A Decade of Silos Has Throttled Open Content Distribution

The 2018 Social Media Flow is Driven by Content Silos

In the ten-plus years since I started this blog, one of the clearest trends on the Web has been for destination sites to want to control the user session and experience. In parallel, sites focused on aggregating content from external sites or highlighting the best of the web - serving as a filtered pass through, have struggled. Many are gone.

While significant efforts were made during the forging of Web 2.0 to drive open standards and allow for data to flow from one site to another, through RSS, Pubsubhubbub, Atom, XMPP, or whatever your preference, 2018 on the social web is a much more challenging place to write once and publish everywhere.

As I view the publishing space, I often turn to four big challenges that have to be solved for a platform to be a success to both authors and readers:

1. Creation

A platform, be it for photos (Instagram, Flickr, Google Photos, etc.), short updates (Twitter), long form (Medium, Blogger, WordPress, etc.), video (YouTube) or a mishmash of all (Facebook, Google+, etc.), needs to make it easy for the content creator to share what they want, in the form they want, and have the output be what they intended. This is true whether we are talking about desktop or mobile creation.

2. Distribution

Once the content is created, it has to be sent somewhere. If you write a post and hit publish, how do people find it? Is it sent to a third party network where they are hanging out? Is it sent by email? Do they get a notification on their phone? Does it flow down their timeline, as they have new items to consume? Or is it just another flat file, waiting to be indexed by Google and other search engines?

3. Discovery

Readers want to find new content. They seek relevance, freshness, and community. This mirrors the three pillars of social sites I highlighted back in 2009, and echoes that readers want intriguing views that mirror their own preferences. Like I'd predicted in 2006, the Web has become a divided place, where we all flock to our groups of like minded people, and disavow opposing views, but we still are eager to find more who reinforce our position. We still crave new friends and stories and we want to find them quickly.

So how good a job do these apps and sites do of surfacing new people and ideas? Do they have an aggregated site with highlights and popular people or posts? Is there a place to find more obscure viewpoints and new voices?

4. Consumption

Since the smartphone revolution, kicked off by Blackberry and the iPhone and now led by Android, more people are constantly connected and reading news from their mobile devices. In many countries, the mobile device is the only window to the Web. Does the content flow well for mobile consumption and new ways to navigate from screen to screen, update to update? Or is it best suited for a leanback tablet experience or for the desktop?

What typically happens with content platforms is the content fills the available container. Twitter is a clear 140 or 280 characters. Social hubs like Facebook and Google+ favor large photos and a short introduction. Instagram is all about the photo with a small description. Blogger and WordPress and Medium are as long as you want to go. One has to consider if users and screens keep up.

2009's promise of sharing everywhere wasn't meant to be.

We've Come a Long Way from Aggregating Streams and Sharing the Web

As content started to be created in a wide array of social sites, aggregation services like FriendFeed helped bring people's streams together. Bookmark services like Delicious helped people save the highlights from the Web and amplify the world's favorites. Users voted up posts from Digg and passed them along with StumbleUpon. The most voracious consumers lived in Google Reader and didn't miss a single post from the RSS feeds they were subscribed to.

It was too good to last.

The largest social platforms were not content in simply being links to external sites. Facebook focused more on original content shared on the platform, with less priority given to send traffic off site. Google Reader shut down, and while Feedly and others stepped up, the world of RSS never recovered. Delicious died. Digg is a shadow of itself. FriendFeed was obliterated. LinkRiver closed. Socialmedian closed.

In the wake of all these gateways' demise, taking content from the open Web and getting it in front of new viewers is more challenging. While I've always said you need to be where the users are and can't force them to come to you, what could be automated is now requiring manual intervention at practically every step.

Just What Am I Talking About?

The alpha and omega, yin and yang of social outlets (for text, anyway) are Facebook and Twitter. Facebook is much bigger and much more profitable, but don't get distracted. People creating content for the Web also need to make sure that content fares well downstream on Facebook and Twitter. You can write it for the open Web, but you then have to take explicit action to share the content downstream - or set up automation to either site, usually backed by RSS. At that point, whether you get discovered or not is up to each site's algorithm, which has leaned more in favor of implied interest rather than chronology of late - meaning you can see viral content from hours or days ago before you get the newest stuff.

