Googler’s Take on Social Networking Reveals Chinks in Facebook’s Armor

On July 7, 2010, in Social Web, by Mahendra Palsule

Paul Adams, lead for User Research for Social at Google, shared a presentation a few days back that was picked up by Venture Beat among others. I am sharing it here along with my own thoughts as I think it deserves a closer look.

Why? Because:

  • Paul currently works on Buzz and YouTube
  • Google is rumored to be working on Google Me, a rival network to Facebook

The Presentation

The Real Life Social Network v2
View more documents from Paul Adams.

Key Points

  • A single umbrella group of “Friends” in an online network doesn’t mirror real-life and leads to problems. Support multiple independent groups of friends.
  • Focusing on technology is a wrong strategy. Focus should instead be on Motivation and Goals.
  • Design needs are different for different relationship types – strong ties, weak ties, and temporary ties. One solution doesn’t fit all.
  • Different communication channels are needed for different types of relationships.
  • Role of influencers is over-estimated. Also need to focus on network of person being influenced. Influence works most within close ties.
  • Network should support multiple facets of identity and also anonymity.
  • We think people care less about privacy because they misunderstand complicated privacy settings.
  • People underestimate the size of their audience and persistent nature of their conversations online.

My Thoughts

  • There is no mention of any geeky stuff here – Open ID, standards, protocols, etc. It is refreshing to see truly social insights coming from Google.
  • For each of the problems identified with current online social networks, Paul uses Facebook as an example. Most of them also apply to Google’s Orkut, but Paul chooses to ignore Orkut as if it doesn’t exist.
  • While its heartening to see these insights from Google, their real challenge is for the Product Managers and Head of Social to take what they’ve got and build on this vision.
  • Google needs many more Paul Adams.
  • The critical insight is how Paul (and by extension, Google) thinks that there can be no one size fits all approach to social networking. Facebook users already experience the problems Paul describes by mixing close friends, acquaintances, and online strangers together in common conversations.
  • Taking this forward, Google may well be saying that Buzz is a network designed for your acquaintances and weak ties. And if Google Me were indeed under development, looks like it will be a network designed for close ties – family and close friends – which is how Facebook initially started.
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Is Windows Live Delivering What Google Buzz Promised?

On June 28, 2010, in Social Web, by Mahendra Palsule

While everyone has been dissecting the Google Me rumor, I’ve been taking a look at Microsoft’s Windows Live Wave 4. Here are a few key features with my thoughts on how they contrast with Google Buzz.

User Base ~300 million

Google tried to leverage its Gmail user base when it launched Buzz. What ensued was a privacy nightmare. Microsoft has had no such issues when leveraging its Instant Messaging user base.

Windows Messenger has a user base of 299 million, compared to Gmail’s 173 million. I also think that a greater proportion of Windows Messenger users will actively use its social features than the proportion of Gmail users who actively use Buzz.

Open Standards Support: Activity Streams

It’s difficult to read any Buzz propaganda without encountering the mention of Open Standards.

Windows Live uses Activity Streams-compliant feeds from Facebook, MySpace, and a dozen other partners.

Superior Privacy Settings

Read this post from the Inside Windows Live blog for a comprehensive look at the privacy options. Here are a couple of screenshots:

Windows Live Privacy Options

Windows Live Advanced Privacy Options

Not only are the options very granular to a deep level, they’re presented in a very intuitive, easy-to-understand fashion. If you customize your settings to an intricate level, you can also quickly view a Friend’s profile and see exactly what he will see from your updates.

Commitment to Data Portability

Microsoft, unlike Facebook, has unequivocally made it clear that you own your data.

…if you would like to access your Windows Live data from a different third party service, or even take your data completely to another service, you should be able to do that. To enable this, we give you ways to export your data from Windows Live into common formats, so that you can import it to wherever you like…

Developers and third-party applications can use Live ID for authentication, and use Public APIs for accessing public information.

Aggregating Other Social Networks & Web Services

At last count in Nov 2009, Windows Live had partnered with 74 services from around the web to pull in updates to your feed.

Windows Live Services

These include Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, and a plethora of services for video sharing, photo sharing, blogging, reviews, ratings, etc. Further, these are localized in 35 languages.

Ex-Friendfeeders have migrated in large numbers to Buzz. Surprisingly, Windows Live is more Friendfeeder-friendly than Buzz, at least at present.

The process for adding your profile from another service to Windows Live is extremely simple and easy-to-use, compared to the tortuous approach in Google Buzz.

Two-Way Integration with Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn

The Salmon protocol is not here yet, and we don’t know if Facebook and others will support it. What we do know is that you can interact with your Facebook feed from within Windows Live today.

Your status updates, photo uploads, etc. can be pushed to other networks such as Facebook, MySpace, and soon, LinkedIn as well. You can comment on your friends updates in those networks from within Windows Live.

