Google+ Publishing Design Flaws Limits Overall Usefulness as an Identify Service

By Michael A. Romig / Austin, TX / January 25, 2011

Early in the Google+ launch two things became evident.   First Google was positioning itself to become a centralized identity engine.  This capability has grown as we’ve seen the rollout of Google Authorship Profiles and now serious integration with Blogger.  Second we saw the public rollout of Google+, a very promising content publishing and collaboration platform.  Google+’s strength was the ability to interact with other users around the world on common interests.  One could organize user contacts into distinct user groups and share content only to specific users or groups.  Well at least one could do that in private.

One of the early Google+ publishing design flaws was the inability to direct content to certain groups and still make that content publically accessible and searchable.  This meant if I had people interested in my comments on technology and I was in their technology circle if I ever posted travel tips, humorous articles or even photos those users interested only in my tech views would see all kinds of stuff from me they didn’t really care about.  I had no way to limit who I “published” my content to.  Google+ crudely equivocated a “public” post to mean share this content with everyone who follows my content.

This did effect the way I published content and from what I observed others as well.  It pressured people to become somewhat one-dimensional in their public posts for fear of not wanting to “spam” people with content probably only relevant to a small audience.  Overall, I believe, it limited the amount of public sharing and public collaboration.

So one unfortunate answer to this design flaw is to create multiple Google+ accounts.  Early on I posted that I thought Google had nailed this problem and multiple identifies wouldn’t be required.  By contrast I have two twitter accounts: one personal for family and friends and another public.  Although for “receiving” content and sharing privately I think Google+ has nailed this.  When it comes to content you want public there isn’t a good answer.  I’ve been patiently hoping and waiting for Google to figure out a way to overcome these initial assumptions, but without any visible progress have to recommend the same strategy now for Google+ I use for Twitter. 

Creating multiple user accounts does solve the problem of giving one the granularity they need to direct messages to users in the exact combinations one wants and still make that content “public”.  It is just really kludgy.   But also multiple accounts pretty much dilutes or even destroys the overarching goal as Google becoming an identify service.  If I share only a part of myself in one account and another part in another account, there isn’t a single unified view of me.  Additionally one good requirement of an identify solution is the restriction or elimination of duplicate accounts.  Here I am suggesting duplicate accounts could “solve” a problem with Google+.

Directed public publishing is a complex problem that hasn’t been solved.  I haven’t started using multiple accounts myself on Google+, but I have been tempted more than once; and now more than ever as I don’t see a good way to work around this.

Blogger Officially Integrates with Google+

By Michael A. Romig / Austin, TX / December 12, 2011

So we knew this day was coming and it looks like it is here.  All blogger users can now do direct Google+ sharing.

Here is the announcement:
http://buzz.blogger.com/2011/12/connect-to-google.html

And here is a photo I took of the Texas capital building to see how it looks on Google+ after the Publish.

A People's Guide to Google+

By Michael A. Romig / Austin, TX / October 20, 2011

I think Google+ rocks for all kinds of communication and social interactions. There is not one way to use Google+. But here is my post to people I'd love to get to know on Google+, if they'd just resist being completely silent, posting press releases, or "tweets" instead of being themselves. In all honesty I just want everyone to feel at home; pounce trolls on the head when they pop-up, and enjoy the rest of us, as we do you.

tl;dr Just be yourself, be polite and be active with the G+ community.

So What Is This Place?

This is not the social network where you shout clever philosophical sayings or witty observations into the ether. That is twitter. This is not the place where you "Love Your Peeps in Philly!!!". That is, well I'm not sure what that is, but it isn't here either.

This is also not the place where you generically plug your product or service in a carefully coordinated marketing campaign already in progress in print, media and the rest of the interwebs. That is just annoying.

You do not friend strangers here or have people subscribe to your amazing updates. That is facebook.

Google+ is a public and private collaborative and communication platform with amazing content and enabling tools. What you can do here is be yourself and let the platform carry your virtual voice.