On a mobile phone, notifications are the holy grail of getting someone's attention. (See: Life by Numbers and Notifications from 2014) It's not uncommon to get notified when someone tweets, but it's very uncommon to ask for a notification when a site makes a post.

In parallel, the feedback loop from such networks, as well as Instagram or others, is near instant and acts as an incentive for the author to initiate their content on that silo natively. Post a 20-tweet storm to Twitter, and immediately start seeing those likes and retweets roll in. Post a story to Facebook and wait for the Likes and comments. Post a news story or a blog post, and ... wait. Wait for visitors in Google Analytics? Wait for the post to be shared downstream? Wait for the story to be indexed in Google News and search?

The elimination of Google Reader, FriendFeed, and Digg as amplifiers of Web content, alongside the attention absorption by Facebook and Twitter makes it harder for Web authors to get visibility - and they they aren't dropping their content into the real time stream.

So What Does the New Flow Look Like?

In 2009, it seemed pretty easy to me. Post on the blog. RSS would take it to FriendFeed and Google Reader. FriendFeed would post to Twitter. Twitter would post to Facebook. Then I'd run around and answer comments wherever they were distributed. (More on distributed conversations from 2009)

Now, I can still post on the blog. And the RSS link is the same. I even get the small bump of engagement on Google+ from the blog's page automatically adding my content there. But then, to make sure I cover all my bases, I then make another share of the same content to Medium, for those who love their site, and I've even found good engagement on LinkedIn, by making a third post of the same content on their channel. It's a different audience, but, if on topic, they share and engage.

So that's three posts. Meanwhile, I still have to share the story on Facebook and Twitter separately, hoping that someone will break their consumption flow and engage on my content downstream.

It feels like more work to get less return. And yes, I recognize that some may not miss FriendFeed because they never used it. Maybe others think Digg got replaced outright by Reddit, and gains similar traffic. Others prefer Hacker News. So aggregators do exist, obviously, but hubs aimed at surfacing new content, as opposed to highlight content on the site and keeping readers there, have declined.

To properly make the Web as desirable and viable a platform for publishing, we need to work together to fix the distribution and discovery gaps, make content fantastic on mobile for creation and consumption, and allow for engagement that is as simple as a Like. I applaud (there's the joke) Medium's approach to reward users with claps, for at least they're trying something. We should all be trying.

Disclosures: Yes, I work at Google. Sometimes, I help the Blogger team. I used to work on Google+ and have many friends on those teams still. I miss Google Reader every day. FriendFeed too.

Striving for Streams of Serendipity or Inbox Zero?

Nobody really likes spam - those unrequested commercial emails that join your email box. They interrupt you, distract you, mislead you, or maybe worse - trick you into giving up your money or personal information. And over time, most email services have been pretty good at determining just what is spam, and what's not, while we, as consumers, are getting better at refining just what content we want on all our screens, be it our email box, or our social streams.

With this experience, what we've labeled as spam now not only encompasses the obvious scam message, but practically anything that enters our view that we didn't explicitly ask for, or surprises us. Most of us living in a social media powered world have taken a lot of effort to refine our content sources, to the right sets of blogs, and the right friend groups on social networks. When we log in to Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or anywhere else, we pretty much know what we're going to get.

Many of these social networks, dating back to the first blogs, are sorted chronologically, with the newest content at the top. With some effort, you can quickly scan to where you last left off, and feel complete. There's no more to read, and you can move on to the next thing. It's a permuation of the famed "In Box Zero", which says your task is complete.

But increasingly, thanks to pressure to fill streams of less active users, or to increase engagement from regular users, it's become more commonplace to push content that's not explicitly requested into user streams. This can be "Friend of a Friend" content, like we saw back in early 2008 when FriendFeed first introduced the feature, or more recently, items that your friends on Twitter have retweeted or favorited, that Google+ friends have +1'd or Facebook friends have Liked.

/via FriendFeed blog: See popular items from your friends-of-friends

It's assumed the more signals given to the network about what your friends like, the more likely it is that this piece of content is also relevant to you. It's not necessarily wrong, but it's a change, unwelcome to people who like to perfectly curate their streams - while possibly exciting to those who do want to take signals from the network - believing they aren't the one perfect arbiter on whether an item is interesting or not.

