Google Reader Evolves, Gets Tighter With Google+

This afternoon saw the delivery of updates to Google Reader that brought the product's design in line with Google's simplified look across many properties, and added support for sharing to Google+. With the launch, which I've been participating in since shortly after arriving at Google in late August, the dedicated friending/following network within Reader, and dedicated shared link blogs from Reader, were shut down.

This last bit has gained the majority of feedback as users anticipated the changes in the last week-plus since the preannouncement, and impacts some of the most active users, myself included. But if one unwinds the immediate reaction of being reluctant to change, the product's direction was telegraphed as Google has promised an evolved product experience,  regularly adds features to Google+ and recently announced the planned wind-down of Google Buzz, which was closely tied with Reader's existing commenting model.

In discussing the changes, I walk a fine line of respecting the tremendous hard work that went into Google Reader from the products' founding team and core engineers in the last five years, while also recognizing its role in feeding the product where I am currently focused as an employee. As a user, I have spent more time with and more loyalty to Google Reader than any other product on the web in the last decade, with the only possible notable exception being a web browser, either Safari or Chrome.

In the last month, I've continued to crank through Reader, in the new interface.

At various times, I've said I'd give up my Gmail before Reader. I even wrote a blog post two years ago saying I wouldn't accept $25,000 in cash to give up Reader. This is because Reader has played a central role for me to find all the updates from around the web in a centralized way, and let me share out the best to my downstream network. In years past, as you've seen here, I've rallied for feature adds to Reader, and highlighted the ecosystem of products, from ReadBurner to RSSmeme, Feedly, Toluu, and my6sense.

A Day In the Life of My Reader Feeds, Graphed

You can't be a bigger fan of information discovery and consumption than me, unless your name is Marshall Kirkpatrick. But one thing to note is that the web has changed quite a bit since I first started drooling over aggregators like FriendFeed and Google Buzz, and the shared items trackers that sparked to life in 2008 are universally dead. Users have voted on the web to share with social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+, and the new additions to Reader make that easier.

Sharing from Google Reader to Google+ Includes Circles and Commentary

I've personally been using the new Reader, or something close to it, for more than a month, and every time I'd log into the existing version, the difference was notable. Change is hard, but like a new haircut or or new home furniture, it grows on you. Now, instead of sharing 10 or so items a day to the anonymous group of people following me in Reader, I selectively share less often, and to more targeted circles in Google+ which I built by hand. And if the item is interesting to an even wider group, I share it to Public. (More tips here on Google+)

Since the launch this afternoon, I am already seeing a lot more items shared to Google+ from others in my circles, and it's interesting to see how they have adapted to the new functionality, even though others are more wary about the changes. As Alan Green outlined in his blog posts this week and last, Google recognizes the changes may not mean the new product is perfect for all users, and the tools are there to let you take your data with you. But I hope people do see the value of leveraging Reader as a smart RSS feed engine and share selectively to Google+ circles. After a few shares, it becomes second nature, and the world could surely benefit from a streamlined social experience. Trust the team is listening to all feedback from all corners. It's a privilege to have an impact on a product that has played so large a role for me for so long.

Google+ & Other Social Networks Need Algorithmic Filters

Google+'s entry into the social networking market presents a new slate of opportunity for tech geeks who have been unsatisfied with leading offerings from Facebook and Twitter. The network's initial launch has been intriguing for two major pieces, namely the need to recreate one's social graph from scratch, including manual sorting, and secondly, as noted before, not starting with aggregation of third party content. The clean slate approach presents optimistic participants with a hope to "do things right" this time, and not fall into the limitations of networks past. Given Google's science-driven history, smart folks have also cautioned the company against leveraging algorithmic filters that might surface some content in the place of others.

The most visible argument was that from Tom Anderson, MySpace cofounder, who said, "Can a company so enamored with the power of algorithms and machine learning, let the user take control?", adding "... I'm worried that Google is going to make a misstep and ruin the service," through leveraging algorithms to cut signal from noise. While I have enjoyed Tom's resurgence to visibility and insights into early use of the network, I think the conclusion he reaches needs some work. Where there is signal, there is noise, and what's been missing in all networks to date is the right approach to surface quality content, which no doubt feeds into Tom's comments.

The vast majority of social networking content is consumed in reverse chronological format, with the most recent content being at the top. This is true for Twitter and all of Twitter's clients, it is true for Facebook's "Most Recent" feed, it's true for LinkedIn's news feed, and is mostly true with others like FriendFeed and Google+, which for the most part, sort content by the most recent activity - meaning older posts can be "bumped up" with additional comments. FriendFeed fought this intelligently over time, letting older posts eventually float downstream, while Google Buzz fought a similar challenge as the most visible posters' active threads initially took too much screen real estate.

