: general public. 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 stas 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's some other
Speaker 1: things you have to remember, like, uh, there is the
Speaker 1: ability to share posts that other people have published. Now
Speaker 1: if you you can either turn the sharing on or off,
Speaker 1: so you don't have to. If you turn it off,
Speaker 1: that means other people cannot share the same message you
Speaker 1: just posted. If the share is on, your message that
Speaker 1: went out to just your friends or just your acquaintances
Speaker 1: might suddenly become public. So Chris sends out a message
Speaker 1: to just his acquaintances, he has sharing turned on, he
Speaker 1: has not turned that off. I read Chris's post, and
Speaker 1: I think, hey, that's awesome. Everyone who follows me wants
Speaker 1: to know that too. I hit share. Suddenly his message
Speaker 1: that just went to his acquaintances are now it's now
Speaker 1: out in the wild, So they're 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 has 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 selling you that post isn't
Speaker 1: there because it wasn't set to public when it was
Speaker 1: originally published, and it gets a little complicated. These are
Speaker 1: things that the Google Plus team. They're looking into this
Speaker 1: stuff to see what makes sense and what doesn't make sense,
Speaker 1: you know, sharing versus private. And because you have the
Speaker 1: ability to turn sharing off, if you are someone who
Speaker 1: doesn't want information to go beyond that group of friends,
Speaker 1: you can always turn it off. Now, granted, that doesn't
Speaker 1: stop your friends from say A, saying that Jonathan said,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, And there's always you know, copy and paste, right,
Speaker 1: So yeah, there are ways around it. But that's the
Speaker 1: same for any social network. I sort of count on
Speaker 1: my friends to be lazy enough where they won't I
Speaker 1: can't share this, yeah, exactly. And and really, I mean
Speaker 1: it's just like real life. Just like real life. If
Speaker 1: I come up and I tell Chris is secret, there's
Speaker 1: nothing stopping Chris from going around and telling other people
Speaker 1: that secret. I'm sorry, I told you, I'm sorry. Gee. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well let's see if you ever get any key line
Speaker 1: pie from me again. So so that's the basics behind
Speaker 1: circles and sharing. And also, if let's say that when
Speaker 1: you're actually consuming information, You're not just that that's sending
Speaker 1: information out right, publishing information. You can also look view
Speaker 1: your stream. That's what Google Plus calls your what what
Speaker 1: Facebook would call the wall right or Twitter would call
Speaker 1: it the feed, So it's the same sort of concept.
Speaker 1: It's it's the stream of information coming from all the
Speaker 1: people that you put into your circles. You can view
Speaker 1: that by circle. So if you just have it set
Speaker 1: to the stream, you're looking at everything that people you
Speaker 1: follow are publishing. So all your friends, acquaintances, celebrities who
Speaker 1: might be following people you know of but you don't
Speaker 1: actually know in real life. All the information gets dumped
Speaker 1: into the stream. If you want to try and filter
Speaker 1: that out, you can view your stream by circle. 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 the recording of this podcast, I have people following me.
Speaker 1: If I choose incoming, I see their updates, so I'm
Speaker 1: not following them. But by hitting income, I'm seeing everyone
Speaker 1: who's following me, I'm seeing their updates. So suddenly it
Speaker 1: just becomes a wall of information. Um. But assuming that
Speaker 1: everything they've published as public, if they published stuff to
Speaker 1: their friends or their acquaintances or whatever, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to see that. I'm only going to see stuff that
Speaker 1: in the circles that I've been included in and in
Speaker 1: the public posts. But it means that I get a
Speaker 1: lot more information from a lot more people, not just
Speaker 1: the people I follow, right. Um, So in a way
Speaker 1: that a lot right. So, in a way, Google Plus
Speaker 1: is like Facebook and that you can follow specific people,
Speaker 1: they can follow you back and you. In a way,
Speaker 1: it's like Twitter because in Twitter you can follow people
Speaker 1: and just read what they have to say as long
Speaker 1: as they don't have their profile set to private. You
Speaker 1: can read Twitter posts from people as they update. So
Speaker 1: in Google Plus the same sort of thing. You don't
Speaker 1: have to give permission to someone in order for them
Speaker 1: to follow you. But people say, well what about privacy.