In 2008, FriendFeed spoke to this change, saying, "Our goal is to make the most interesting shared items more prominent so your FriendFeed has a higher percentage of interesting stuff and active discussions." And it worked. If I believed +Paul Buchheit had high quality interactions, I could be alerted to items on the stream that he had liked. But FriendFeed also gave me the option to turn it off, and many people did.

In 2014, Twitter is a lot bigger than FriendFeed was six years ago. It's a world-recognized stream for real time communication, so their moves get a lot of attention. Every minor change in the stream is especially scrutinized. After already taking for granted the fact that retweets from friends would be sent to my stream, the occasional tweet now appears, simply because someone I follow added it to their favorites. Unsurprisingly, this experiment, which is easy to spot on their mobile app, set the tech blog debates abuzz again - trying to figure out how it worked, and whether it was good or bad.

Techmeme debates the Twitter favorite bumps.

It's widely assumed putting content in user streams benefits the service provider. Twitter should see higher engagement, higher relevance and more clicks. For the OCD "In box zero" types, these serendipitous pieces disrupt their worldview, and, unsurprisingly, those who write about tech and social media all day are more likely to be of this type than the general population.

When +Barak Hachamov and I were working on my6sense, we were more than happy to rank social streams based on your activity and implicit interests. The solution, in my view, hasn't seen an equal, even in the three plus years it's been gone from consumer's hands. We offered a stream based on relevance, with your interests playing a huge role, a toggle to view the stream chronologically, and yes, we promised occasional serendipity to deliver surprise - to get you out of a knowledge rut, which can come from seeing the same topics debated and shared by like minded thinkers.

Relevance vs Time in my6sense

What we've learned from the Web is that we tend to gravitate to people who reinforce our own views and agree with us. Debate happens, but we don't actively seek out opinions from those with opposing takes on political, religious or even sports. (I wrote about this in 2006: Blogging Bifurcation - A Web Divided) The Web, despite being especially diverse, leads to us forming cliques, with friends, with what we read, and where we choose to congregate. Our three social pillars are what I called out back in 2009: Technology, Community, Relevancy. Most of us active in social streams have bought into the technology, and crafted our community, assuming the community's thoughts are themselves relevant. And by seeing new content, we immediately question its relevance.

For the 95%+ of people who haven't put hundreds of hours into scanning their streams to never miss a post, and who haven't taken time to set up lists, form circles, or fully understand Facebook sharing settings, the serendipity of surprise is as important as what they've explicitly asked for. While those of us on the tech edges react to the surprise with shock, we should know this is something we give in exchange for participation in somebody else's stream. The only thing I'd ask is that, like FriendFeed, we always have the option to please, kindly, be able to turn something off. Then we'll all be happy.

Standard Disclosures: I work on the Google Analytics team at Google, which provides Google+. Various services from Google partner with or can be assumed to compete with products from Twitter and Facebook. Also, from 2009 to 2011, I had a consulting relationship with my6sense as part of my work with Paladin Advisors Group. Disclosures are fun.

Two Paragraphs, a Link, and a Cloud of Dust

Our platforms, and their limitations, are changing the way we communicate. Rather than accommodating the many ways we as humans like to share and engage with others, most of the online services we use have limits in how much we can share, how items can be staged, and how easily others can discover or respond.

While Twitter's 140 character platform is only the most well-known of these hard limits, there is an easily observable trend away from long-form content, analysis and conversation, and more toward a brief moment with an ephemeral interaction. Blogs are one of the last outlets we have where the container, like liquid, expands to contain all into it which is poured, while most other outlets are often trying to make us something we're not - be it photographers, clever headline writers or meme artists.

We've moved away from thousand-plus word screeds and dozens of debatable comments over a single item, with a permalink discoverable through search, instead to a moment in a stream that is significantly less relevant tomorrow or next week than it is today. We're valuing our content not in real activity, but in microactivities - be it +1s, Likes, Retweets or Favorites. We're trading points and counterpoints for vague notions of follower counts and popularity.