Be Yourself

So don't give the keys of your account to one of your lackey's or worse a full time social media team member, you will catch flack for it here. Let me give you an example, I've got a celeb circle, as many probably do. Most of us are curious people and fascinated with celebrity and fame. But I've seen Celeb accounts where people post content in the 3rd person, clearly not by the celeb and the reaction is a little violent. Honest mistakes are one thing, but be careful; here be dragons. No matter who you are if you post in the third person, what do you think the rest of us are going to think?

If you are a later adopter you might have missed a rather large firestorm early on with pseudonyms. As it turned out Google was advancing a foundational principle for Google+ where it primarily was going to be an identify service that also enabled social interaction, games, and in the future commerce. What this meant was that for Google the integrity of the individual was paramount. That users were real people, with real identifies, doing real things was where they wanted to start.

People jumped onto Google+ quickly and started doing business pages and accounts with pseudonyms because that is what they did inother social networks. Google initially rejected that, knowing, as it turns out, that both business identities and pseudonyms have to be carefully implemented in the technology and with consistent platform policies so as to protect privacy, business identify, and to not disenfranchise other users. Today both business identities and pseudonyms are not allowed in Google+, (except for a few small limited test groups) but there are public announcements those capabilities are on the way.

All of that being said the culture of a "real identify" was an early battle here on Google+. And when you have a lackey post content for you or you post someone else's content as your own, you cheapen that battle and the culture that glew out of it. Google was built to be and has become a place where real people interact with other real people. So be yourself. If you don't you might catch some flak, or worse get ignored.

So What is the Google+ Culture?

Of course it is many things to many people. But for me it is a genuine place of collaboration and interaction. Which basically means you should just be yourself and you should interact with others on the platform. I've seen politicians join Google+ and not actually interact in any way after they post a little PR clip and they are completely missing the boat. I know there are good reasons for people to want to be careful with what you post online, especially for public figures, if either addressing fans or constituents. But this platform is primarily about interacting with real people. It easily facilitates reaching out from your sphere of influence into new spheres. But we in those spheres far away from you are only really interested in the real you. A real you that is revealed to us through your posts, hangouts and comments.

We don't want to know what the talking points are or what your publicist wrote. Likewise we don't want to know what your spouse thinks or your siblings think; at least through your posts. We want to know what you think. When +Wil Wheaton talks about his life and hobbies he is connecting with us. When he mentions an upcoming show it comes from a genuine place because he has a relationship with the wider community in which he interacts and we in the community are consequently interested in what he's working on.

But the principle that worked for him works for everyone. Spend time publishing content to your circles in private, comment and +1 the content of others, and when you do publish things publicly it will be as a valued community member; which people will respect. You can't buy your way into Google+. You have to earn it by being real with those that are here. Not everyone will agree with you, but they will recognize you for being willing to be out there with your voice. Ultimately most people will find you through your public posts, but you will be shared, both your content and in circles, by the relationships you make.

But be warned, as this participative culture has developed I've been effected as much as anyone else and have started uncircling people if they only post brief snippets and never actually interact with others in the comments or on other people's posts. For me just posting "tweets" here doesn't fly and I don't have time for that.

Why Not Risk It?

Joining into the Google+ culture will be a little risky. If you post things here you might misspeak, post when angry, or otherwise be a human being. The danger there is someone could grab that post and use it against you. But here on Google+ you can edit your posts or delete them altogether if you change your mind. You can be yourself, correct yourself later if you want, and you don't have to be so concerned about making things absolutely perfect before you even start to speak.

I'll tell you now, you will get some trolls. And some people who you probably should "watch out for", but hey, this is the Internet, that comes with the territory. As it is, during the limited field trials and now with open beta the quality of user interactions here on Google+ is as high or higher than anything I've seen. That means some of your noise should be lower here than other places; at least when it comes to the nonsense.

But what you will find is as you be yourself, others with similar interests will become genuinely interested in what you say. You will have people interact with you and share their views and parts of their life with you. You will see and discover things you won't have been exposed to in any other venue as you open yourself up to those in the world around you.