Speaker 1: That's where the the circles come in. That's where you
Speaker 1: 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, right, 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. Now I don't think that's such
Speaker 1: a good idea. 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, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a bad idea. But let's say it's just a bad photo,
Speaker 1: like your fingers in the frame. You know, you don't
Speaker 1: want that publishing because you're like, come on, that's just
Speaker 1: a I'd rather take that photo again. So you can
Speaker 1: set your privacy setting so that those photos don't automatically
Speaker 1: go to everybody. Yeah, I actually do have instant published
Speaker 1: turned on right now, because I wanted to try it out,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty neat. I didn't realize that every picture
Speaker 1: I take on my phone is instantly published, not just
Speaker 1: the ones I do through the app, but through anything.
Speaker 1: So it gets like I've taken photos to upload to
Speaker 1: Twitter and twit pick. It also has gone to my
Speaker 1: Google Plus account. Now I don't have it publishing publicly,
Speaker 1: so at least people aren't being flooded by pictures of
Speaker 1: me 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, And that isn't to say that that
Speaker 1: won't that functionality won't come to other phones. Now there
Speaker 1: is a Google Plus app. Actually, there was a Google
Speaker 1: Plus app for Android, I would say just about immediately
Speaker 1: since I heard about it, I looked for it. There
Speaker 1: it was the launch, the launch on the web, and
Speaker 1: the launch on the phone. In fact, the launch on
Speaker 1: the phone gave some people work around to getting into
Speaker 1: Google Plus. Early on, they installed the Google Plus app
Speaker 1: on their phone and found that they could bypass the
Speaker 1: invite system, and once they tried to activate the app
Speaker 1: on their phone, it gave them an invite UM, and
Speaker 1: 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 two 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 personally.
Speaker 1: And 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 the
Speaker 1: recording of this podcast, it's been submitted but not yet approved. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there. I don't know if the automatic photo feature
Speaker 1: will work with those phones, I you know, and I
Speaker 1: don't know if there will be something coming for Windows
Speaker 1: Phone or or web os. Um. We'll see. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: like a lot of BlackBerry, like a lot of services
Speaker 1: and products that we're seeing launch these days. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: really effective if you subscribe to a particular ecosystem in
Speaker 1: this case Google's, so using Google Plus on Google Chrome
Speaker 1: and having an Android phone. It works. I mean it
Speaker 1: works really seamlessly because all those products are coming from
Speaker 1: the same company. But when you start mixing matching, your
Speaker 1: experience may vary. Yeah. There's another feature, um, and that
Speaker 1: that Jonathan and I tried out pretty much immediately, and
Speaker 1: that's called the huddle. Yes, Um, 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 gave 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 workarounds too.
Speaker 1: If you added someone to a Google Huddle, then in
Speaker 1: order for them to be able to use the Huddle,
Speaker 1: they were given a link to log into Google Plus,
Speaker 1: and that's how they ended up getting accounts even though
Speaker 1: they didn't have an official invite UM and the invitations
Speaker 1: at that point had been closed. And yet a lot
Speaker 1: of people found that workaround. Again, that's been patched since
Speaker 1: the since since it first happened, took a couple of
Speaker 1: days before Google caught on, or maybe they caught on,
Speaker 1: but they let it happen anyway because they're like, well,
Speaker 1: this is letting the population base expand, but it's not
Speaker 1: expanding at a rate that's outside of our comfort zone.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, um. And there's hangouts yea. Hangouts are awesome.