In contrast to the chronological view, one can find intelligently filtered streams on Facebook, with the service's news feed, and in Twitter's search results, which try to show you "Top" content, and not just "All" content, dependent on the user sharing updates. But Facebook's approach, from my own understanding, relies heavily on your previous interaction with a person, augmented by that post's activity, which can bubble it to the top - independent of context. This means that if, for example, I share two posts, one on Apple's blowout quarterly earnings, and the second showing a cute picture of Braden at the supermarket, the posts may carry equal weight, assuming we are BFF. You can see this all the time in your own news feed on Facebook, as seemingly "random" posts from your friends surface to the top, while friends outside your top two dozen interactions almost disappear.

An algorithm that surfaces personalized content that does not take into account the many multiple factors that indicate interest, from the person sharing the content, to the content source, keywords, headline, author, time of day, time since publishing, the individual(s) commenting on that message, the keywords in the headline in combination with the author and/or the source, etc. simply isn't enough. The truth is that each of us does this automatically, and what the world needs is social networking that thinks like we do. For example, if you like financial news from the Wall Street Journal more than you like it from GigaOM, then similar stories from both should be weighted this way. But if you prefer articles on stock from Om Malik more than you do from Mathew Ingram, that too should be determined. The human brain is a very complex object indeed, but just because something is hard doesn't make it something you don't want to try.

Which brings us back to Google+. Initial content in any network excitedly rallies around itself. Soon following, one finds a backlash against meta posts, a call for the mainstream to enter the site, a fear for what happens when they do, a backlash against top users and so on. But once the fun of that is done, people behave like people and want to see interesting stuff. One person's noise is another person's signal, and unfortunately, very few people can be constantly logged in to a service. This means that when they log back in to a service, they shouldn't be forced to see just the most recent things that have happened, but instead, the best things that have happened - the content that is most important to them as an individual, the pieces of content that they absolutely did not want to miss. Because if something is especially important and relevant to you as an individual, that it came out two hours ago does not render it useless.

The advent of Google's much-discussed Circles delivers bidirectional manual filtering of people. It's bidirectional in that you are consuming from a unique list which you created, and you are sharing to a unique list of people which you created. If you create a list of "My Poker Buddies" and another for "College friends" and another for "Tech News People", the truth is that your poker buddies are going to talk about things other than poker, your college friends are going to talk about new stuff, and your tech news friends are going to talk about whatever they want... all day long. So the circles are porous. Simply naming one "Baseball" won't force people to talk about baseball, and until search is fully implemented beyond Sparks, there is no great way to find that on the site.

Another common fear about filters (which we discussed when responding the filter bubble) was that preferences are reinforcing, and that you see only what you want to see, at the exclusion of all else, that this leads to a dangerous space where you don't get access to alternate opinions. Again, I argue that we are very early in the game of finding high quality algorithm-driven personal filters for news, for social networks, or anything else we use that could benefit from personalized ranking. The solution to a smart algorithm that learns your preferences implicitly, rather than polling you explicitly for what you say you like will mean that you don't have to sift through the dozens or hundreds of posts that you deem off-topic, but instead that you get the best delivered right to you.

Unfortunately, while many companies have talked about this possible panacea, most all of them are cheating through collaborative filtering, and assuming that your social graph is smart enough to determine what is the best content for you. It's simply not true. Your interests are not my interests, and just because I like a specific topic on one day doesn't make it the most important thing the next. What is needed is a strong body of record that is tied to you as an individual, applied to your stream in real-time, helping you avoid the mess and find the best.

Google has traditionally been very cautious, going against conventional wisdom by not leveraging behavioral targeting as much as they could, by going out of their way to not overuse your Web history, your email activity, or in any other way, abusing the relationship you have with them and your content. With Google+, on both mobile and desktop, they have a new opportunity to do this correctly, continually learning more about your interests and activity to serve you the most relevant updates while avoiding much of the cruft that has plagued other networks, specifically Facebook. Having worked closely with my6sense for the better part of two years, I've seen directly how smart algorithms based on implicit feedback can make useful high quality streams out of what would more commonly be considered noise - and I've seen many people on Google+ and Twitter call for the same such filtering engine to be applied.

As Google+ gains visibility with the service opening up to more users, and less geeky users, it is inevitable that the stream content will be diversified and become more "noisy". Initial users will no longer be accepting of the content, excited just to use something new, but they will want the network to provide increased quality and connections than the status quo. While it's expected Google will eventually do a tie-in with casual gaming on a dedicated games site, the general hope from the community is that game-related info with not pollenate Google+. It's well-known that game info is a common polluter of Facebook streams, even if you've done your darndest to block all the services that hit your feed.

Tom's approach is laudable. He sees a new network with great promise, and is scared that Google will fumble it away. But I believe his conclusion is not perfect, for if done correctly, intelligent algorithms can make the network the most personal and most relevant one on the market. What Google+ needs to deliver is not just that it exists, but that it is differentiated and better. Why not use the smarts and information the company has to achieve just that?

Disclosure (as always): I am the VP of Marketing at my6sense, which provides personalization of news and social streams (but not yet Google+).

Google+ Referral Traffic Possible to Track, Unlike Buzz

What is this string? And what could it mean?

