Get In The Inbox

You can’t be surprised, Facebook is already set-up with our mates and GooglePlus has limited access so it’s no remotely encroaching on Facebook’s true social network. Subsequently it’s the tweeters who are taking it up and testing it out.

Currently due to the convenience, integration options and the fact that Tweets are so short, Twitter is surviving, however, Google could finish Twitter sooner rather than later…

All Google needs to do is create a 160 char interface for Google plus, linking back to the Google plus page for the longer posts; At the same time, allow the main Google Plus account to drag in tweets that can be sent out as a Gplus post and/or allow tweets to appear in the interface that could be re-shared Gplus posts.

Of course this could sound like a big job. After all twitter is a whole app on it’s own, separate from GooglePlus, this could mean that Google would have to write a whole other app on top, or does it?

No it doesn’t, Google already has a 160 char content feed, it’s just that no-one uses it – they called it Google-Buzz and it was Twitter without being Twitter. No-one actually uses it because there was no point at the time – we already had Twitter. But now it can have a use.

On Twitter, most people use Hootsuite or TweetDeck with a column for mentions, the main feed, DMs and then columns for certain lists and searches.

Imagine going to a page where you have a column of all of your circles’ content but just the 1^st 140 chars  +  a link back to the full GooglePlus post on GooglePlus if it’s longer than 160 chars.

Then the ability to give each of your Google Circle it’s own column to aggregate the content so you know where to concentrate your time.

This way you can do the quick and easy twitter style use and you have an easy interface to find relevant content on Google plus. You can easily get into the main Google Plus interface to reed and put more of an elaboration in and they will be automatically picked up and feed out into the 160 char interface – not unlike sharing a blog comment through apps like Disqus.

If you like this idea and you want to be able to use Google Plus a bit more like Twitter: TELL GOOGLE about it now!
There is a Feedback Button on the bottom right of every Google Plus page, just hit it type in your needs a suggestions, hit preview then hit go -please make sure you are polite and constructive – the good people at Google are hard working people and if you want something from them, don’t kick the gift horse in the teeth – thanks you.

Subsequently when you start Google Plus and pile all of your mates from your email account into circles you then want to do the same with your tweeple, who you are not Facebook with.

This leaves with 2 circles of friends: Facebooky friends and family, Twitter industry mates and networks etc. Then I add people who are neither into a 3^rd circle, like followers – 3 circles.

I then realise that some people from the industry are also friends but not on Facebook, so I’ve got another circle for Industry good friends, 4 circles.

I then realise that some of my industry friends are all about digital media in general but not about email, so I might want to throw all of the geeky email stuff to them, so I make another circle – 5 circles.

Then some of the people that are friends but also industry friends are colleagues, I don’t need to bombard them with all my email geek stuff, so I make another circle – 6 circles.

Then I realise that whilst I now have full control over who I send my content to, what about reading content?

I had twitter lists, to manage what I looked out for and to aggregate the right content to me, some public and some private.

I did have a list of people in digital media in Brighton, so I could pick some of that out of the mists of content, so I make another circle – 7 circles.

Then I find that Mashable have a news presence and as I had a list of digital media publishing on twitter I want that same aggregation in Google Plus, I make another circle – 8 circles.

Then I write a plus post and need to decide who to share it with…

It’s a really hard decision, you don’t want to give people irrelevant content but you don’t want them to miss out, so I sit there for ages and eventually, after checking twitter in between, I make it public!

This is what I think I need  from Google Circles

1. A better interface for managing these circles. If I decide to change people in circles I need to be able to filter the contents of some circles to see: only the ones that are not in other circles or ones that are in specific other circles.

2. I also want sub-circles, so instead of having people in duplicate circles I can put multiple circles into a parent circle, like all my work circles can be work, whether they are networking, friends, email, seo, etc OR if they are Friends circles, friends, family, acquaintances etc. That way when I  write something if it’s work, I can send to all work but if it’s social I can send it to friends, however if it relevant I can send social stuff to other industry bods in Brighton which would be a sub-circle of the work circle.

If you agree on this or have something similar in mind, please TELL GOOGLE about it. There is a feedback button on the bottom right of every page in Google Plus. Use it. Google want  to get and keep users, so right now, they are listening – make sure you are helpful and constructive and not critical and sarcastic!

Those who read can then decide to get on with their life, reply to the sender or retweet to everyone else. They can also send that person a direct message – providing both users are following each other.

Why is this good? … Attention span is tiny!

It’s really easy to interact and visually filter out non-relevant information because the content is only up to 160 characters.

Publishers and bloggers have revelled in their Twitter glory – just read the Mashable Story to see how they would not be who they are today without Twitter.

Publishers and bloggers, publish a piece and tweet it to the world then get all of the traffic back to their site. It’s good for traffic and very good for SEO – for the moment.