Speaker 1: I haven't tried to hang out yet. I've tried it
Speaker 1: and it is. It is addicting. So a hangout is
Speaker 1: a video chat session. You can start a hangout with
Speaker 1: specific people if you want to, or you can start
Speaker 1: a hangout and just make it public where anyone who
Speaker 1: follows you will see the hangout and can join. And
Speaker 1: a hangout is you need a web cam and a
Speaker 1: microphone and speakers in order for this to work, so
Speaker 1: that you can hear people, they can hear you, and
Speaker 1: they can see you, and up to ten people total
Speaker 1: can be in a hangout at one time, so it's
Speaker 1: you and nine other people max. And the video switching
Speaker 1: is very clever. It switches to whomever is speaking at
Speaker 1: the time, So if everyone's quiet and I'm talking, then
Speaker 1: the main video will be me as I'm chatting. As
Speaker 1: someone else starts to talk, the video will switch to
Speaker 1: that person, and uh the focus changes to them. And
Speaker 1: if two people are talking, whomever' is the loudest will
Speaker 1: have their video featured as the central video, and so
Speaker 1: you'll actually see uh if in a full hangout, you'll
Speaker 1: see one main screen of the person who's talking, and
Speaker 1: then you'll see the other nine miniaturized like thumbnail sized
Speaker 1: screens below, and it's all moving, you know, like you're
Speaker 1: seeing video from all those feeds at one time. It
Speaker 1: can get a little buggy depending upon people's um data
Speaker 1: transfer rates. You know, if you're if you're on a
Speaker 1: slow UH, if you're not really on a high speed
Speaker 1: broadband connection, you're gonna have some problems with this. There'll
Speaker 1: be some lag. UM I was. I was having some
Speaker 1: really bad lag when I was doing it, because I
Speaker 1: think there were a couple of different uh choking points
Speaker 1: in the in the data transfer. So I would say
Speaker 1: something and then about three or four seconds later, I
Speaker 1: would hear myself say it. So I'm responding to something
Speaker 1: that someone is saying right now, but then three or
Speaker 1: four seconds later there I'm starting to hear it. So
Speaker 1: there'd be a gap between when I'm talking when they're talking,
Speaker 1: so you know, they might stop asking me a question
Speaker 1: stop I don't answer. Then they start asking if I'm there,
Speaker 1: and that's when my answer is starting to hit and
Speaker 1: I got a little muddled. But on a fast connection,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. Yeah. And then of course, right after
Speaker 1: all this happened, Facebook had an amazing, awesome announcement. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're video chat, which is uh partnership with Skype and
Speaker 1: allows you one on one video chat with another person
Speaker 1: on Facebook. It's a difference system, right, Like you can
Speaker 1: use a hangout and just talk to one person if
Speaker 1: you want to, but you can also talk to a
Speaker 1: group of people, whereas with Facebook video Chat right now,
Speaker 1: as the recording of this podcast, it's a one on
Speaker 1: one scenario. So um, Facebook may not necessarily see Google
Speaker 1: Plus as an immediate competitor, but you can bet that
Speaker 1: the company will be watching Google Plus to see what
Speaker 1: features are added next. I mean, uh, and I don't
Speaker 1: think Google Plus is what Google would consider a finished
Speaker 1: product even you know, assuming that the features are all robust,
Speaker 1: they open the floodgates and anyone can join. You have
Speaker 1: two hundred million people on there. I think they will
Speaker 1: continue to add new features and new functionality. For example,
Speaker 1: something that I I don't know expect might be a
Speaker 1: 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 have 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 Whitter,
Speaker 1: people can reply. Yeah, plus one is kind of like
Speaker 1: voting up or a comment or saying that you know,
Speaker 1: I really like this, so I'm adding a plus one
Speaker 1: to it. It changes the way it displays on other
Speaker 1: people's streams. Um, but yeah, we should We should mention
Speaker 1: that quickly. Like in Twitter, you can reply to someone
Speaker 1: and in general only you and the other person are
Speaker 1: really seeing that conversation unless other people are following both
Speaker 1: of you. Right, So if I reply to Chris. People
Speaker 1: only Chris and I would see that reply unless other
Speaker 1: people are following both of us. Uh. Now with Google Plus,
Speaker 1: it's more like Facebook and that I can make a
Speaker 1: comment and then someone else can comment on that. Anyone
Speaker 1: following me can comment on that if I've made it
Speaker 1: public and then or and you can disable comments as
Speaker 1: well if you don't want people commenting on something um
Speaker 1: and then other folks can comment and it becomes a discussion.