Last year's launch of Google Buzz was followed by some blogger navel gazing around how referral traffic from the social network within Gmail was sending negligible traffic. The rub, of course, was that Gmail is served under SSL, and would not be sending back session headers to downstream sites, regardless of click-through volume. So guessing whether Buzz was driving a high or low percentage of traffic relative to other sites was pretty much a guess. In contrast, it is possible to divine traffic from Google+, launched last week, but it's not directly designated, falling under the general Google.com domain.

For Google Analytics users, Google+ is not called out as a dedicated site, making its use practically invisible, adding onto the "Google/Referral" statistic, as opposed to "Google/Organic", separating the company's Web apps from native search.

For those viewing raw logs, or using third party tools (like Sitemeter, which I use in addition to Google Analytics, Quantcast and Icerocket, just to overload myself with data), you can see Google+ referrals having the following string:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=z

If you can track how many times visitors come your way with that particular string in their referral, then you can know just how much an impact Google+ is giving you downstream. For me, despite reports from others, I've never gotten much traffic at all from Facebook, and Twitter tends to like a specific type of story, inconsistently. FriendFeed, once my 2nd highest referrer, is practically gone. You get what you give in the social networking space, so no doubt if you participate in G+ (as the cool kids are calling it these days) or you make it part of your flow, you can see it bringing visitors your way.

So watch for that string if you care about this stuff. There's no Gmail excuse this time to obscure transparency.

Aggregation Is Invisible In Google+. Thank Goodness.

The true value of a social network is the product of the people participating and the content being shared. There's no doubt some sort of mathematical program smarter geeks can compile to show just how that works, but it's true. You will participate on one service or another because of what is said and who is saying it. If the content doesn't match your interests, or the people aren't those you care about, there's little pull for you to be there. One corollary to this which evolved over the last three-plus years is that social networks gain power through being the originator of the content. While I once was a major proponent of aggregation products that pulled from many corners of the Web, the value downstream is vastly diluted, and adds to noise. This was a major problem for late adopters of FriendFeed, was immediately a problem for Google Buzz on day one, and is an ongoing problem for Facebook users, who often struggle to find ways to delete specific services' access to their feed and wall.

Google+, at least on day one, has absolutely no way to push content into the site from a third party network. This means you don't see a stream of people's Twitter updates, you don't see their blog posts automatically added, you don't see their Foursquare checkins, their Instagram photos, TurnTable spins or any of the other various update virii that flood most streams. Instead, the site is an open whiteboard for status updates, link sharing and photos, all requiring manual input. The inference, and correct assumption, is that those updates on Google+, were written by the person with specific intent for a specific audience. You don't get that feeling that they posted elsewhere and aren't participating locally - a common complaint on other services, like FriendFeed and Buzz.

At the end of 2009, my two-year fascination with aggregation-centric parlays coming to a close, I said aggregation was better in theory, arguing cross-posting should be reduced. This didn't stop Google Buzz from launching with aggregation at its core a few months later. Unfortunately, the ease at which you could pull in content from third party networks like Twitter meant many people, including Google employees, added these feeds and didn't return. It made for a subpar experience, and initial requests for updates included the ability to mute these services as a whole or from specific users.

I would bet that in time as the Google+ API is completed and released, we could soon see the opportunity for mobile and desktop clients (like Seesmic for example) to write to Google+ as a new service. I am betting Seesmic's Ping.fm is already thinking of how they can make Google+ yet another supported service. But I would push for caution in this. I've seen how the deluge of activity from sites like Twitter (and Facebook if they opened up) can drown the downstream aggregator and help it lose its identity.

Some first users of Google+ today commented about the similarities of it to FriendFeed, with nested comments, lists and real time at the core. But honestly, it's the opposite. FriendFeed launched as a major aggregator, supporting dozens of sites. Google+ starts with just one. It's refreshing.

Google+ Breaks Out of the Social Box, Ready to Score Users

More than a year after the launch of Google Buzz, rumors have been tossed about on most tech news sites about just what Google has been up to in the world of social to ebb the flow of activity that has migrated to Facebook and to a lesser extent, Twitter, over the last few years. With users spending significant time participating in social activity on the Web, it's made Google sometimes seem like the last era's winner, with it being thought the future of discovery is through friends. So long as another company owned the social graph, Google has been pushed to an unfamiliar role, as challenger. With today's launch of Google Plus (nee Google+), you can see they haven't taken the role of backup lightly - delivering a fun and engaging place that brings many of the benefits of existing social sites, but learns from their mistakes. In time, the package of Google+ could be a serious alternative for people's attention.

As a longtime Google ecosystem power user with Google Reader and Buzz, both of which I continue to use even as they've fallen in others' eyes, gaining access to Google+ today was practically second nature. Within minutes, I had started to reassemble a brand new social graph into explicit "Circles", their equivalent of lists, and could share status updates, links, and photos. The vast majority of content in Google+ feeds into a centralized stream of all friends' updates, with additional product features including built-in chat, powered by Google Talk, "Sparks", much like saved searches to surface interesting articles, "Hangouts" for instant video chats with other users, and at least on mobile, "Huddle" for group chat and instant photo uploading.