While it can be a challenge to regularly upkeep an outlet like a blog or a news magazine, consider the permanence and discoverability of this content. One can, with a little effort, read an author's life as it changes, by poring through the archives. Authors can link to previous points and positions to make a deeper case for an idea, and show consistency or evolution of thought. And permalinks can serve as the point of engagement for us to talk something into the ground, or its natural conclusion - whatever comes first.

Consider, if you would, the last really important Tweet or Facebook post or LinkedIn update that you either made or saw. Where would that Tweet stand in the halls of history? While real-time is an amazing tool for the right now, it's not usually a great tool for the later or forever. There's no other solution out there for diving into the world's collective thoughts around television, sports and shared experiences, but it lacks for completeness.

Yet that's where practically all our effort is going.

The most visible entrants and quickly adopted mediums in the social sphere over the last few years are not centered around long-form content. Instagram, for the most part, is a photo sharing site with social interaction. Tumblr, despite the option for longer-form content, is usually a collection of photos or short excerpts -- links to links with the content on the other side. WhatsApp and Snapchat are different beasts altogether, focused on the right now, with the content never intended to have any true longevity.

So our thoughts and our communications are being forced into these neatly approved buckets, wrapping around the presentation of the medium. If you know your network looks best with a headline, a few hashtags, and a sentence, that's all you'll do. If you know it's a beautiful photo with three words at the top, that's what you'll do. Maybe you can make an infographic or a meme out of it and be the most shared image of the moment, only to fade into oblivion the next day.

That's why I'm optimistic about the plans for Ev Williams' work on Medium, as outlined in a dedicated piece for TechCrunch two weeks ago. We've also seen interesting attempts from Dustin Curtis' Svbtle network - a very well designed platform with hand-selected authors. I don't yet have accounts with either, as I'm quite loyal to my +Blogger platform and integrated Google+ comments, but both services seem to be fighting against the stream, so to speak, helping people with longer thoughts share in a better looking way.

I believe as social participants, we can and should do better than a picture with a few words, a tweet that summarizes a link, or a post with a headline and a paragraph. It may satisfy the right now, short attention span theater, but if that's all we have, then what do we tell history that we've done? Do we suggest that those in the future looking back on this age download our archived social stream to best understand who we were? Should they grok our automatically filtered photos and understand our taste for art, or see how many likes a post got to determine its impact?

I would hope we're not letting the containers impact our ability to share the entirety of the message. That's why even while I've got plenty of other work to do, the blog continues to be my foundation in a world of streams, which I first wrote more than four years ago and stand by. So if your favorite social outlet starts to reduce the number of ways you can express yourself, take it somewhere else. Don't cut yourself short, and become dust in the wind.

Usual boring disclosures: I work at Google on Developer Relations. Most of my work is on YouTube videos, short and long. This blog runs on Blogger and integrates Google+ comments. The post is not intended as a post in favor of or against our products or competitors' products. I also like writing long disclosures.

Video: Social Media: The Thing You Do "Between" Things

A couple weeks ago, I got the chance to visit Paris, France and London, in the UK, to speak at Devoxx France and meet with colleagues internationally. While in London, I sat down with +Bob Barker, who works with my good friend +Thomas Power, and he asked me questions on how I use social media, including what sites, what times, and for what purpose.


As this question comes up a lot, and continues to come up, more than 7 years after I started the blog, I'm glad he took the time to record it in this video, less than ten minutes long. Fast summary: You shouldn't block off time in your day for social media. Like email or catching up on the news, social media happens "between" the rest of the bits in your life - be they meetings, work, or anything else.

Like many people, I consume content differently on a mobile device than I do on the desktop. I often watch television, but at the same time, have my Nexus 7 so I don't miss a thing - levering what I've long called continuous parallel attention. In the discussion, we talk about how Google+ Hangouts have broken down barriers in communicating with friends, family and colleagues, and how I leverage Twitter for real time content and sports. Of course, I work for Google, but these are my individual words, and the objective was to be as transparent and real as possible.

Writing for Social, Defending for Court

Earlier this month, I had an interesting experience, being asked to participate in a deposition, taking questions from a legal team as part of an ongoing case. While I’ll skip the details out of deference for confidentiality, there were aspects of the morning that serve as a reminder for those of us who participate online that often, content we post is permanent, and it can be discovered and used for means far beyond those we originally intended.

