We’ve been geeking out for a while now, and we thought we’d share some early thoughts about the new tool and its potential impact on business communication.

First, my immediate reaction upon joining up last night: It’s friggin’ pretty. It’s so clean and slick and fast. By comparison, the busy, cluttered Facebook interface seems downright nauseating. And the mobile app (at least for my Android phone) is equally slick, putting Facebook’s Android experience to shame.

Facebook, designed by Google

Upon digging in a bit deeper — sharing some photos, posting updates, commenting on other people’s posts, etc. — Google+ seems to contain the best of Facebook and FriendFeed (which was founded former Google folk and later acquired by Facebook) and even some features reminiscent of the once buzzed-about Google Wave.

The ability to sort, manage and share stuff with your friends based on lists — a bolted-on afterthought on sites like Facebook and Twitter — is effortless and effective. I can easily share updates with just the people I want to, and it’s so simple to add to and move people between lists, called Circles.

The Android app has a killer option called Instant Upload. When enabled, the app instantly and automatically uploads any photo or video I take on my phone to a private album within Google+. From there, I can just leave them (for my own viewing or just as a backup) or share them with the world — or any Circle subset thereof.

And it’s with these easy-to-manage Circles and some other features that Google+ presents some interesting business communication opportunities. Imagine creating a Circle that consists of all members of a client-agency team and being able to share updates and links and even participate in group video chats (another standard Google+ feature) with those folks. That has the potential to infringe on the space reserved for bigger, clunkier, less social, more expensive business software — like Outlook, WebEx and more.

Bob Ingrassia’s Two Cents:

Social Media Fatigue — I think this is a significant hurdle. I’m a bit a burned out with creating and maintaining social networks. My big three are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I’ve got accounts with at least 30 other social sites (not kidding!) but the vast majority of those I signed up for out of professional curiosity and use sparingly, if at all. So here comes Google+ and another learning curve and network-building exercise. I can see a wide swath of Facebook users simply dismissing Google’s platform with an exasperated “Not another social network!”

But This Is Google! — I’m already knee deep in the Big Google Muddy. I use Gmail, Reader and Analytics every day. I have a Google profile. So Google really is a backbone of my digital life. As soon as Mike invited me into Google+, I witnessed how slick it may become to have my main social network integrated with the rest of my Google tools. I’ve used a number of digital dashboard services, but I could see Google becoming the “One Dashboard To Rule Them All.”

Setup Observations — Easy as pie if you’re already a Google Account holder. Google+ scoured my Gmail inbox for friend suggestions and my Google profile page for my new Google+ info page. Setup will be more of a barrier for users who aren’t already big Google users.

Video Chat — The “Hangout” feature is irresistible. It took me a minute to figure out how to tell Google which microphone to use on my end (another hurdle for less techie users). Then Mike, Andrew and I jumped in and did the ridiculous thing of video chatting between the main room and the 2nd floor at Fast Horse (“Watson, come here! I want you!”). But this is powerful: easy video chatting within Google may be the feature that drives a lot of adoption.

Facebook – I’m an everyday user, personally and professionally, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. But, like a lot of users, I’m not passionate about Facebook. It’s always felt cold and somehow metallic to me. I’m there because everyone else is. But if the crowd migrates and Google+ gains critical mass, I could envision a time when my Facebook activity withers. In this sense, I think Facebook has a brand loyalty problem that Google might succeed in exploiting. I would not feel guilty in the least about ditching Facebook.

Privacy – I worry a bit about my public social activity getting too close to my private browsing and searching. I’m not sure yet how this will play out, but when I’m logged into Google, it may be disconcerting to see my social network navigation bar in action while I’m searching for something personal.

The Name — I quibble with name. Is it “Google+” or “Google Plus”? I’m no SEO expert, but it seems the “+” could create search and SEO problems. This WordPress blog won’t accept the symbol as part of the URL, so that’s an issue right there. And what do you call this product in a standalone reference? “Hey, have you tried +?”

Andrew Miller’s Two Cents:

I think skeptics will say, “Well, I’m already on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I don’t really have a need for yet another social network.” With Circles, I think Google+ has the opportunity to be all things to everyone. Think about it: Facebook is for friends, Twitter is for acquaintances and LinkedIn is for professionals. Google+ trumps Facebook lists and privacy settings by presenting Circles each time you adjust your profile or post new content.

I imagine Google+ to be like the urbanization of social networks. Facebook is still the most popular site on the Internet and will be for some time, but Google+ could swallow up the rest of the towns and hamlets (Twitter, LinkedIn, Skype) and become a formidable foe. And I say this as someone quite cynical of Google after the Wave disaster: Google+ totally aligns with my needs as an avid poster, uploader and blogger. Google+ seems to play by my rules, unlike Facebook or any other social network out there.

Alex Weaver’s Two Cents:

I was beside myself with excitement this morning when Mike shared a Google+ invite with me. I was initially on the fence about this new social network and how it measures to Facebook. Plus, conversations about up-and-coming platforms becoming the “new” Facebook are exhausting. How many social networks can one really be expected to actively engage with?  But, after some research and downloading the app for my Droid, I couldn’t wait to try it out.