Circles, Hangouts and Sparks - All Part of Google+.

Clearly, this is no small undertaking - one Google has thought through in the year since Buzz's launch and initial privacy hiccups, and one where they have given an unprecedented (for them) amount of effort in making sure the user experience was top notch. While we've grown accustomed to helping Google test out their first iterations of beta software, Google+ is well designed out of the box, and has seen positive kudos from all corners of the Web, so far as I can tell. There are bugs, of course, but nothing dramatic.

Separating Friends By Circles In Google+

Most of us power users on various social networks, from Facebook and Twitter to lesser successes, like FriendFeed, have been reticent to adopt lists for sharing out of our corpus of friends. FriendFeed and Twitter's lists have primarily been read-only, letting you organize what you consume, and Facebook's selective filters for sharing are underutilized and challenging. The Circles in Google+ are easy, backed by starting from scratch on the social graph for the most part, and being easy enough to drag and drop to new circles, complete with old-school rotary phone like animation. I managed to set up connections with more than 400 different people on Google+ today without getting carpal tunnel syndrome. I can choose to share each post of mine with the world, or a subset of folks in each Circle.

Google + In Action With a Share from Ben Parr

The integration with Picasa and especially automatic uploading has increased the visibility and vitality of the photo service, which has similarly played second fiddle to sites like Flickr for the masses and hip apps like Instagram and Path for the geeks. Albums on Picasa are available for featuring in Google+, and photo sharing is quite simple. You can also tag any Google+ user on any photo, one of the major reasons Facebook Photos became so wildly popular - along with notifications that you'd been tagged.

Many Different Types of Notifications, All Clear In Google+

Speaking of notifications, they're nothing if not thorough. Thankfully, unlike other networks, you get follow notifications in bulk. After a certain amount of time (not exactly clear), you can get emails saying how many new people are now following your account. On the fun of day one, I got a handful with dozens apiece, rather than hundreds of separate emails. In the site itself, you can see a small number in a square highlighting the number of notifications that beg for your attention, including new connections, comments on your posts, whether someone has tagged you in Google+, or if comments have happened on a thread where you've commented. Of course, if you don't want an email or phone push notification each time that happens, you can just disable those in your settings, and reduce the amount of bacn in your life.

Congrats! You're Followed On Google+ By Lots of People!

The biggest and most exciting piece of newness with Google+ over Buzz for me, though the services are vastly different, is that Google broke out of the Gmail box on this one. While I understood the desire to automatically create one's friend graph in Gmail and embed it in a popular app, the mere act of having to head to Gmail every time I used Buzz was a real detractor for me. Google+ is its own dedicated URL and it looks great in every browser and mobile device I've tried before, even the Galaxy Tab 10 on Honeycomb.

Sparks Bring News on Topics You Choose to Google+

Right now the service is invite only, and I don't have any invites to spare - trust me, I'd pass them around like candy, because I think this is a service you just might want to enjoy. Google has invited some skepticism for false starts in the past, but from what I've seen today, especially the excitement and wholescale adoption of the launch from prominent Googlers, this time they are absolutely serious and we'll be seeing some noise from this team. Their URL is plus.google.com and you can find me here: https://profiles.google.com/louisgray/posts.

Google I/O 2011: Android and Chrome OS All the Time

      

This week, Google is holding their annual developers conference on Tuesday and Wednesday in San Francisco. The event has grown in stature over the last few years, rivaling only MacWorld (back when Steve Jobs would keynote) in anticipation as press, users and evangelists banter back and forth about will or won't be announced at the event. For the second year in a row, I'll be there, after what was no doubt one of the more enjoyable technology events for me last year. But instead of going in expecting whiz-bang products and breath-taking surprises, I am expecting to hear strong updates on the company's continued march in hardware operating systems, both mobile and desktop, taking the company even further away from their initial core focus on search and accompanying ads, but not so extreme as to having us scratching our heads and demanding to find a use case.

Like the aforementioned Apple, Google already does a solid enough job year-round, between its biggest events, of keeping people updated. The Nexus One was announced at a special media event, as was the Honeycomb tablet OS. Google Buzz got its own event, all at the company's Mountain View headquarters where the venue was more comfortable, the expectations were maybe more muted, and the numbers were certainly smaller. But I/O is the crown jewel of conferences for the search and ads giant - a place to update its extended community of geeks on progress to date, while simultaneously encouraging them to help push their next initiatives forward, keeping their attention close while so many temptations lurk elsewhere.


   The Sessions and Pods Heavy on Android & Chrome, Light on Social

If the Google I/O application for Android is any indication of the week's focus, there are dedicated tracks for the company's two-pronged approach to take share in mobile and desktop OS's - Android and Chrome, flanked by items deeper in the weeds, like App Engine, Commerce, Geo, Developer Tools, APIs, Tech Talk and Google Apps.