For those unfamiliar with the process of a deposition, it’s essentially when an individual is called as part of a fact-finding mission, to bring information deemed relevant to a lawsuit or other legal matter, outside of court. The individual being deposed, in this case, me, fields questions from an attorney, and those answers are recorded as on the record, as they would be in court. The questions can draw from one’s memory and experience, or can come in response to exhibits entered into evidence.

In my example, beyond questions about my knowledge and experience, I was presented with four exhibits entered into evidence. As is procedure, I was first asked if I recognized the exhibits, and after acknowledging I was familiar, I fielded questions about their content. The source of these exhibits was intriguing, consisting of:

1. The main documents related to the case, as one would expect.

2. My own LinkedIn resume.

3. A Google+ post I made in 2011.

4. Multiple Quora posts I made in 2010 on a single topic.

Seeing my own words come back to me, in a new and unexpected setting, was initially unnerving. No doubt when I set up my LinkedIn resume and ongoing work history, I didn’t anticipate it forming the background for how I would be qualified in the legal process. When I posted to Google+ last year, I didn’t anticipate mining a few of the paragraphs to confirm what I had stated was accurate. I certainly didn’t expect posts I made on Quora two years ago would later be entered into the legal record.

As I revisited my own words, I was comforted to see they were not only accurate, but mirrored my testimony and helped answer the questions. I was intrigued to see the mix of content coming from LinkedIn, Google+ and Quora as forming the exhibit summary for the case, and glad that my honest and direct approach to social networking meant I didn’t have to explain away any hyperbole, sarcasm or misdirection.

The morning’s events wrapped and I was left thinking about the mountain of content I’ve brought to various social networking sites in the last several years - from the blog to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Quora and so many other places, as well as the activity many of my peers are consistently producing. We’ve all heard stories about how posting pictures from a party or slandering your boss online can have real world impact. But as social networking content becomes the grounds for evidence in law, it brings up new considerations for seriousness on the web.

As one friend of mine, who has also gone through the deposition process before, noted when I replayed the events, “People who work for a large company, yet insist on saying crazy things, probably haven't been through a deposition already.” I would have to agree. That doesn’t mean lose your sense of humor and personality, but it does mean that if you do participate online, consider where the words could eventually fall. You might be surprised.

It's Not Social If You're Not Engaging

What does it mean to "be social" or to participate with people online, including family, closest friends and colleagues, but strangers as well? Is sharing a link social? Is telling somebody where you are or what you ate social? Is showing a photo of your kid social? It can be - and it can also not be. An action becomes social when you engage with others and provide value through your sharing and interacting beyond the action itself. This is something that's often missed.

Google+ was designed to aid you online doing what you already do offline - sharing stories, swapping jokes and links, hanging out, sharing photos and videos, with different groups of people. Of course, you can always share publicly if you like as well, giving everyone who runs into your content the option to see it and engage.

As communities grow, both offline and online, cliques and factions emerge. You can see it in small groups, like family reunions or church events, or notoriously high school. Google+ is no different. As people post fast and engage fast, it's possible that feelings get hurt, people misinterpret what you meant, assume something untrue, or label you based on one comment alone. It takes effort to move past that and not let those perceived slights take hold. It also takes effort to make sure you're contributing beyond your initial share. 

Unsurprisingly, I often get questions about what it takes to "be social" and to get visible or, at least, not feel ignored, on a network like Google+ or a blog. I wrote about some of those ways in 10 Great Ways to Get Discovered on Google+ (http://goo.gl/LyzJ1) and in July's The Secret 10 Step Guide to Giving Good Social (http://goo.gl/12drA), but the most critical part of being social is to be yourself and do what comes naturally.

My Social Contract With You Is As Follows:

1. I will always share content I think you will find interesting.

Not every share is for everyone, and if you're not using circles, instead sharing publicly, there's no doubt that not everybody shares your interests. I share what I think is interesting to a good chunk of you, which probably hasn't already entered your view.

2. I will always give you the benefit of the doubt - at least twice. :)

Sometimes, people are out to be trolls. But just because you don't always agree with me doesn't put you on my bad list. Even if you say something cross to me or someone I know well, I'll do my best to figure out why that is and I'll engage with you to see if the problem can be cracked. But if you keep going, that negative experience isn't something I'll want to make part of my life.