Speaker 1: In fact, I've had a few discussions like that pop
Speaker 1: up on Google Plus. Recently. I said, wouldn't it be
Speaker 1: cool to use the hangout feature to have a D
Speaker 1: and D game where everyone in the hangout is playing
Speaker 1: D and D. You have one person being the dungeon
Speaker 1: master and everyone else is playing a character. And you
Speaker 1: could do that. You could have people from other states
Speaker 1: log in and play the game all at the same time.
Speaker 1: So or any other game for that matter. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: could really do that with any game, although once you
Speaker 1: start getting into things like board games or whatever, it
Speaker 1: gets a little more complex. Some games you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to do, like like poker, because how are you
Speaker 1: going to deal with all those cards in? You know,
Speaker 1: you have to have a video poker game going at
Speaker 1: the same time, which makes them a little more complicated anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Yeah, any any role playing type game like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: board games you could do too, if everyone had a
Speaker 1: copy of the board game. Yeah, but you have to
Speaker 1: all right, you have to move me forward three squares?
Speaker 1: Is everyone on Baltic Avenue? Good? Next turn? Uh? So
Speaker 1: that's but 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 pis. 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,
Speaker 1: so 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 And I think this
Speaker 1: is Google's response to the trend of people getting information
Speaker 1: and news through stuff like Facebook. Like their friends shares
Speaker 1: an article that's that that their friend thought was really
Speaker 1: cool and then you see it on Facebook and you're
Speaker 1: like huh, and you click on the link and you
Speaker 1: read the article and you're like, yeah, that was interesting.
Speaker 1: Google's kind of taking that and trying to incorporate it
Speaker 1: directly into the social experience so that you aren't you
Speaker 1: know you aren't. You don't have to move very far
Speaker 1: away from Google in order to do it. Also, we
Speaker 1: should mention that Google Plus has a notifications bar that
Speaker 1: tells you when people have interacted with your your Google
Speaker 1: Plus account in some ay, maybe that they started to
Speaker 1: follow you. It may be 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, com wonder what's going on? Click on it,
Speaker 1: see that someone's commented on one of my pages. I
Speaker 1: wanna comment back. I can type in a comment on
Speaker 1: that notifications page and send it back without ever actually
Speaker 1: going to my Google Plus uh. Profile and um, we
Speaker 1: also need to talk really briefly at least about photo albums. Okay.
Speaker 1: I was going to add to about about that that
Speaker 1: you can also turn on email if you really want
Speaker 1: you and that I gave a bad idea if you
Speaker 1: have a lot of followers, because you will start getting
Speaker 1: but you could. You can do the same thing as
Speaker 1: you would with Twitter or or Facebook and say yes,
Speaker 1: I want to know, send me an email every time,
Speaker 1: or or text message every time someone you know fill
Speaker 1: in the blank. It's pretty much everything sends me a
Speaker 1: message gives me a plus one. You can choose. You
Speaker 1: can choose which ones give you alerts and which ones don't.
Speaker 1: And uh. For for an average user, it may make
Speaker 1: sense to have email notifications turned on for me because
Speaker 1: I have people following me. It would be it would
Speaker 1: overwhelm 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 Fleicia 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 um, yeah, please go
Speaker 1: into photo albums. I do have one other thing I
Speaker 1: want to mention before we finish. Okay, So yeah, photo
Speaker 1: albums are using Picasa, Google's photo web photo album service
Speaker 1: as the foundation. Although Picasa will undergo a name change
Speaker 1: pretty soon. I think that's gonna be Google Plus Photos
Speaker 1: or something like that. So but it's it's the same
Speaker 1: service so Picasa. Normally, if you sign up for a
Speaker 1: Picasa account, which really you can do. If you have
Speaker 1: a Google account your you can create a Picasa account.