   Tuesday's Schedule and My Tentative Attendance

The 2010 tracks make one either cringe or wax nostalgic with scads of updates on Google Wave, dedicated meetings to discuss Google Buzz APIs, and an entire track on the Social Web, from PubSubHubbub, Open and Social Web, OpenSocial, and the integration of Google Buzz with location and social gaming. Not in 2011. There's no Social Web track at all. Other sites have predicted what that means for the future of Google Social, but what it does mean is that one should plan on talking about something else outside of the two-part keynotes Tuesday and Wednesday.





Google I/O 2010 was the flashpoint in my transition from iPhone to Android, after the latter OS had just been a curiosity to me. I've extended this Mountain View infiltration into my life with the addition of the Chrome OS powered CR-48, and spend a ton of time with my Samsung Galaxy Tab and Barnes and Noble NOOKColor, both of which run Android. In the fall of 2010, as I joined my6sense, we launched on Android, and have leveraged the Android ecosystem to find partners. 2011 looks like it should provide updates on Android helpful to both developers and users, and it may possibly be the starting point for getting Chrome OS equipment to the masses, beyond the initial beta units that I and others like me have been lugging around.

The combination of Android and Chrome OS should be enough for the event. No doubt we'll hear more about numbers, partnerships, coding, development, standards, openness and what have you. We may get more demos of music, but no announcements. We may see updates on the Android Market and Chrome Web Store, but they're ancillary to the main attractions one and two. No swing for the fences surprises, but straight up execution where the company knows its strengths and won't likely be second guessed. That can be saved for a special event when the time is right.

2010 In Web Services: My Top Ten Sites

    
    
    

As with my top gadgets list for 2010, this year's list is personal. It's what I use, and what I found had the most impact for me in 2010, which I found myself using every day. The services themselves are limited to being Web-based, so I am not talking about those which are primarily iOS or Android apps, but if they do have a mobile equivalent it helps. What I've found in the way I use the many Web services and sites that take my time is that I may find things first, and I don't always enjoy those which are most popular, but once I do find real value, I am as loyal as they come.

That said, here are the sites that had significant impact on me and my family in 2010. Your mileage may vary.

1) Redfin

2010 saw the arrival of baby #3 in our family. Braden, who joined us in late August, made his potential known at the beginning of the year, and this forced us to start planning a process to move up and out of our condo. With Bay Area housing prices a volatile, yet always expensive, thing, we had to use the best resources available to help navigate the housing search.

Without any hesitation, I can say Redfin saved us. We set the required criteria for potential homes to fit our growing brood, and started getting alerts in the Spring as we set favorites, getting to learn the trends in each sale and seeing the macroeconomics of the market in a microscope. Needless to say, if a home wasn't listed on Redfin.com, we didn't find it, and it's their loss. Even after buying our home in July and moving across town, I frequently use it to follow home sales in the area, and keep sure that we got the best deal for the best place we could afford.

Redfin quite possibly saved us hundreds to a thousand or more a month, or could even have meant another bedroom afforded or a shorter commute. The value is unmistakable.

2) Mint.com

Planning for both the sale of our condo and purchase of our home simultaneously, while navigating the growth of Paladin and transition to my6sense this year, has required an eagle eye into our finances, seeing how our spending has trended, up and down, and managing money flow. Mint.com has become an essential stop for keeping tabs on our home value, 401k status, bank and credit accounts to show us whether we broke even each month, or if we didn't, what the root causes were.

Planning ahead and our focus on the specifics led to our loan operators' excitement when they found we actually had already paid the 20% down on our new home, and I heavily leveraged Mint.com to balance the process, even as we had to close our purchase before the sale of our condo had closed. Doing it without Mint.com would have been a complete pain.

3) Google Reader

Even with the rise of real-time news, Google Reader's ability to catch all my RSS subscriptions in one place is unmatched. Though I have actively scaled back some of the busier or more redundant sites of late to get more time back, Reader is a cornerstone for my information consumption. It, of course, is also a major player in feeding my6sense. That I had encouraged comments and sharing of content from my Google Reader shares led to an easy transition to Google Buzz when it arrived earlier this year as well.

4) Spotify

Thanks to early tech blogger access, I have enjoyed the mainlining of music Spotify has offered for the entirety of 2010, and I've been enjoying Spotify for about 16 months by this point, without the service making US support official. Spotify is practically a music nirvana, with all the best stuff just a search away, on my Mac, our iPads or any of my Android devices. The tie-in with Sonos doubles down on the brilliance as well, delivering all the world's music anywhere in my house. For anybody in love with Last.fm, Pandora, Napster, Rhapsody, Rdio or the rest, Spotify is like getting called up to the big leagues from the minors. Practically the only time I ever visit iTunes now is to download application updates for our iPads.

When I hear new albums from my favorite artists have debuted, I don't go to Amazon.com like I once did, or iTunes. I just go to Spotify, and it seems they are always there. The fact I can call up any song and choose any point in that song and never suffer buffering or sound quality issues is seemingly magic.