The better bits get retweeted by readers and more people go and read and share and discuss – in 160 characters. Obviously most of the sites have their own comments section so and discussion can ensure from there, this can get tweeted and more traffic gets directed.

How does Google Plus Compare?

The main difference is obviously that you are not tied down to 160 characters. Also you can have images viewable in the G+ post page, any link you share will get a preview under your post and another big thing is that all comments appear below, like in a blog or in Facebook.

In fact it doesn’t sound anything like Twitter – but lots of people are saying that this will kill Twitter off? – It could but not in this state.

Right now Google plus is more like Facebook but for Twitter users. By that I mean that people hold their Facebook presence a bit more preciously than their Twitter. And the early adopters of Google Plus are people who network over twitter with their online world more than Facebook, which is more for family and friends to share photos, funny quips and the music videos.

Twitter is simply a way to SMS to a public forum, it’s a subject line and a call to action, it’s a glorified RSS feed with an easy sharing button to a central arena.

Twitter is so very convenient and to the point, the G+ interface does not satisfy the tiny attention spans of the masses who want just the buzz. Which brings me to my point about how Google can steel twitter from twitter and this time not die on their arses. Google have already created their own version of Twitter, they called is Buzz, you may have seen it before running away at how terrible it was. However, the frame work is there to give an nice easy & light twitter interface to G+.

In the grand scheme of things, Facebook is so very social, as in for mates, and not really for business – people who post status updates about work to a network full of family and friends, tedn not to get asked to parties; Linkedin is one big CV and job site now and twitter is too…tweety, Google plus will be a Twitterer’s Facebook.

If that actually works out there will be room for Facebook and Google Plus in our lives – that would be weird.

Publishers and some bloggers make their money from advertising on their site. Driving traffic to the site and getting those ad images loaded, is to some extent all that matters. Maintaing the regular traffic is what becomes your lifeblood.

People can visit their site, follow and RSS feed, get emails – daily, weekly, monthly, as new content is published and they can follow the brand on Twitter and Facebook and now Google+.

Twitter especially has been good for publishing because it easily drives traffic to the site, it’s easy to share and recommend, easy to see, if the headline is good it can do very well and traffic will be good.

People will then leave comments, that can also be shred to twitter to and more repeat traffic can occur as they get into a dialogue with other readers and the writers.

Facebook while also being a big traffic source, in more social arena’s like The Daily Mash, it is more than Twitter, in fact many news sites get more out of Facebook than twitter. However, conversations and dialogues are not all on the article’s page.  Facebook posts have their own micro communities where people can comment directly. This is good for Facebook but not as good for the publisher.

However, the publisher does not get to chose. It’s not as if they would sacrifice the Facebook traffic by not posting it to Facebook just because the community is on another site, of course not.

However, if Google plus kills off Twitter and the tweeters go to Google and start holding their own communities ion their own circles and the brand page and not at the publisher’s site, what would the affect be.

Would the traffic increase because Google plus is so much better then Twitter or will it drop off because of the lack of discussion on the site. My money is that it’ll be the same for while and then increase as Google make plus better I doubt the publishers will miss the repeat traffic.

I do expect slightly less traffic on some situations though: if I see a lot of people in my network discussing something on Facebook or even on the actual blog page I don’t always need to read the blog – so will some traffic drop off from G+ compared to Twitter.

Presumably, either way, good online publishers will just embrace the new network to increase it’s klout, so to speak, so they do not vanish, like many paper publishers who didn’t get into online quick enough.

I’ve seen a few posts of people saying that they don’t like “sharing”, personally I think it is the nature of the G+ app and if you want to axe people for giving a post the highest accolade the app provides then axe me, I’ve no interest in being connected with you.

If however, you understand the reason why people hit the share button but the fact that the same post being shared by multiple people clogs up your stream inconveniences – which I fully understand and agree with – but don’t want to miss out on other post by someone do the right thing: SEND FEEDBACK TO GOOGLE!

If the g+ interface is putting barriers up and giving a poor user experience which could eventually mean losing users Google will fix it.
If enough people say the same thing, Google will fix it quicker – none of this is rocket science, just because Facebook tells you how to use software OR you are trained to accept anything Apple gives you it doesn’t mean Google is the same – you can have what you want if you ask.

For instance: in this scenario, Google could quite easily allow someone to mute shares of a certain post, they could force all comment on shares into the original post, they could simply allow you to to comment on the original post rather than the new one.

However the real problem is that people want to re-tweet a post, doing a +1 is like adding a favourite, it’s not telling other people to look at it. Retweeting is a way to let other people on your network know you like it because people like to stay in touch with what their network is reading.
So what we actually need is a change to how +1s work, make them show up on streams in say 140 char + a link back to the original post, for instance.