Friends vs. Acquaintances

A nice little feature lets you perform a “reluctant accept” or a “polite decline” of friend requests.

Windows Live Polite Decline

Selecting the “Limit the access…” box lets me accept the friend request as an acquaintance who only sees the updates I set for All Friends, and not all my photos or contact information.

To me, this feature shows that Microsoft is “getting social” like nobody else today.

Mark People as Favorites

In any news feed, whether Facebook, Buzz, or Twitter, I wish there was a way to choose people whose updates I don’t want to miss. Windows Live allows you to do that.

Windows Live Favorites

Filters

Note the Highlights, Recent, etc. links in the above screenshot giving me quick access to key filters for my news feed.

One of the features much wanted in Buzz has been the ability to filter out updates based on the service imported – Twitter, Flickr, etc. Windows Live lets you do that today:

Windows Live Filter By Service

You can also set many other filters for what you wish to see in your news feed:

Windows Live Filters

See this post by Dare Obasanjo for more on how Windows Live is designed to reduce noise and focus on the signal.

Windows Live on iPhone

The free Windows Live Messenger iPhone app has chat, aggregated social feed, photo upload and email. Microsoft will have something better when Windows Phone 7 comes out later this year, but it’s noteworthy that they didn’t shun the iOS platform just because they have a rival mobile OS.

Closing Thoughts

Windows Live may not support as many open standards and protocols as Google Buzz does, but do end users really care? Windows Live doesn’t present an either-Facebook-or-Buzz dilemma, and doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel by building a network from the ground up. It leverages Messenger’s large user base without compromising on privacy and data portability. These can be important lessons for any Head of Social.

Most importantly, unlike Buzz, it keeps things simple, stupid!

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10 Questions for Google’s “Head of Social”

On May 11, 2010, in Social Web, by Mahendra Palsule

GigaOm reports that Google is looking to recruit a “Head of Social”. I welcome the move and present a few questions Google should be asking of its new hire:

  1. In 2008 and 2009, we let people believe that iGoogle was our social platform. In 2010, we placed all our bets on Buzz. Is there any way we can integrate iGoogle and Buzz?
  2. What should be Google’s ONE social homepage? iGoogle? Buzz? Profile Page?
  3. What do we do with Google Friend Connect? We need an answer.
  4. How do we leverage Google Social Graph API?
  5. We added social sharing features as an afterthought to Google Reader. Later we invented Buzz. Now, Buzz largely consists of Google Reader shares, where you can easily comment and like them. Except that you can’t share from Buzz to other networks, like you can do in Reader.
    We need clarity on how to move forward with these products so that there’s no overlap and distinct product roadmaps.
  6. We realize that Facebook wouldn’t have grown to its present gigantic size without frivolous but sticky apps like quizzes and games. Stuff like this can be added as gadgets on iGoogle, but not on Buzz.
    We need to consider where and how we can provide sticky apps that attract mainstream users.
  7. How do we let developers monetize their apps for our social platform?
  8. We have a millions of people using Orkut in Brazil and India. How do we consolidate these into the Buzz umbrella?
  9. What incentive do we provide web publishers to use our social platform? Can we leverage our core search results page to highlight results from our social platform?
  10. Facebook is a one-stop-shop for discussions (Buzz), photos (Picasa), videos (YouTube), friend network (Profiles/Orkut), and sharing (Reader). We are all over the place, with a different set of active users of each product. How do we consolidate all of them?

These questions may sound tough and embarrassing. I hope they’re not avoided, because Google is in a tough and embarrassing position. A blind-folded approach isn’t going to help. And we desperately need Google to challenge Facebook.

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Matrix: Google Buzz, Twitter Chirp, Facebook F8

On April 23, 2010, in Social Web, by Mahendra Palsule

This is how the events launching new social network features compared:

Buzz-Chrip-F8

Pretty self-explanatory.

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How I Live and Breathe Google Reader

On March 19, 2010, in RSS, by Mahendra Palsule

I spend my entire day in Google Reader and Twitter to get tech news. I am sharing my Reader experience here so that I may learn from any tips you might have or the other way around.

Feed Organization

Tip: Prioritize your feeds in folders.

This is typically how my Reader looks when I start my day in the morning:Reader Shared Items

  • Me is my own posts and my tweets faved by others
  • BuzzShares are people I follow on Buzz (about 65 at present)
  • GoodShares are a group of about a dozen people
  • LG-RobDiana are shares by Louis Gray and Rob Diana
  • Google is for Google’s official updates
  • Tech has about 50-55 feeds mostly from individual tech blogs
  • MajorTech are the big tech blogs like TechCrunch, RWW, and GigaOM.

The sequence of folders is arranged by priority from bottom-up. Thus, depending on the time I can spend at any moment, I travel my way up in this hierarchy.

Tip: By adding a person’s shared items to a folder in Reader, you can unfollow the person in Buzz if you wish, while continuing to see their Reader shares.