5) Twitter

Twitter became even more useful in 2010 than in early years after I dramatically scaled back who I followed, set up customized lists, and gained the ability to sort the service's many updates by relevance, or show only those with links, in my6sense. Removing the link-free updates from Twitter practically put the service on the same pedestal as Google Reader RSS. On the desktop, I continue to use Tweetie for Mac, with its integrated multi-account support, tracking Paladin clients and my6sense, including keyword searches, @replies and any other discussions that could flare at any time.

To use Twitter in isolation from the rest of the Web would starve you of oxygen. But at this point, using the rest of the Web and avoiding Twitter could be similarly bad. News breaks on Twitter and your brand and products can win or lose 140 characters at a time.

6) OneTrueFan

I am gaga over OneTrueFan, not because of the gamesmanship, or even due to its top news feature just launched, but instead due to the potential for discovery from peers of mine to new sites and sources for news. OneTrueFan helps me find out where established folks who I respect are getting their news, or what services they find critical. OneTrueFan manages to be incredibly useful while also being fun. When on the desktop, I use OneTrueFan's browser bar to share articles to Twitter and Facebook, knowing I'll be rewarded for bringing new readers to the story, and to see just how effective my shares were - much like Bit.ly analytics for the entire Web.

This is the second go-round for this team, who spawned and sold MyBlogLog to Yahoo! years ago, who promptly put it through their "How to Botch an Acquisition 101" course. The band is back together and you should wait for some sweet sweet music as they build a horizontal social network that spans all the sites you visit.

7) Google Buzz

For a long-time FriendFeed devotee, the debut of Google Buzz earlier this year, delivering smart aggregation by a company promising to support it, was like manna from heaven. Pad on linking with Google Reader shares, and you could see serious potential. I wasn't as big a fan of it being locked down into a Gmail experience, but believed in its open standards pedigree and corporate promises for fast innovation. I also was one of the few who heard their caution about not taking Facebook and Twitter head-on, but looking to foster a community within Gmail.

Public bumps stalled the service's potential growth out of the gate, and while I enjoy the community a great deal there, and visit every day, it is not as big as it could be, never having launched a dedicated site, where I would spend much more time, and quietly working on its innovations, not making good news when it was available. Without having any detailed insight, I think it is safe to assume that Buzz and the Buzz experience will play a strong role in whatever Google's future social plans for 2011 will be.

8) Blippy

Speaking of amazing services with public privacy bumps that didn't get the press eating out of their hand, Blippy has evolved to play a much bigger role in my online experience than I had first anticipated. Blippy in my mind is the next step after you've first told us you "like" something, and then "checked in" on Foursquare. Blippy shows you what you did when you got there, with your own money. The company is making a real product graph to help connect consumers and bring intelligent reviews to your purchase streams.

Blippy now has pulled in about $100 million in purchases through its site. That's a good chunk of consumer data. Aren't you intrigued by what brands would want to know about these folks? Don't you want to know how Blippy will leverage this gold mine? I do.

9) Zillow

The companion piece to Redfin, Zillow helps provide value estimates for homes practically anywhere - even if they are not on the market, with trends showing if the prices are rising, falling or stable, with 1 year and 5 year histories being especially useful. As someone who just bought a home, I get a lot of fun out of keeping Zillow open on my phone as we walk the kids around the neighborhood to get an idea of the homes we are passing, and their history, or simply getting incremental updates to see if the value of our home has increased since we bought it five months ago. (It has)

10) IceRocket

Yes, Icerocket. Icerocket is the best blog search and Twitter search tool on the planet, period. That you're not using it every day means you haven't figured out why you should. I check IceRocket to watch for mentions of my activity and content in Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Video and Photo sites daily, as well as those for companies I interact with.

Missing the Buzz? Check out http://louisgray.icerocket.com/ to see what IceRocket has on me or http://my6sense.icerocket.com/ for my6sense, for example. Technorati has changed its focus. Google Blog Search seems neglected at best. IceRocket may not have the brand pizazz, but it's the best.

So who didn't I mention? Quora? Quora's cool, and maybe in 2011, it will play a bigger role, but it hasn't yet made a major impact for me in how I use the Web. Foursquare? That's a mobile experience for me. In June, I wrote up 50 startups worth watching, and that included many of these as well as others. So for a broader scope of companies I am seeing, that's not bad (from 6 months ago). Why isn't Facebook here and Twitter is? Good question. I do use Facebook a lot, but that's like telling the world I use e-mail. Duh. I didn't feel a need to tell you I use Blogger either. That's obvious. So where are you spending the most time, and am I crazy to put sites like Blippy, IceRocket and OneTrueFan so high?

Buzzooka iApp Enhances Google Buzz Mobile Experience

One could be forgiven for thinking all the development around the Google Buzz app ecosystem is weighted heavily toward Android. Sharing a corporate parent, integration between the two platforms, tapping into Google's location and maps database, and the close integration with Gmail besides has made the two a good pair. But there's still a ton of folks out there on iPhones and other Apple devices who have made Buzz part of their social experience. For them, one great option is a new app called Buzzooka - which not only has a fun name, but is fully-featured and intuitive as well.