However, due to a lengthy coffee run this morning (25 ridiculous minutes at Dunn Bros.), I was late to work and late to accept my invite. Now, I’m told to try again soon because Google+ is over capacity.

Perhaps tomorrow will be my day. Until then, I’ll be refreshing my link every 10 minutes.

In April, Facebook launched of a set of “social plug-ins” that let anyone put tools Facebook’s comment box and “Like” button on websites outside of Facebook. Just three weeks after these social plug-in tools were launched, more than 100,000 sites had installed the tools.

It was huge news in the worlds of technology and marketing. Not because it was the next big step for the social-networking giant. Not because it presented potentially huge privacy concerns for users of the service that has previously danced all over both sides of the line that separates respect for privacy from abusing users’ trust. And not because it gave geeks and marketers fun new toys to tinker with.

It was huge because it marked what was arguably the biggest stride to date toward what Charlene Li, a social media marketing analyst formerly with Forrester Research, described as a future in which online “social networks will be like air.” That is, the people and entities we’re connected to online and the things they share will surround us and be taken for granted — like air. Their presence will be the norm, not the exception. And if you think our social networks aren’t as crucial to our survival as air, ask the nearest psychology major about Maslow’s hierarchy.

Ubiquitous social networks are different from “everyone uses Facebook, dude.” It means tools for being social are built in to places you already are, things you’re already doing. You don’t have to go somewhere to be social. Before Facebook’s announcement, I would read news on cnn.com and visit facebook.com to see what my friends were reading and sharing. Today, I visit cnn.com and see the big feature story, a list of latest-news headlines and a list of headlines for CNN articles my friends (as defined by the connections I’ve made on Facebook) have read and liked.

On levi.com, the clothing maker shows me how many friends and which friends like the jeans I’m looking at. The social-fueled site also reminds me about my friends’ upcoming birthdays and any Levi products they might like — just in case I’m inspired to pick out a gift. I don’t need to go anywhere or do anything to take advantage of these social elements. With Facebook’s recent developments, my friends are always with me. And the potential uses for this social ubiquity are limitless.

This puts two crucial and very different methods for information gathering and filtering side by side: I see stories or products deemed relevant or significant by a well-informed and -trained professional gatekeeper alongside items my friends deemed interesting, entertaining, shocking or otherwise worthy of sharing. And of course, my friends likely share at least some of my interests and certainly capture my attention more easily than some anonymous editor.

Friends, in the “real world” and online (which, of course, isn’t real, right?), make everything better. When I see a funny YouTube video, my first inclination is to share it with friends. When I’m moved by a great song, I want my friends to have an opportunity to experience the feeling, too. When my kid does something cute or funny (daily!), I want my friends and family to share in the fun. When one of my friends writes a compelling blog post, I like to do him or her the favor of helping spread the word as much as possible. These “social plug-ins” from Facebook will make that impulse easier and more natural to act upon, arguably more so than any other development since the advent of Facebook itself.

So what does this mean for companies trying to communicate effectively in this social media-obsessed landscape? Think about ways in which you can create things — products, videos, events, blog posts, experiences — people want to share with their friends. Better yet, what can you do to honestly make people want to be friends with you? I’ll spare you the clichés about this being the era of conversational marketing or that “content is king” and so on, but I will tell you this: If people don’t like you, you’re going to have trouble liking your results.

For years, Web publishers sought to develop “sticky” content that would hold people’s attention and keep them coming back. Makes sense, right? If you’re producing quality content or finding ways to keep people entertained, they’ll naturally be drawn to your site.

Then this whole social media thing happened. Folks started to recognize that if just about anyone can create content with a few clicks of a mouse, the competition for those eyeballs is going to be fierce. If your success or failure depends on attracting and keeping eyeballs on your site — that is, you’re trying to sell advertising on a CPM basis or all of your content is locked up within the proverbial walls of your Web site — you might be in a bit of a tough spot. Coming up with compelling content is but one hurdle; coming up with content that’s compelling enough to keep people’s eyes from straying is a whole ‘nother ball game.

The simpler approach is to not even try to lock them in at all. Go to where your audience already is. This is the essence of being slippery: Rather than try to create sticky content and grasp onto visitors for dear life, create content that slips into the right places at the right time.

What the hell does that mean? Don’t just build a destination for your video content; put it on a site like YouTube. Don’t just create a photo gallery on your site; set up a Flickr account. Don’t just watch the conversations go buy; leave comments on blogs and interact with people on Twitter.

Being slippery is crucial; if this social media revolution has taught us anything, it’s been to remind us to be less self-centered. Be a source of useful, relevant information, not shameless self-promotion. People aren’t often compelled to share promotion, but they’ll eagerly share information and entertainment. That is, information and entertainment allow your brand to become slippery. 