Speaker 1: You are normally given one gigabyte of storage space for photos,
Speaker 1: which is not really that much. Um. But with Google Plus,
Speaker 1: if you upload photos through Google Plus, it will automatically
Speaker 1: resize your photos so that the longest edge of your
Speaker 1: photo is two thousand, forty eight pixels long, all right,
Speaker 1: will automatically resize it. So whatever the longest edges gets
Speaker 1: reduced to that size and at that resolution, it does
Speaker 1: not count against your one gigabyte of storage space. So
Speaker 1: if you upload the Google Plus you effectively have unlimited
Speaker 1: digital photos storage. I tested this and I have a
Speaker 1: photo album on my profile that has one thousand photos
Speaker 1: in it. That's the maximum number of photos you can
Speaker 1: have in a photo album. Now, you can have unlimited
Speaker 1: photo albums in Google Plus, so you're not limited that way.
Speaker 1: It's just that each individual photo album can only have
Speaker 1: a thousand files in it. And uh, I recently took
Speaker 1: a vacation in Europe, and so I have a thousand
Speaker 1: photos from my vacation in Europe in that photo album.
Speaker 1: And I probably have about two thousand more photos I
Speaker 1: need to upload from that vacation, so they'll be most impressive.
Speaker 1: There'll be at least three photo albums of my vacation
Speaker 1: photos on Google Plus. Now, you gotta keep in mind
Speaker 1: 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 at a storage if you want to keep
Speaker 1: the photo at the original resolution. Um The thing I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about was your Google profile. 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 keeping
Speaker 1: it private, UM, that's going to change one way or
Speaker 1: the other by July thirty one. I'm not sure exactly
Speaker 1: when this is gonna published. This may put some of
Speaker 1: you at a really tight deadline. UM. I don't think
Speaker 1: a lot of people know this, but Google has plans
Speaker 1: right now, as of the recording of this podcast, to
Speaker 1: delete any profile that is not public by July thirty one.
Speaker 1: And you have to have a name attached to your profile.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so you can't just create profiles like multiple
Speaker 1: profiles and not have a and identity associated with that
Speaker 1: profile right now. It doesn't necessarily have to be your
Speaker 1: exact name. However, people, I have heard reports that people
Speaker 1: with made up names have been questioned by Google, um
Speaker 1: as they might on on Facebook. Um, you know, they
Speaker 1: they want to make sure I guess that a real
Speaker 1: human is behind it and they're not fooling around. But uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this this might cause some issues because I
Speaker 1: know one of the people. Things that people complain about
Speaker 1: about Facebook is that, you know, hey, I want to
Speaker 1: I want to keep this between my close friends, the
Speaker 1: people I know in real life, and my family. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't want it to be out there for everybody
Speaker 1: to see. And this is no longer going to be
Speaker 1: an option. The thing is, maybe you say, well, I've
Speaker 1: had a Google account for ten years now, I have
Speaker 1: Google account's been around him that long anyway, Um, I've
Speaker 1: had a Google account for some time now, and you know, I,
Speaker 1: you know, I guess I'll change my name on Google Plus. Well,
Speaker 1: if you do that, it changes it across your entire profile.
Speaker 1: Um so if you want to rename your Google profile Horatio,
Speaker 1: your Google Plus profile Horatio T. Wiggle Bottom, then people
Speaker 1: who you send email to on Gmail will also see that,
Speaker 1: and they may not realize that that's you, and then
Speaker 1: they delete it and they make fun of you. Yes, know,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily so that's the that's the thing. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Uh, it's it's sort of unclear to me
Speaker 1: whether they mean, you know, we will delete your profile,
Speaker 1: meaning we will delete your entire Google account, or whether
Speaker 1: they mean there will be nothing public about this account
Speaker 1: at all, the the the what they call the profile itself.
Speaker 1: It's what they're just talking about. And that's still unclear
Speaker 1: to me as of right this minute, but I have
Speaker 1: the feeling they're talking about the entire account and and
Speaker 1: I mean the whole point of this is it's a
Speaker 1: you know, to let you connect with other people. So sure,
Speaker 1: keeping 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 profile.
Speaker 1: So it's it's forced that to happen. The profile is
Speaker 1: the bottom of the pyramid is the problem. So um yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's it's that's a concern some people have, um,
Speaker 1: A concern I have. And again this is not necessarily
Speaker 1: the concern of the average user, but it is for
Speaker 1: people like Chris and myself and for people more notable
Speaker 1: than us, is that people can create um the you know,
Speaker 1: fake accounts or or accounts, uh, accounts claiming to be
Speaker 1: people and it's not really that person. Well, you know.
