I was browsing around my about.me page this morning and came across this seminar that I gave to the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce earlier this year. It’s always fun to listen to yourself talk.

Like others in the social sphere, I’ve been playing around with Google+ since its release last week (thanks to James Herbert). Like the Google Buzz experiment, I’ve been casually playing with it to see how Google envisions their second stand in the social sphere. So, I’m a bit cautious to make any predictions as to whether it is truly the Facebook-Twitter-All-Things-Social killer.

If you can imagine the cosmic dust swirling around the big bang in the world of the social cosmos, you have seen bits and pieces of Google+:

• Wave – Do you remember that experiment? The general idea of allowing groups to share information and have a threaded conversation on a particular topic seemed like an enterprise win, but the lack of notifications and nebulous interface made all wave goodbye.
• Buzz – It was the Twitter killer, but it ended up being the Buzz kill–for me. The privacy faux pas set Buzz’s first footing on shaky ground. Then the inbox overload was too much. For me, it was superfluous to my twitter stream, so I eventually Buzzed off.
• Google Chat - No complaints here. The solid jabber chat interface is a mainstay for our business to stay connected. Adding video chat and eventual Voice integration will make Google Chat a Skype killer.
• Google Profile – At first, the Google Profile was a meteor in the cosmic dust. I remember setting mine up in 2009 purely for SEO purposes, but it wasn’t apparent how it ultimately played in the bigger equation.
• Social Circle – For some time, Google has been playing with Social Circle to provide more accurate search results. The idea that a friend’s interaction with a site is some predictor of my favor is probably not too far off, but it needs fine tuning.
• Picassa – Google’s acquisition of the Flickr competitor seemed to follow the YouTube acquisition as a logical move into multimedia–in my opinion for enhanced search results.
• +1 – A few months ago Google’s +1 seemed like an enhancement to Social Circle. Now with Google+ it makes much more sense.

With all of the “circling” social mass, I present to you Google+. I’m not going to recount all of the features and analysis (and trust me there is plenty). For a few nice articles, take a look at Chris Brogan’s 50 and Joshua Michele’s Google Plus, The Great Game and why Social is the One Ring to Bind the Internet OS.

Instead, I wanted to share a few of my initial observations. I think Plus is a nice collection of all of the tools that Google has developed, and I think that there are some features that it offers over the predicted enemies (Twitter and Facebook). But, I’m stuck with “why?” At its genesis, Twitter (more so than Facebook) filled a niche of apparent human need to share in excruciating detail the happenings of one’s life with a very simple interface. It was non-intrusive and non-competitive. Twitter was transparent text messaging for the world to eavesdrop. From any mobile phone, smart or dumb, a person could text about their soup, and then the users and developers built a world around this simplicity.

It seems that Goliath, er Google, has developed a very sophisticated platform that combines many wonderful sharing features. My struggle is that it’s not anything New. Ezra Pound once said that “Literature is news that stays new.” By analogy, a social network is something New that becomes Need. Quora was new but it wasn’t needed–not every day. I am struggling to see how Plus is New. For the current users, I believe there is Need.

My second issue at the core has to do with playing nice. Twitter is ubiquitous because it was non-threatening. Application developers were able to sail through the approval of Apple, Android, Web OS, et al. with no problem because Twitter and Facebook posed little threat. Google on the other hand, has experienced dramatic setbacks with many of the applications (namely Voice with Apple). So, if I understand it correctly, Google+ is going to work best as an untethered application on my mobile device. While the HTML 5 application is acceptable on the iPhone, it doesn’t have many of the features that I expect from my social networks (i.e. real-time notifications, competition between developers (for better applications), etc.). Mobile is the key, and any viable network must play nicely with “all” mobile.

Finally, Twitter is by far my favorite social network; I love it because the users have built Twitter’s sandbox. Hash tags were a result of users agreeing how to categorize information. URL shorteners thrived because Twitter users needed a way to share links in 140 characters. Twitpics (and all variations) exploded to allow users to share their images. From the ground up developers and users have tapped ingenuity to figure out how to work within a wonderfully simple sandbox: 140 characters. On the other hand, I sense some suggestion that Google+ has defined the sandbox and I should feel free to play.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I have said for years that Twitter and Facebook are the current social platforms, and there will be eventual replacements, but I am more concerned about a thousand more niche “killers” than a single atomic explosion. The coveted designer network Dribbble is a great example of a niche network that is not the 400 pound gorilla but has great loyalty.