Available for $1.99 on the iTunes store, Buzzooka replicates the Buzz experience, providing streams from those you follow, a link to your own Google profile, a tab for nearby updates to the stream, and integrated people search. But while Google keeps Buzz embedded in Gmail, making the experience at times feel heavy and slow, Buzzooka just flies - with the most well-known equivalent being that of Twitter for the iPhone. It even offers the option to pull down to refresh.


   Seeing Active Buzz Threads in Buzzooka from My Stream and Profile

In Buzzooka, Google Buzz entries display the user's avatar and shared content. You can click on any piece of content to add a like or a comment, mute the thread, or visit the poster's profile. The app lets you see active comment and like streams, complete with small avatars for those engaging, and jump in yourself, or simply post updates directly from within the app.


   Viewing Rich Content and HTML In Buzzooka

Buzzooka has some nice twists in the app, especially for being so new. First, the app displays full Web content within itself instead of launching you to the iDevice's Safari browser. Second, it even plays rich media content, such as YouTube videos, which may have been shared. And if you click over to the "Nearby" tab, and scroll through recent updates in your area, the embedded Google map shifts along with the user's location as provided.


   Liking an Entry in Buzzooka, Scrolling Nearby Updates

You can configure the Buzzooka experience to show a specific number of posts per screen, and a predetermined number of comments per post. The most active discussions are collapsed, showing the first and last, with the option to expand.


   Searching for People, Changing Prefs in Buzzooka

Buzzooka leverages the Google Buzz API, of course, just as many other clients, including TweetDeck, Seesmic and my6sense have. The greater the partner ecosystem, the greater the network's chance for continued growth.

You can find Buzzooka on the iTunes Store here.

Disclosure: I am vice president of marketing for my6sense. Our Android App also offers Buzz consumption and interaction, which could be an assumed competitor to Buzzooka. Also, we are active Google Buzz API partners.

AddThis Stats Show Spike in Google Buzz Sharing

Over the last 90 days of available statistics, popular multi-network sharing service AddThis shows few surprises in its top services selected by customers. Facebook dominates all options with nearly 40 percent of all shares, with Twitter and e-mail having just under ten percent apiece. But further down the chart, while most services saw single digit moves, up or down, two Google services are seeing significant growth - with Gmail logging an increase of 76%, and its companion network, Google Buzz, spiking, up 296% from the previous 90 day period. Sharing from AddThis to Buzz was good enough for #22 overall, just ahead of others including LinkedIn, Tumblr and Wordpress.

It's tempting to write off the blip as nothing more than a blip - a rule of small numbers. After all, the total percentage of shares to Google Buzz from AddThis totaled .25%, or 1 of every 400 shares. The top 10 services, comprising of Facebook, Twitter, Email, Print, Google, MySpace, Favorites, StumbleUpon, Messenger and Delicious, comprise more than 85% of all shares, leaving scraps for the remaining services - and one knows Google services aren't supposed to be "also rans" outside the top ten in most cases.

Google Buzz Shares Started to Spike on AddThis in Mid September

To dig deeper into the surprising data, I asked AddThis for more clarification.

While the company doesn't yet expose absolute sharing statistics, they reported that the rise in both Google Buzz and its companion Gmail is likely a recovery after a slow summer. The spike in Buzz propels it to the 5th most popular social network overall.

Buzz and Gmail Trending Up on AddThis

"Kids are back in school and sharing up a storm," wrote Justin Thorp, Community Manager for AddThis. "But... even with that, Gmail & Google Buzz are still seeing growth, usage, and excitement."

Aside from the 3-month bump, Thorp reports that StumbleUpon "has been the one that's seen some of the most continuous" growth.

Buzz's Spike Pushes It to the 5th Most Active Social Network on AddThis

Additional AddThis details on Google Buzz reveal that after the United States, which leads by a large margin, the next most active countries sharing to Buzz via AddThis are the Netherlands, India, Russia, Brazil, Germany, China, Canada, the UK, and France.

In contrast, the long since purchased, but still active, FriendFeed statistics show Turkey far outpacing the United States, followed by Italy, India and Pakistan.

While the world awaits Google's next round of social updates, long rumored, but still unclear, the loyal Buzz community eagerly awaits any signs of good news that show engagement and activity in the much-dismissed social sharing network. AddThis' statistics give a glimmer of hope, even if it is small numbers relative to other social tech titans.

Social Layers or Networks... Is There Room for More?

      

Sometimes, it seems the phenomenal success and user growth seen by Facebook and Twitter in the last few years has boxed in what we accept as a bonafide social network - as we early adopters and tech press absorb potential challengers like chum and digest them quickly, mocking their attempts as feeble, and their traction as futile. For some, Facebook and Twitter, despite their faults, are the end all and be all - and it matters not if other products have more features or innovation, because in the end, he with the numbers wins, and it seems they've got all the numbers.

In the meantime, recent comments from CEO Eric Schmidt of Google to social layers being part of whatever the company has planned for what's largely been dubbed as Google Me have people saying a thin layer of social spread like a veneer over the company's many products just won't be enough to challenge a behemoth like Facebook - yet we see social elements being added to just about everything, from our e-mail clients to our music players, our photo editors and our video games.