I hope you do risk it and post content you create and that is important to you. I hope you post comments on other's posts, and make new friends and colleagues along the way. I hope you too begin to have an amazing experience here on Google+ as I and many others have alongside you.

Image created by Elvire. R http://www.flickr.com/photos/elvire-r/2451784799/ released CC Generic 2.0.

Google+'s Foundation is the Social in Social Networking

by Michael A. Romig / Austin, TX / September 21, 2011

We are social creatures, maybe more than we realize.  From our earliest experiences we identify ourselves in groups.   We are born into our families.  Next we are integrated into school and our neighborhoods.  Then again in churches and social clubs we find ourselves moving in and out of social communities.   Just as we learn language we also develop non-verbal social skills to help us survive in this new and rapidly changing social landscape.  We learn how to read a room to different degrees of success and strategize how we will interact at an almost unconscious level.  We all learn at times we must submit to others or create alliances to accomplish goals.  Sometimes we move to lower group anxiety or seek the praise of others.  Each one of us doesn't have to delve into the depths of anthropology or social psychology to understand the gist of this.  It is intuitive to some degree in all of us.  It is the social air we breathe.

So over the course of our shared history we have adapted and survived, not alone, but in groups.  Our technology has facilitated our social success whether in enriching ourselves or in defeating our enemies.  But the technology itself never existed in a vacuum uninfluenced by social needs.  Our shared community goals drive the technology we build and adopt.  Successful technologies resonate with culture and society.  If the technology is acceptable, meaning it facilitates something desired in our social experience, then we allow it and encourage it. 

Social networking and many areas of computer technology in general were built primarily out of an Engineering construct tasked with solutioning a specific problem.  The telegraph was revolutionary, but had drawbacks, so engineers replaced it with a telephone, which was in turn replaced with mobile communications.  But the telegraph and telephone as one of the world's first international social networking mediums only existed to allow business people, friends and family to be able to talk with one another.  It wasn't about the phone, it was about the communication.  It facilitated sharing the social experience beyond face to face communication in a way that had never been done before. And it revolutionized the world.  It wasn't the engineering that changed the world, rather it was the communication that ran on top of that engineering marvel that made a difference.

So over the course of time we observe very interesting and sometimes innovative technology that fails.  Not because the engineering is bad nor because the product or service doesn't fit a valid need.  But rather it fails because it doesn't resonate in a meaningful way with the masses.  Early adopters, journalists, and marketers may be the initial gatekeepers to all new technology, but despite their feedback if the product doesn't fit-in with the masses it will not last. 

One of the earliest modern stories of corporate success attempting to understand and embrace our human side is Apple computer's infamous Apple's Human Guidelines.  Once rigorously enforced, that standard required applications to behave in a way humans would expect them to behave.  For Apple that guideline evolved itself into a corporate governing value.  Technology they released had to have a simplicity of design that wouldn't overwhelm customers or it wouldn't get released.  With Apple and all successful innovators the big breakthrough isn't the technology alone.  It is when the technology intersects with our social nature and transforms our experience.  We value those technologies that help us leverage our productivity and our social health and experience. 

Remarkably the most popular social networking sites in use today weren't built on a foundation of human and social design.  Many were incremental "betters" of previous technology.  BBS gave way to email, IRC and Unix talk, which gave way to the world wide web and portals like MySpace and Facebook.  But Facebook's biggest innovation was the simplicity of creating an online book of faces with brief information that everyone could relate too in a networked framework.  Yearbooks have been around for years providing and fulfilling an existing social need.  This was nothing different except it was online, could be updated frequently, and was globally interlinked. 

Twitter, likewise, emerged as essentially an innovation of SMS.  Text messaging, again, had been around for a long time.  It was an innovation to standardize on that length and formatting in a wider Internet context that created a breakthrough.  But essentially it was leveraging an existing social network paradigm as well, the mobile phone network.