3. I will make every attempt to engage with you - no matter your visibility.

You'll find people on Google+ (and elsewhere) who don't do a great job of responding in comments, following mentions or acting elsewhere in the network. If anything, I may over-engage. I always participate in comment streams, well beyond my own feed, and I try my best to find when you're addressing me, no matter if you've got 1 million followers or 1.

4. I am always smiling, just like my avatar.

Take yourself too seriously and you lose. I have fun, and that means hanging out with people around the world, sharing music that I enjoy, posting pictures of my kids, and being sarcastic or humorous. When I stop having fun here, I should quit.

5. I will not get pigeonholed.

If you catch me posting too many Google+ centric posts in a row, apologies in advance. We're just updating so frequently, it's practically a necessity just to stay on top of things. But I haven't changed from the same guy who many of you have known for years. I still care about baseball and electronic music, and obscure trivia, TV and tech outside the Googleplex. So if you follow me, expect more.

Hitting 100,000 people having me in circles is pretty cool. It's a big number, and probably my last big number for a long time. After all, I'm not on the recommended users list - and that means you're finding me through word of mouth or through the content I bring here. It's almost 500% what I've seen from Twitter over 4 years and more than 600% the subscribers I had on FriendFeed. But just think, we've only been here just under 240 days, so this place is growing pretty fast. What's next for Google+ and for all of us? You'll have to wait and see, but now you have more of a hint of what you'll get from me.

To the next 100,000.

/via My Google+ Profile.

Dice.com: Louis Gray on Google and Job Hunting

Last fall, shortly after I joined Google, +Michelle Greenlee contacted me for a quick interview about the Google hiring experience, and what tech-savvy job seekers can do to leverage the influence of social media to influence hiring managers. The story was finally posted this morning.

The biggest take-away is probably my last note in an answer to her final question: "The world is becoming social and the new world of business and hiring can find great candidates through how you present yourself online."

See: Dice.com: Louis Gray on Google and Job Hunting

/via My Google+ Profile.

50 Things a +1 Can Mean

A +1 is simple. It’s one of the easiest ways on the web to take an action that endorses the content and says you saw something. But it can mean many different things. That’s the beauty of +1. You can +1 things you like. You can +1 bad news. You can +1 things you love. You can +1 casual status updates or items that change the world.

Often, we get asked what it means to +1. Here are some ideas. We’d love to see yours.

/via The Google+ Page (Which I maintain)

1. A +1 can say you agree with the post.
2. A +1 can say your photo is beautiful.
3. A +1 can say your joke was funny.
4. A +1 can mean you share in sympathy.
5. A +1 can mean you endorse content found on the web.
6. A +1 can say “thanks for sharing!” 
7. A +1 can say “thanks for mentioning me!”
8. A +1 can say “Glad to see you hanging out!” 
9. A +1 can say “Good to see you here!”
10. A +1 can say “Wow! That’s cool!”

11. A +1 can say your video was amazing.
12. A +1 can mean you’re excited about new features.
13. A +1 can mean your post was clever.
14. A +1 can say you like this brand.
15. A +1 can say you’re the biggest fan.
16. A +1 can mean you agree with the shared story.
17. A +1 can say “thanks for commenting!”
18. A +1 can say “I vote for this choice.”
19. A +1 can say “your high score is impressive”.
20. A +1 can say “thanks for playing!”

21. A +1 can say you’re with the band.
22. A +1 can say you love the band.
23. A +1 can mean your meme is hilarious.
24. A +1 can mean your child is adorable.
25. A +1 can mean your food looks delicious.
26. A +1 can mean that song is incredible.
27. A +1 can mean “You said what I was going to say!”
28. A +1 can say you saw the post, but have no comment.
29. A +1 can say that video is stunning.
30. A +1 can say you found the news interesting.

31. A +1 can say you sure do know how to recommend people.
32. A +1 can say “I’m rooting for you!”
33. A +1 can say “Congratulations!”
34. A +1 can mean this article is a must-read.
35. A +1 can mean “I have this product too.”
36. A +1 can mean “I love this book!”
37. A +1 can mean “I hear you.”
38. A +1 can mean “You rock.”
39. A +1 can mean “I love you.”
40. A +1 can mean “I + you.”