Stickiness has its place, though. As a content consumer, I want to subscribe to and closely follow certain blogs and news outlets. As a content publisher, I want to make that sort of opt-in expression of zeal as easy as possible. The key is that being sticky shouldn’t be your primary goal. Stickiness is a positive side-effect of first being slippery.

So strive for sticky ideas — ideas that stuck with me the way Kevin’s post about “slippery brands” stuck with me — that you can then make slippery. “If you build it, they will come” worked for Ray Kinsella, but if your brand isn’t slipping into the right places, you might as well take your cue from another famous film.

Photo courtesy of joelogon on Flickr

Her associate Lars Leafblad, vice president of KeyStone Search, compiled a very interesting 10-page summary of “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies,” by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research. (More on the book here.)

The book gives professionals and executives the tools to thrive in the rapidly changing world of social technologies. That’s a theme we’ve all written about extensively in this blog, and may be the single most critical challenge facing anyone in today’s marketing business.

I have a pdf copy of Lars’ summary, but I can’t link to it here. However, he’s interested in disseminating it as widely as possible, and would be happy to e-mail it to you. Contact him at larsl@keystonesearch.com.

photo credit: luc legay

I’ve wondered about that, as well. Given the essentially personal nature of those sites, I question how users would respond to an invasion of overt advertising messages. The quick failure of Facebook’s Beacon feature gives one indication, and it’s not a positive one for marketers.

There’s also the question of the disposability of technology, in which I include Web sites. Facebook and MySpace are hot today, but will they be in five years? I’d give a qualified yes, but with predictions calling for the creation of another 250,000 social networking sites in the next year (!!!), who knows whether one of the newbies will come up with a new twist that will steal users from the existing giants.

If you read the comments section with the Times story, you’ll see quite a few predictions that Facebook, et. al., will be replaced by the next big thing. “People are fickle, they grow older, their priorities change, fashion changes, they get bored and want a change in venue,” one commenter said.

I’m not prepared to go quite that far, although I get the point. But for now, there’s no doubt that having a social networking presence is a net gain for anyone with a product or service to sell.

Here’s a link to a fascinating discussion at Read Write Web on how much of a time commitment it takes to really be involved with social media.

For Valerie Traina of Denver, it’s because of a passion for the environment. Traina is leaving her job as a fund-raiser for a child abuse prevention agency and going to grad school to become an environmental journalist.

“Environmental stories are suppressed by the corporate media,” she said. “Finally, with the rise of the new media, we have a chance to really get some of these important stories before the public and help do something about the environment. Because if the environment goes, none of us will be here, anyway.”

Dr. Jim Brancato teaches communications at Cedar Crest College, a small liberal arts college for women in Allentown, Pa. For him, it’s a matter of keeping up with his students, who grew up with new media and effortlessly incorporate it into their lives. But Brancato also believes that the mainstream media have actually ventured far from the American middle.

“The corporate media have really gotten away from what the majority of Americans believe in,” he said. “I actually think the ‘alternative’ media are much closer to the mainstream these days. On issue after issue, they really reflect the values that most Americans have.”

Arthur Lies showed up at the conference after realizing that an octopus had invaded his life.

“I grew up with a newspaper called the Fargo Forum,” said Lies, a retired schoolteacher from — where else? — Fargo. “Then it became just the Forum, and then it became Forum Communications. I was looking at their Web site recently — do you realize they own 34 newspapers? It’s an octopus. And then you look at our TV stations in Fargo: four stations, and it’s Disney and General Electric and Rupert [Murdoch]. The big corporations own everything.” (A century ago, the Standard Oil monopoly was often depicted as an octopus, as in this cartoon. That’s the kind of feeling I get from people here when they talk about the corporate media.)

There’s definitely big change happening in the media world, and it’s not stretching the point to call it people power. This conference features several political bloggers — most notably Jane Hamsher and Duncan Black — who were unknown three years ago, but now have followings in the tens or even hundreds of thousands. They are mobilizing people, influencing elections and having an impact on public policy at the highest levels of our government.

That would have been virtually inconceivable 10 years ago, or even five years ago. But it’s a fact of life today, and there’s no going back.

Political bloggers have learned to harness these forces more effectively than most bloggers on the commercial side. For people like me, whose job it is to market things, the challenge is how to find the key to getting people to feel as passionately about a product as they do about politics.

But a few short blocks away, at the Minneapolis Convention Center, thousands of deep thinkers, do-gooders, bloggers and assorted social irritants from across the USA will be on hand for the National Conference for Media Reform, sponsored by Freepress.net.

Dan Rather and Bill Moyers are among those who will be there, promoting “diverse and independent media ownership, strong public media and universal access to communications.”

Me? I’m going to be there too, blogging it live on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning.

In this political season, there’s a political angle to this conference, too. The organizers say that the mainstream media’s “failure to inform and represent our communities” poses a dire threat to our democracy.

Their claim certainly gains credence from the recent revelation that even President Bush’s own press secretary thought the media didn’t closely examine the crucial issues in the leadup to the Iraq War. That will no doubt be a widely discussed topic this weekend.

I’m just hoping to snag a free pen.

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