My Stats (Trends)

Here are my key stats for the past month:

Reader Trends Main

Thus, I am sharing about 160 items/week, or about 20-22 items/day.

Reader Trends Graph

My ‘items read’ count might probably look different than other heavy Reader users. This is because of Techmeme as well as Twitter. About 80% of the time, I’ve already read and am aware of the news that arrives in Google Reader, or is a duplicate of an item I’ve read.

Subscription Stats

The following stats are interesting:

Reader Shared Items Per Day

You can see that some folks, including myself, share on Reader at a rate comparable to the number of posts by major tech blogs.

Disconnecting Reader from Buzz

I have disconnected my Reader shares on Buzz. I will wait till Buzz provides better filtering options. In my experience, it is easier for me to follow other’s Reader shares in Reader, than in Buzz in terms of efficiently finding tech news.

Buzz is a better place to have conversations and engagement on one’s Reader items. But what’s ‘engagement’ for one, can often be ‘noise’ for another. Without better filters, this engagement is simply force-fed noise on Buzz.

Going Forward

Because curation and sharing is primarily my work at Techmeme, I am increasingly focusing on sharing other stuff on Reader and omitting major news items in my Reader shares. This falls into several different categories – social media, how-to, personal, opinion, media, lifestreaming, etc. – stuff that doesn’t typically appear on Techmeme. If you are interested, do follow me on Reader.

I appreciate and value the shares of people I follow in Google Reader. Thank you for making it such an enriching place!

Please do share your tips, if any.

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Google Buzz + Reader + Twitter + Facebook = Noise

On February 12, 2010, in Social Web, by Mahendra Palsule

I’m having a hard time deciding whom to follow on which network with duplicate shares everywhere. The problem is compounded further by folks who auto-share from one network to another. There is no value in following people who share the same thing on Reader, Buzz, Twitter, Facebook, and so on. Duplication simply amplifies noise and reduces signal.

This is a real problem with social media today. Everyone wants maximum likes, shares, retweets on each and every thing they share. Their hope, understandably, is that each morsel they throw into social media becomes a feast on which everyone will drool.

Well, count me out. If someone is auto-feeding the same thing on all networks, it doesn’t add any value to me to follow them on all networks. Especially if they are not engaging in conversation where their content is landing.

I have written before about why I do not use auto-tweeting tools like Reader2Twitter, because I take as much effort as possible to attribute my sources. If you are using such tools, it makes sense to auto-tweet to a different Twitter account, like some folks do. This gives your followers the choice whether to follow you on Reader or Twitter.

Enter Buzz and FriendFeed and Facebook. Each of these is capable of pulling items from multiple sources for each person. FriendFeed can further be imported into Facebook and Buzz. This is not just aggregation, it is super-aggregation or aggregation-squared. This amplifies signals to such enormous proportions that all this noise is deafening.

Each of my shares on Twitter, Reader, and Facebook are hand-picked and manual. It takes extra effort but I believe it adds value to those who follow me. I am happy not being a social media superstar with thousands of followers if even a single person likes a single share of mine in a day. My value is not in the number of retweets, number of likes, etc., but in the feedback I get from even a single @reply or comment.

Neither of the companies behind each of these social networks are working with each other to design better filters for all of us. Each simply wants us to use them exclusively. There lies the problem. We hop on to each new social network bandwagon, immediately discover tools that allow us to auto-share and auto-propagate our shared content down stream, up stream, cross stream, life stream, etc., ultimately drowning our followers in the flood.

I am skeptic this problem will go away soon. As a curator, this is a challenge. The only way I see to successfully filter the signal out of this noise is to be brutal in curating sources. Auto-sharers, auto-tweeters, auto-feeders, or whatever these tools are called, will be the first on my radar as likely candidates to be unfollowed.

As a follower, I am a human. When you auto-share, you’re not a human on that network, you turn into a bot. Bots are what we call spam.

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Get Buzz with RSS, feed to Facebook/Twitter

On February 10, 2010, in How To, by Mahendra Palsule

Here’s a quick tip, courtesy @Avinio: your Buzz updates are now shown on your Google Profile, which now has its own RSS feed.

When you visit any Google Profile, you will see the RSS feed icon in your browser address bar. Click it to subscribe to anyone’s Buzz posts using RSS.

For e.g., you can check my Google Profile to see my Google Reader shared items showing up at present. The RSS icon should be enabled in your browser.

Google Profile RSS

Why would you want to do this? There are interesting possibilities:

  • Mix and refine Buzz feeds using Yahoo Pipes
  • Feed your Buzz posts to Facebook Notes
  • Tweet your Buzz posts to Twitter using RSS2Twitter
  • Follow someone on Buzz without explicitly following them in Buzz
  • Read Buzz posts using Google Reader
  • and so on.

This is just a glimpse of the interoperability possible with open standards.

Note: I have not yet used Buzz, still waiting for it to be enabled.

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