Each of these social networking services has attempted to stay relevant by adding more and more content and services both to innovate and to keep up with the advances of their competitors.  None of them have effectively re-invented themselves from the foundation up.  The most tragic recent example of this valet attempt was probably Digg.  This social news aggregating sight was the darling of technologists, geeks and more and more the mainstream public.  Their attempt at redesigning the site from the ground proved an enormous misstep that has more or less led to its premature demise.  Lesson to the others, if it isn't too broke don't risk changing it fundamentally.

So in the shadows of this social network context we've had Google as a facilitator of Internet content dip its toe into the market with Google Wave and Google Buzz.  The former had obvious failings and the latter little impact.  Not surprisingly Google didn't sit back and give up in this space.  It approached the social networking problem like most of its innovations with a firm foundation and simplicity of design and implementation. 

But the real innovation with Google's new Google+ social networking service is the social foundation.  Just like on the playground we see 7 year olds banding themselves together into unique social groups with various internal interests, so Google decided to copy that most basic of natural human tendencies with circles. Google+ circles are the most intrinsic building block in the Google's new social networking world.  You aren't an individual interacting with other individuals in Google's world.  You are a group interacting naturally with others in that group and many other groups with different memberships and interests.  You get to decided which groups are important, Google+ makes some suggestions, but what we call our circles and who we put in them is entirely up to us.

Google plus is now officially in an open field trial, another way of saying Google+ Beta in the historical language of Google.  Anyone can sign up, but don't expect things to stay the same day to day and expect there to be bugs and glitches along the way as it get it fully developed.   As new people start to sign up making the link between the raw technology and the underlying meaning is going to be the biggest challenge to adoption.  Google+ is fundamentally unlike anything we've seen implemented on this scale before.  The foundation will be familiar to everyone, but the terminology and the graphical user interface will be new and awkward.  We all know what social groups are, but Google+'s circles with their dragging and dropping take some getting used to.

Starting off with private exclusive circles allows us to direct our communication naturally and in context.  I'll share personal struggles with running, for example, to fellow runners in my "Runner's" circle in a way I won't share publically.  But it is more than placating this hazy notion that privacy is good or that secrets will stay secret by putting them into social silos.  Our human experience constantly adapts in the social groups we engage in.  Google+ circles allow us to interact natively in the exact same way.  We don't have to struggle to fit our natural tendencies into awkward stranger vs. friend, or public vs. private social words.  We share what we want to share with one group.  And we share something completely different in another. 

Other social networking sites have seen this deficiency as well and are racing to add fixes to make the products more "natural" to our human experience.  And they certainly will have some measures of success.  Google has positioned itself as an enormous competitor to all existing social networking services because of these foundational design decisions.

Of course Google+ didn't stop with the building blocks, but have layered video chat and conferencing and the native sharing of rich media on top of text to make the social connections even more natural.  Google+ is still very much in an early phase of development and adoption.  But I believe it has position itself very well.  Google may not necessarily overtake legacy social frameworks quickly or at all.  But it will almost certainly gain a large loyal and productive user base that will enjoy the social foundations Google+ is built upon.

In Google+ Quality Content Matters More Than Ever

by Michael A. Romig / Austin, TX / September 20, 2011


A friend of mine last week posted the following to Google+:

I just looked at my G+ stream for the first time in 2 weeks. So far, not a Facebook killer. 


He has 80 people in his circles.

I think his experience is that of many Google+ users. The big questions is "How do we find content that really resonates with what we like and turns us on?" Personally I am finding that mix and consequently love Google+. But currently the process is very organic and still requires a lot of manual effort. Today one can very quickly find people via circle sites like group.as or recommendedusers.com and with the amazing Circle+ chrome extensions seed your circles and streams rather quickly. I did this myself without the Circle+ extension initially, because it hadn't been written yet, and found great users. That and searching on findpeopleonplus.com my circles grew pretty rapidly. But it took a long time and effort. For example I like photography has a hobby and now I have 1679 photographers in that circle. Not surprisingly I get amazing content in that stream. Every single day I see things I wouldn't ever find on my own. Was it easy manually setting up a circle with that many people, absolutely not.