Speaker 1: One of the big things is, uh, this first couple
Speaker 1: of weeks of Google Plus was that Mark Zuckerberg, the
Speaker 1: founder of Facebook at a Google Plus profile and they
Speaker 1: were pretty sure it was him because it was a
Speaker 1: photo no one had actually seen of him before, and
Speaker 1: 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? Yeah? I thought you said
Speaker 1: no one wanted to do that. Good thing. It was
Speaker 1: really easy to find, yes, Um, but uh. And I've
Speaker 1: also heard reports as of today that he may have
Speaker 1: actually deleted that account. But um, there are also dozens
Speaker 1: of other Mark Zuckerberg's in there now. Yes, and I
Speaker 1: know that, like Neil Gaiman, he end the Google Plus
Speaker 1: account for a while, and then he made the conscious
Speaker 1: decision to to to cut it out. He said it
Speaker 1: was too much noise and it didn't work for him,
Speaker 1: so he left. And then, um, he got irritated because
Speaker 1: he started getting lots of emails from people trying to
Speaker 1: add him into circles. But because he had left Google Plus,
Speaker 1: he was getting those invites through email as opposed through
Speaker 1: Google Plus. So he deleted his account and then got
Speaker 1: deluged by email. Um. Yeah, there's the thing I was
Speaker 1: saying is that there should be are hopefully there will
Speaker 1: be some point away to verify that you are who
Speaker 1: you say you are, kind of like Twitter has verified accounts.
Speaker 1: It would be nice to have a verified account through
Speaker 1: Google Plus. Because I noticed last night that I had
Speaker 1: a quote unquote celebrity following me named Selena Gomez. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh the Bebes Main Squeeze and um, and so
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, why is the Beeb's main squeeze following me?
Speaker 1: And so I decided to do a little investigative work
Speaker 1: and noticed that it was not truly her. People who
Speaker 1: had gone into a hangout with this person said, no,
Speaker 1: this isn't really Selena Gomez. It's a it's a fake
Speaker 1: account from a fan, which, you know, whether you believe
Speaker 1: that's ethical or unethical is beside the point. The point
Speaker 1: being that you know, you kind of want to know
Speaker 1: the people you're talking to are the people that you
Speaker 1: 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 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 author
Speaker 1: already in a particular field that you're interested in. You
Speaker 1: don't want to be following a fan of that person
Speaker 1: because you're not actually getting the information you wanted. So
Speaker 1: that's that's an issue with Google Plus. As of the
Speaker 1: recording of this podcast. Yeah, there there are apparently corporate
Speaker 1: accounts on the way, so yeah, right there, 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.
Speaker 1: Ah yeah, yesterday, So if that happens, I haven't received
Speaker 1: any information back about that yet, but that's that's coming,
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, because right now, it's supposed to just
Speaker 1: be people. That's what Google Plus was designed to do.
Speaker 1: And they said, you know, we understand there are corporations
Speaker 1: that want to use this as a way of connecting
Speaker 1: with their customers, um, their partners, etcetera. But it's just
Speaker 1: not designed for that. They're working on that right now.
Speaker 1: They being the Google Plus team. Yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: think that they have that Google has done a much
Speaker 1: better job with this than it did with Wave and
Speaker 1: and and definitely buzz and definitely work it. Um is
Speaker 1: it a Facebook killer? While I can't stand the Blank
Speaker 1: killer thing. I think it can definitely grow into a
Speaker 1: Facebook rival and that will be good. I think the
Speaker 1: competition will be good for Facebook. They don't really have
Speaker 1: at this point a serious competitor. My Space was probably
Speaker 1: the last one, and it's at least a serious competitor
Speaker 1: and host the world. Yeah, and there are a few
Speaker 1: places where things like or are actually sure yeah five um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean worldwide. Uh. Facebook is still a
Speaker 1: pretty big um juggernauty million users is huge. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I think I think that given time and some
Speaker 1: added features and some refinement, I think Google Plus is
Speaker 1: off to a very good start. Yeah. And it may
Speaker 1: very well just be a complementary service. It may never
Speaker 1: be one that replaces Facebook, because that wasn't necessarily what
Speaker 1: it was intended to do. It may be that you
Speaker 1: go to Facebook for certain kinds of interaction and you
Speaker 1: go to Google Plus for other kinds of interaction, and
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with that, so um, we'll see. I
Speaker 1: know there are a lot of people who are talking
Speaker 1: about the fact that are going to just drop Facebook.