41. A +1 can say “I can’t wait!”
42. A +1 can say “You shouldn’t miss this!”
43. A +1 can be a smile.
44. A +1 can say “You look hot.”
45. A +1 can say “I’ve been there before, and I love it.”
46. A +1 can mean “I wish I were there.”
47. A +1 can mean “I am so proud of you.”
48. A +1 can mean “You took my breath away.”
49. A +1 can say “I’m on my phone and only have a second.”
50. A +1 can say anything.

Blogger Adds +1 Data to Dashboard to Track Popular Posts

This afternoon, Blogger introduced a small update to user dashboards, letting blog owners see how many +1's their content has achieved across the web, including +1's from Google Reader and search results, from your personal dashboard. Now, in addition to traditional statistics familiar to blog authors, like those found in Google Analytics, you can now see a quick + count next to the number of comments and page views - helping show the impact your most popular posts have received.

As I haven't been very active of late on the blog, I haven't done much to deserve +1's from every corner - something I'm looking to get back to doing shortly. But it's fun to see my August announcement of joining the Google+ team got 105 +1's and the Ten Step Guide to Giving Good Social from July also cracked the 100 +1's mark. And working on the Google+ team, I know that as we don't automate +1 activity, every +1 was done by a human being who took the time to show endorsement of my content.

The Addition of +1 data is displayed in the Blogger dashboard.

Watching how many +1s your content gets, and seeing who your most passionate readers are could play a big role in just what you decide to write about in the future - as page views, retweets and likes have. It's a lightweight way to gauge user satisfaction and get a view into your growing community.

Disclosure: I joined Google in August to work on the Google+ team. Blogger is a Google product.

Two Numbers: 1 and 90 Million

By now, you all have seen the dual bits of news today - first that Google+ has achieved 90 million users with at least one new feature every single day, over 1 million businesses and brand pages, and sign in of 60% daily, 80% weekly.

Also, earlier today, Google was (for the 3rd time) named the best place to work by Fortune Magazine (see http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/best-companies/2012/snapshots/1.html). We're working on making Google+ the best place to be for you so you can be just as proud about these numbers and this news. To stay on top of all this great stuff, follow the+Google+ page, and make sure you don't miss an update from +Vic Gundotra or +Larry Page.

For those of you who believed in Google+ when we had 0 Million users, 10 Million users, 40 Million users and now 90 Million users... thank you. Keep providing feedback to make this place even better and tell all your friends who are waiting to be the next ones to join and be active.

/via My Google+ Profile.

Daria Musk Visits Google+ for Live Performance

Last Monday, I had the great pleasure of meeting +Daria Musk and interviewing her on stage, to learn more about her story and rise from relative obscurity to becoming a Google+ sensation. As I told the Google+ team, assembled in the private concert, in my introduction, Daria epitomizes the community here as well as anyone I know.

She is fully invested in this platform, is tireless, upbeat, and to boot, is incredibly talented. I'd heard her sing in many a hangout, but to hear her sing live at Google was transformative. Nothing beats a live performance by an artist with passion, energy and skill. With pleasure, I share with you our conversation with +Daria Musk.




/via My Google+ Profile.

10 Great Ways to Get Discovered on Google+

As social networks evolve, so to do your circles. Even in the few months since our launch, you’ve probably added a lot of people to your circles who you didn’t know before - people who share common interests, or came by recommendation of a trusted friend or expert. Some people have rocketed their way to high visibility, added to hundreds of thousands of circles, by virtue of their actions on Google+. So while I can’t promise you the big numbers, here are ten ways you can get found on Google+, and examples to boot.

1. Embrace the Community While Doing Something Unique and Creative.

+Daria Musk +Thomas Hawk and +Trey Ratcliff are three of the most prominent people who have taken their talents, including singing and photography, to constantly give back to the community. And rather than post and run, as some content creators do, each of them learns from the community, honing their craft, highlighting others, and making recommendations of other top people. I’ve met all three in person in the last few months, and their dedication to both the network and their talents is something to behold.