But with the volume comes the need for refinement and noise control. +Chris Robinson recently posted about plusclout.com to his public stream and he had a very insightful comment:

Imagine two new people opening a Google+ account. The first person circles 20 people with clout scores >60 and the second person circles people with clout scores <10. My guess is that the first person will have a great experience and recommend G+ to friends and the second person will go back to facebook.

I think Chris is right. The experience of each individual user is tightly correlated with what kind of content they are seeing in their stream. I was concerned initially that Plusclout was going to be more about volume than quality and wasn't sure if I saw much value in it. But as Chris dug into it, it appears the algorithm tracks comments and shares. On the day I had a score of 95 I posted a lot of content that had a relatively high interactive impact on people who saw the content in their stream. Those things kind of things should be an indicator of quality, in general.

Of course it doesn't address the specific issues of what content a user is posting and does that content really resonate with me or challenge me. For that you have to dig into their history and G+Me does an excellent job of quickly allowing people to investigate other users' posting history and even suggests a score.

Being a part of this limited field trial is fun. But it is also challenging. I think about the future and how today on a Google search we see many input factors affecting the search results such as browse type, geolocation, browser history and +1s. And how in the future Google's algorithms will probably help make intelligence quality recommendations for me based on my post history, +1s, sparks and browsing in the same way. But it will never be perfect.

At the end of the day it is personal. Some people come off too voluminous, whether they are or not. Others seem to repost content like a spammy machine and still have high circle counts. Some people just seem arrogant to me and others humble. My preferences and yours are still going to be highly subjective and that's where circle maintenance comes in. I enjoy looking at my incomming stream for this purpose. I see lots of interesting content from people I don't yet know, but are sharing to me. I love getting surprised and finding a new nugget and poster to follow.

Noise control is another topic altogether, but related. For most users I'll bet their streams aren't flowing out of control yet and getting more high quality and relevant content is going to be key.

Google+: You are not my friends...but I like you anyway

by Michael A. Romig / Austin, TX / September 8, 2011

So I dig things.  I dig skiing.  I dig trail running.  And I dig photography.  So when I had the opportunity to start following some extremely talented professional and armature photographers on Google+ I got more than a little excited.  So over the last few weeks I've been adding and adding and adding.  All of a sudden I have 1661 photographers in my Photographer circle.  But then the most unfortunate thing happened.  The next person I tried to add failed. 

Apparently there is a 5000 person maximum on the number of people you can circle, in total.  5000 people, are you kidding me?   Yeah, yeah.  I get it.  I can be a little OCD sometimes.  Not like this http://goo.gl/5E99z guy, but can't we all get a little excited from time to time?

I was googling around for a rational and as far as I can tell Facebook also has a 5000 person maximum; after all who realistically has 5000 friends.  Well, if that kind of thing is the rational, then let me make myself perfectly clear to Google.  They are not my friends.  They are acquaintances and strangers; people that might someday become friends and colleagues.  But for now they are just virtual touches.  Of course I have a Friends circle, a Family circle and a Colleagues circle, among others.  But for the majority of those I have in my circles and streams I discovered them on Google+.  And you know what, I like that I've discovered them. 

In case you can't tell, I think this particular implementation decision to cap might need to be revisited.  I get that they are probably looking to eliminate spammers and other abuses.  But I would think Google of all companies could write some rather sophisticated algorithms to deal with that problem and still let me add to my interest circles unencumbered. 

In some ways Google+ is a lot more like twitter than anything else we've seen.  Twitter exposure one to the entire world of people and ideas.  Google+ does the same, but with a much richer interface and communication capabilities.  But with that combination I find I have a world of streams available to me to learn things, make new friends, and share ideas, content and information.  What I would like to do is build out my interest circles and add new ones as I have time and my interests change. 