The world is going social, whether it's little bit by little bit or in an all-in gamble to change the world. It's simply a matter of perception as to what is a feature and what is a network, and if users are willing to give the old college try to networks that aren't from Palo Alto and San Francisco proper.

Just take a look at Apple's Ping, within iTunes. Is that a network, or a social layer grafted on an existing service? What about Spotify Social? Is that the same thing as Ping, or is that simply a service that integrated with Facebook - not a network on its own? Does a social network require a unique user name and password and its own social graph to be a network?

What about Google Buzz? Is that a social network, or a social layer inside of Gmail? And if that's a network, certainly one must consider the social elements of Google Reader as a layer and not a new network on its own, right?

And just where does this leave other innovative social services (that's a safe word), including Amplify, Cliqset, Quora, GetGlue, Plancast? Boxee? Is Foursquare a social network? And let's not forget the classics that have been here for a while, even if you're not talking about them... like MySpace. LinkedIn. FriendFeed. Orkut. The list could go on for a while.

As I mentioned in a somewhat off the cuff "timeline of new social networks not named Facebook or Twitter" post I put on Buzz earlier this month, it seems our rush to judgment rapidly dismisses any challengers to the throne. All we are doing, in many cases, is signing up, following the same old folks, kicking the tires, and then walking away. But services, if they are any good, aren't about the first week or first month of services, and not about the first 10,000 customers. They continue to build. While many were quick to judge Google Buzz and Apple Ping, usually not in the best of light, both services have added many features since their debut and both see strong engagement from a loyal core of users - even if not in the hundreds of millions. (If they did, trust me, they would tell us)

Additionally, it is interesting to see how the services themselves perceive their place in the world - if they are networks, layers, or features.

From the Google Buzz announcement in February, they said:

"If you think about it, there's always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most."

So it sounds like, to Google, Gmail is the social network, and Buzz is the presentation of that network. Note this is not how they presented social features in Google Reader, when they added comments in March 2009 or when they added friend management in August of 2008. Neither blog post even mentioned the word social. So the ability to make friends, to add likes and comments, that was not a new network, but instead new features on an existing service - albeit one that integrates very well with Buzz, which came afterward.

In contrast, Apple Ping describes itself directly as "A Social Network for Music", while just last week, Twitter says it is not a social network at all, but instead a media company.

In May, I said to make a choice to your mobile phone platform, you should look to the core. For Blackberry, that's e-mail, for Apple it is iTunes, and for Google, it is the Internet. Not surprisingly, the latter pair's social networking aspirations are starting there. Apple has shoehorned a social layer into iTunes and called it a social network, much like Google did with Buzz and Gmail. Both companies are rallying users to spend more time in their assumed strengths. It makes good sense. Now, with the thought of Google adding social elements to everything, be it through layers, or widgets... or something, you can see the idea. Share everything. Like things. Link things. Facebook wants to own the "like-o-sphere" and capture what pages you like everywhere on the Web. Why would Google want them to have that alone? Of course they wouldn't.

The tech rumor mill is seemingly in wait and see mode over what they hope would be a full-on assault against Facebook from Google. Is it because they want an alternative to Facebook, and would literally leave the site for something else? I doubt it. I think it is as much because they want to see a fight. They want to cover a fight, and to declare somebody the winner and somebody a loser. It's clear, at least to me, most people aren't even spending the time to establish serious use on secondary platforms - platforms with elements similar to Facebook and Twitter that offer sharing and connections and liking and discussion - like Amplify, who wants to break through the 140 character barrier to have real communications, or like Cliqset, who wants to enable discussions to flow in and out of the network, no matter the origin, or still again, like Cinchcast, which is the easiest way to make a social network around audio podcasts on the go.

There's a like button in my iTunes now. I didn't ask for it. I don't even use iTunes much any more, now that I'm addicted to Spotify. There's a like button in my Google Reader. There are like buttons in my Facebook and my FriendFeed, and my LinkedIn too. These are social elements to existing networks. But think about who could turn this all upside down - the operating system guys and the browser guys. Guess what? They're one and the same now. Google has an OS and a browser. Apple has an OS and a browser. Microsoft has an OS and a browser. Only Firefox seems a little out of luck. Why wouldn't Google or Apple find a way to make the browser social, through a social layer, and make the entire Web their oyster? You wouldn't even have to make one more login with yet one more password to remember.

Let's not get too caught up on what's a network and what's not... what's a layer and what's not.... what's a feature and what's not. The real question is if the big guys are going to deliver tools that bring us real tangible benefits, or if there will ever be a small challenger that gets our attention so strongly that we really take the time to use it and get it right. For now, I think the alternatives to Facebook and Twitter are in the small niches. They are in Fabulis for the gay community, in SportsBlogNation for the jocks and fans, and in Reddit or Digg or Slashdot or Hacker News for the nerds.

Being social doesn't have to be in a network. It's everywhere. It is already a feature, layered into all we do.