Speaker 1: In fact, I've seen a lot of people who have
Speaker 1: changed their profile pictures to say I have moved and
Speaker 1: have the g Plus logo in there, which is cute.
Speaker 1: Oh and I was gonna say about the clicks behavior.
Speaker 1: Let's finish off with this because we are running along.
Speaker 1: But the clickish behavior on Google Plus. I saw a
Speaker 1: lot of people and I assume most of it was
Speaker 1: joking about how you know, because they joined early. They
Speaker 1: thought it would be cool to have a Google Plus
Speaker 1: badge to show that you were one of the original
Speaker 1: Google Plus beta testers before it went public, and that
Speaker 1: this would set you apart. And uh, I happened to
Speaker 1: be of the I mean, I jokingly said that would
Speaker 1: be awesome, but I honestly think that would be a
Speaker 1: bad idea because it would discourage people. It would it
Speaker 1: would encourage a sense of clickishness and saying like I'm
Speaker 1: superior to you because I managed to get an invite
Speaker 1: to this social network, which, by the way, getting an
Speaker 1: invite to a social network doesn't mean anything. It just
Speaker 1: means you've got an invite or a work around, which means,
Speaker 1: you know, equally nothing. Um. The so I would say
Speaker 1: that that's kind of would discourage new people from coming
Speaker 1: in because they're like, oh, well, this is like a
Speaker 1: closed off club. And also right now it's more or
Speaker 1: less a boys club according to UH. To Mashable, UM,
Speaker 1: there was a a survey done to see or a
Speaker 1: kind of an estimation done to see how many men
Speaker 1: versus women are on Google Plus. Um. For a while,
Speaker 1: like women made up about ten of the entire Google
Speaker 1: Plus population. And when you think we're potentially over ten
Speaker 1: million users, that's significant. According to Social Statistics, that percentage
Speaker 1: is now closer to UH seventy three points seven percent,
Speaker 1: So there are more females on Google Plus than there
Speaker 1: were before, but still it's overwhelmingly a male population. So
Speaker 1: we'll have to see. For Google Plus to really survive,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to see that expand beyond just the dudes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. Al Right, we are wrapping this up.
Speaker 1: Like we said, there's probably a billion other things we
Speaker 1: could say about Google Plus right now, not to mention
Speaker 1: the fact that by the time this publishes things may
Speaker 1: have changed. UH. If you guys have the ability to
Speaker 1: access it, search us out, or at least search me
Speaker 1: out Chris. Chris is really good at at at maintaining
Speaker 1: a nice low profile. I am one of those people
Speaker 1: that prefers to keep my social networking down to people
Speaker 1: actually know in real life. And I certainly mean no
Speaker 1: offense to any of our listeners. No, it's there's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with that. Yeah, I I am a very extroverted
Speaker 1: kind of guy who I'm like, look at me. So
Speaker 1: it's just really different personalities. 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 published 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 product 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. UM. Also,
Speaker 1: keep in mind Google Plus does have at least at
Speaker 1: the recording of this podcast, and age limit. You have
Speaker 1: to be eighteen years or older and uh tall, so
Speaker 1: your mileage may vary on your success at getting into
Speaker 1: Google Plus. If you guys have any suggestions for other
Speaker 1: topics we should tackle, let us know. You can send
Speaker 1: us an email that address is tech Stuff at how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com, or you can let's know on
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter or Hey Google Plus. If you're on there,
Speaker 1: you can find me, but the text the text Stuff.
Speaker 1: Facebook and Twitter accounts are Text Stuff hs W. Look
Speaker 1: for us on there, and Chris and I will talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Be sure to check out
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