Today I have to start going through my circles and kicking some of y'all out.  Not that I want too, but you are busy and haven't posted much (or at all).  And now I have hit this limit I need to add someone else and replace you.  I apologize in advance.   It isn't me you see, it's Google.  They don't want me to be friends with you.

Circles are wonderful. Streams are great. I think they might need to go on another date.

by Michael A. Romig / Austin, TX / August 29, 2011

I was reading +Zee M Kane's post on Re-sharing on G+ needs a rethink and I got completely side tracked into how I am still struggling with streams. I love, I'll say it again, I love Google plus' approach to security and privacy. The biggest breaking point to security probably is sharing, which allows one to re-publish someone's content wider than they might have intended. Today there is a friendly pop-up. In most cases that will probably be fine. In the remote case where a techno-paparazzi befriends someone and harvest there information just for monetary gain, a security measure probably won't help much as someone can just do a copy and paste or screenshot and get all the information they want to share anyway. In the majority of other cases it might be helpful to add a "Do not allow this to be shared beyond my original group" option, but I worry with too many additional security features it might become overwhelming for users. Personally I would love to have it as an option as it would allow me, the content creator, to put a restriction on the max-set of receivers of the content from the start. Others could re-share, but it would still only be 'seen' by people in both of our groups, with mine being the limiting boundary.

Fundamentally I think the intersection between Circles and Streams is great. In my use of the tools in the field trial I can see a few things I struggle with that I think could be solutionioned a few ways. But ultimately I think they should be tweaked in one way or another.

First, the on/off binary approach to a post and its stream availability is an easy design solution, but doesn't allow flexibility and I think also doesn't scale very well. Today if I post a story publicly and user Joe has me in their Trail Running circle, that is helpful only in as much as if my post is related to our areas of common interest in running. If I post about my work or something related to technology that user just got spammed with something off topic. The only limit is an on/off decision on if they have access to the material, not if it is relevant. Today I rarely share things publicly because I don't want to spam off-topic content to my interest-specific groups.

Here is one way it could work instead:

Separate the difference between something being publicly viewable from the notion it should be in someone's stream. The easiest way to do this is represent "releasability" of content in one section and "stream-to" in another. Kludgy, yeah, but hopefully it could be implemented smoothly. I have lots of posts which I don't mind being public, but I don't put them public because I don't want circle bleed-over. That is the only reason. If I could mark things 'public' and then say publish to stream "Trail Runner" then I'm solid. Others that wanted to know what I was into or cyber-stalk me could go to my profile and look at my posts. But my post written to and about "Trail Runners" would only show up in their stream.

Alternatively if I could publish to +Public and the limit which streams saw it or didn't see it directly by honoring the circle tags it could still be done with the same UI designed. A piece of content with +Public, +Technologist, and +Photographers would make the content releasable to everyone but only streamed to my Technologists and Photographers circles. Alternatively an +Public, -Friends, -Family designation would publish it very widely and only exclude the content from showing up in the streams of my Friends and Family circles.

Today it seems they have combined two very different things for simplicity and elegance, relesability and stream presentation. I think these are very different things. I think I should want the ability to publish a nature photo of a mountain trail both to Trail Runners and Photographers in their streams, but no one else, and yet still have it be public if a stranger or a technologist wants to dig into my interests for whatever reason.

If I do really want to hide out with some friends or colleagues then those two functional areas will probably be the same. But in this case the previously mentioned option of being able to restrict sharing only to the original release group would be quite helpful. I actually think the primary design driver shouldn't be to solve this particular small edge-case. It fits perfectly now, but I'm not so sure the secondary effects of this design decision don't challenge its underlying assumptions rather significantly.

I think they are really really close, but not there yet. However it gets solved, I appreciate the hard work and hope for the future. I'm glad Google is keeping this trial open and public. Their communication is outstanding. Thanks to the following for doing such a good job keeping us in the loop on the G+ release and changes: +Vic Gundotra, +Bradley Horowitz, +Natalie Villalobos, and many others listed here, who I also follow http://socialsunil.com/list-of-google-plus-profiles-of-googlers-google-employees/.