2. Speak Eloquently, Thoroughly and from Your Experience.

+Tom Anderson used to just be the default avatar on a once-high-flying network. Now we recognize him as a respected observer of technology trends, social interactions and business moves - both for better and for worse. Having lived through the white hot rise and similar plummet of Myspace, he made enough cash to comfortably tell you how it is and not worry if you love it or hate it. Similarly, +Mark Cuban, a man never known for holding back his words, talks openly on Google+ on sports, business and tech.

3. Go on a Google+ Diet.

If you like what you see here, there’s little better way to show you’re all in than by fully committing to the platform. +Mike Elgan coined the term “the Google+ Diet”, but +Linda Lawrey and others, like +Denis Labelle, are just as devoted in their posting top links throughout the day to Google+ and sparking discussion. Linda also seems to have a side project going squashing the occasional spammer here, and we all appreciate that. 

4. Have a Sense of Humor and Share The Wacky Parts of the Web.

One of the best parts of circles is being able to organize your friends due to what they share, from serious to … not so serious. +Hillel Fuld and +Mona Nomura manage to mix their tech and social enthusiasm with a (un)healthy array of crazy images and outlandish things they find on the Web and share with those who follow them.

5. Gain the Attention of Others Who Have Proven Influence Before.

One of the most viral opportunities here on Google+ is that of the shared circle, where friends you already trust place you in a circle, usually topical, and recommend you to others. +Robert Scobleis one of the most active curators here, and takes a lot of effort to make sure his circles are full of active, contributing people. Gain his eye, or others with a network effect, such as +Veronica Belmont or +Felicia Day, and your updates could reach thousands. To gain the attention of these influencers, engage in their comment threads, don’t be shy about +mentioning them when you have interesting content, or stay on topic.

6. Spend Your Time Contributing to Make Google+ Even Better.

We’re working hard on making Google+ incredible. But we’re just getting started. Smart developers like +Matt Mastracci and +Mohamed Mansour have made a number of Chrome extensions to improve the streams and sharing beyond where they are now. +Paul Allen has made a side project of projecting our growth using real statistical analysis. Products like+CircleCount and SocialStatistics.com try to keep tabs on who is growing and what the top posts of the day are. This makes them all worth watching.

7. Be Well Known for Something Outside of Google+, Engage Here.

Call them celebrities or whatever you like, but there are many people who are household names who have taken to Google+ and used the medium to get closer to the rest of us, so you know them even better. From +Richard Branson and the +Dalai Lama to +Hugh Jackman to +will.i.am, people you read about offline are part of the community online.

8. Embrace Hangouts.

+Daria Musk's concerts in hangouts have been incredible to watch, but many more of you just simply hang out, with friends in your circles or the public. Every evening, I get invites from friends like +Bobbi Jo Woods, +Erica Joy and +Liza Sperling who just love hangouts. Want to know the community face to face to face? Click the Hangout button and see who shows up.

9. Be On the Scene and Break the News.

+Roberto Vongher was armed with a camera and reported on the Costa Concordia disaster, giving us a primary source view previously the world of the news networks. +Breaking News has adopted Google+ and is a fast place for me to catch up on what’s happening, as is +Fox News. For tech, I’ve got +The Verge +The Next Web and +TechCrunch. On the sports side, between+ESPN +SB Nation and +Sports Illustrated, I’m pretty much set.

10. Be The People Who Make This Place Run.

This might not sound fair for those of you who don’t spend your 9-5 (or longer) at the Googleplex, but the people who set the agenda and write the code to make Google+ go are as committed to the platform as its users. So it’s a pleasure to see updates roll in not just from +Vic Gundotra and+Bradley Horowitz , but Google’s execs including +Larry Page, +Sergey Brin and +Eric Schmidt. I’d list out the many folks I work with every day who own different aspects of the product, but by starting I’d never finish.

If you’re not constantly finding people to add to your circles, you’re not seeing what I’m seeing, which is a thriving community eager to share, socialize and discover. Looking for engagement on your content and feeling a bit ignored? We’ve all gone through it. So keep being yourself, and there’s no question your friends and peers are here. Leverage search to find topics and people you’re interested in. Check out shared circles from people you trust. Hangout! Play games. Have fun.

I’ve added all the people in this post to a shared circle. Add them and you can’t go wrong. There’s no question your stream will be full of some great stuff.


/via My Google+ Profile.