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.