Are you on Google+? Connect with me. If not, let me know that you want an invite in the comments, and I’ll email you to confirm the correct email address. Most importantly, let me know your thoughts is Google+ going to be a sea change in social? Also, if you don’t mind, indicate in your comment whether you’re an android user.

Sorry. All of that emphasis on page one SERPs of Google may not be the funky cold medina after all. Search Engine Optimization, which is a profession that didn’t exist a few years ago may not exist in a few years. Thus, the modern era of the Internet: professions that don’t exist today may be the top job in 3 years. [check this video for an interesting communication of this phenomena]

In a recent  article, ClickZ likens the current environment to early paid search in  Social Media 2009 = Search 2002

If you’ve been in the interactive advertising business for at least the last five years, you’ll recognize the pitch for social media to be nearly identical to the ones we heard (and made) in 2002 for search. Search ads were fast and cheap to create and dirt cheap. (You didn’t even have to pay unless you got a click!) In the face of a bloated and barely effective display advertising market, search looked to be the best deal in town.

Honestly, I am not predicting that one medium will trump the other, but I believe that a single tool arsenal is not the Internet “marketing” solution. Staking one’s business upon Google results is simply not a sound solution. For a few weeks, the question, “will Twitter trump Google?” has been circulating tweets and blogs.

No, but social media will rule supreme as the top referrer of the web.

Twitter is already towering over the news sources in the UK and this doesn’t even include the API connections (i.e. Tweetdeck, Twhirl) to the social service:

TechCrunch reports:

In February, 4 million people in the U.S. visited the site, up from 2.6 million the month before, according to the latest data from comScore. That represents a 55 percent month-over-month growth rate, compared to 33 percent growth in each of the two months prior.

There is a good reason for this explosion in use. Social media serves niches that search engines and blogs alone cannot.

1. Internet Portal

Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter are many people’s portal to the Internet. Sorry of conjuring up imagery of AOL. But, these are the first and last accessed sites that many people use during their Internet sessions. In a recent Nielsen study, 10% of all “internet time” is spent in social networks.  Facebook is being used as their portal page to the web, and they find referral links through in-network communications.

2. Hyperlocality

National sites and search engines will always be handicapped to scale down to provide accurate poignant local results-despite the changes to the algorithm. Social Networks have the ability to scale because the content creators are local. For example, if you want a Hot Dog in a particular city, page one results and the top result are far more national with localized information (Krystal). However, tapping out less than 140 characters, “where is the best Chicago dog in Knoxville?” will likely return nuanced and accurate local results.

3. Contextual Relevancy (crowdsourcing)

In the network of friends and followers, questions are not blindly stripped and plugged into an algorithm that may or may not account for misspellings or memory lapse. For example try this query on Google, “what is the name of the place that used to be next to the pizza parlor on johnson st.” Surprisingly, the same query to Twitter will likely yield a poignant response. In addition, all of these past queries are searchable.

The key difference here is primary vs. secondary research. My network “filters” the results for me:

add context to relevant information. Searchers don’t just want facts. They want to learn more about the experiences of real people they can relate to.

Trust is key. These “relational” or “social” queries are built on trust. If I ask a question to my network and they mislead me then I turn them off (unfollow or unfriend). On the other hand, the percentage of trust in search engines results continues to decline.

4. Immediacy

On a cold day in January while staring off into my tweetcloud in tweetdeck. I noticed a surge in Hudson and Plane. At least 30 minutes before any television news network could mobilize, Twitter broke the story. The Hudson is not the only case. The Mumbai terrorist attacks were best reported via Twitter by people inside the hotel.

Users can access Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn through web, text message, mobile applications. So, unfiltered information can be in real time. As these services become more ubiquitous, we will have a variety of devices that are fully integrated with our social networks–and yes that will include more than just my washer telling me that the spin cycle has finished.

5. Direct Access

Throw your Rolodex out the window. Social networks are connecting people directly to their sources. Want to complain about comcast or tell motrin that their ad is offensive? You don’t have to write letters that may or may not be read, you can tweet or blog directly to the source.

The caveat is that  BS detectors are very high in social mediums. For an advertiser or owner, simply setting up twitterhawk to swoop in to keyword mentions or hiring ghosttweeters to engage customers can be catastropic. Inauthentic posts or ghost written material can be obvious to readers / followers / friends, and as @guykawasaki has learned, exposure of ghost writing can be a disaster (or at least distracting).

6. Eavesdropping is Awesome

My guilty pleasure is  to eavesdrop on (interesting) conversations while dining in restarants. Whether on someone’s wall or in their Twitter feed, social marketing is largely about listening to people talking. If something is interesting, we are generally permitted to engage in that conversation. Of course, this can be exploited by marketers, but in some cases I want to be engaged while ranting about the ridiculously slow download speeds on my comcast connection.

7. Google Doesn’t Care

Some suggest that Google is “passionate” about providing quality search results. Google is an advertising company; first and foremost the objective is to generate revenue. Facebook recently redesigned the intro screen to open up more advertising, and this emphasis towards ads will like be more pervasive in future redesigns. On the other hand, Twitter’s revenue model is nebulous and undefined [probably best served and most profitable to sell to Google]. Therefore the free flow of information is not altered by the revenue model (yet).

Search engines are not going away. They will continue to improve the results, but the fact remains that people are continualy drawn to people. This is not a new phenomena as any listserve or newsgroup junkies of web 1.0 will tell you. As social networks continue to proliferate, they will become increasingly important referrers of the web.

I was at an Entrepreneurs of Knoxville meeting last week talking about the interplay between social media sites and main sites (however you define “main sites” blogs, main pages, or otherwise). It reminded me of this slide that I threw together for a client a few months ago:

Interaction of Social Media Sites for Marketing Strategies

It is certainly not a new idea to describe online assets in this way, but I think “hub and spoke” is fairly fitting for the current web environment. Clear execution throughout all channels is important, so engaging in social media requires strategy–although many apply a whimsical approach.

I encourage clients to:

• Identify goals
• Identify appropriate mediums
• Create genuine, quality content–even if it hurts
• Truly engage with others
• Remain active

There is no easy shortcut to crafting your online persona. It takes time and energy to create these networks, but the benefits are significant not only to generating more business but also the learning that occurs in the engagement of others. Hit me here if you would like to discuss more.

Paul Boutin’s recent Wired article, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004, suggests that the blogosphere is  too crowded for a lone blogger to make a difference, and it it time to fold up shop on blogging:

Writing a weblog today isn’t the bright idea it was four years ago. The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge. Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths. It’s almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers. And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.

I thought I would post a blog about it, and I hope that it draws more comments than those haranguing hecklers Paul references. In many ways, I tend to agree that microblogging and many 2.0 apps have changed the face of the personal publication model. To me, all of these tools become facets of my online persona, but the blog is central to this online presence.

Although it is possible to have superintegration across blog/facebook/twitter/freiendfeed/linkedin/youtube/flickr/etc., each of these personal promotion channels, have seperate communities (despite the crossover). After feeding tweets to Facebook for some period, it became clear that my tweetquency was too high for my conversation to be meaningful to Facebook friends. For me, the blog becomes the central hub of my online persona to all of the spokes (or channels) of social media.

Many activities that were formerly blog content now appear as tweets.  I write blog posts once or twice a week as opposed to once or twice a day, but I am actually publishing/retweeting/linking more content than ever before. Tweets are pithy. They may even have misspellings or ramblings. They generally are not thoughtful and well edited like blogs. However, with my posts, I try to think before I type. Therefore, blogs become more informational, reflective commentary, and the more pedestrian commentary happens in these other outlets.

Despite this Zarathustrian proclamation, blogs aren’t dead, and we didn’t kill them–at least not in 2008.

According to my recent poll, it looks like Twitter is the most popular social tool. Although the respondents were a fairly limited set (only 10 because I am lame and no one really wants to take my polls), here are the results:

• 50% Twitter
• 40% Facebook
• 10% LinkedIn

Why is Doug always friending himself?

Weirdo! That freaks me out just trying to figure it out.