Google+ a socially suitable successor to Facebook?
Ever since Facebook started to gain traction within the collective global consciousness, Google has tried to jump in on the action. Its first foray, a service called ‘Buzz’ was deemed a disaster and served to reinforce the growing belief that the team at Google didn’t really ‘get’ social media. Last week, however, Google launched its newest venture, a social network called Google+. And the feeling is that this time, Google has done something right.

Google+ is a social network. As with many social networks, it requires membership to get the most out of it. Unlike many social networks, you can still participate if you are not a member.

There are a whole host of services on offer – users can capitalise on many of Google’s existing products and services in a manner that facilitates social engagement. For example, increasingly you will start seeing the +1 symbol on Google search results pages. This is Google’s equivalent to ‘liking’ something. Google+ users have unlimited storage on Picasa, which is a piece of image editing software that allows users to store, share and more importantly edit images. It also has face recognition, but I’ll come to that later.

You will probably hear a lot about ‘circles’, which is Google’s way of allowing users to associate an individual with a particular group. For example, one circle may be ‘family’, one may be ‘work colleagues’. Depending on how granular you want to get, you may also have a circle called ‘drinking buddies’, or ‘people I met at Tom and Marie’s wedding’. It is possible to get as granular as you want and also, allow one person to be attributed to lots of different circles. Its pretty intuitive and more importantly, you can specify very clearly what group is allowed access to what information.

It’s all very clever stuff and as I spend more time over the coming weeks, you’ll probably hear more. For now, it is worth noting simply that Google has launched a credible competitor to Facebook. With Facebook starting to lose numbers, it is worth paying attention. There are however, a couple of things to bear in mind.

There is a fear that Google+ allows Google to be even more intrusive in our lives. Google wants to be all things to all people, and, no, this is nothing to laugh at. Google continues to build the largest computing infrastructure on the planet, but still manages to generate large amounts of liquidity. At the end of March 2011, it had more than $36B in cash. Google is extremely capital efficient.

The other concern is about how Google use the information that a Social Networking product will provide. Google’s one and only goal is to sell advertising. The path to this goal requires ‘radiation pressure’: Google wants to make sure we don’t escape its ads. It wants to insert itself into all aspects of our lives, to find out as much as it can about as many aspects, activities and relationships as possible. And Social Networking is about as pervasive as it gets.

Do I think that this will stop people from taking up its new offering? Yes and no. Yes, because Facebook is falling out of favour with many and people are starting to look for a credible alternative (which Google+ provides); no because Google is already a behemoth with a staggering amount of information. We tend not to like it when organisations or people have too much power. On top of this, I’m expecting Governments around the world to wake up to this and to start talking about monopolisation, data integrity and security.

Social Networking and Recruitment
Social networks are powerful recruiting and job seeking tools. The $120 billion corporate recruiting industry is being transformed (and upset) by LinkedIn because the system is such a powerful tool for recruiters to find passive candidates.  People in the LinkedIn network maintain their profile actively, giving recruiters a real-time, highly accurate database from which to search and contact candidates.

And the growth of LinkedIn has dramatically impacted many of the big players in this market. Executive recruitment firms like Heidrick and Struggles, Korn Ferry, and Spencer Stuart are losing the value of their proprietary executive networks. Mid-sized recruiting companies are seeing big companies develop more and more expertise in the use of social networking internally. And large job boards like Monster.com, The Ladders, and others are seeing job seekers (and recruiters) move their money and energy toward LinkedIn.

That’s not to say that LinkedIn is the only professional networking tool out there. Nor is it to say that the more innovative agencies, like MDH, are doomed to fail. It is simply outlining that the speed and voracity of social recruitment has caught a lot of people off their guard.

Monster finally joins the game; LinkedIn responds
Last week Monster threw down the gauntlet with the launch of BeKnown, a new Facebook application that aimed to become the professional social network for Facebook users, and a vital new tool for recruiters, human resources, and talent acquisition teams.

Monster wasn’t the only recruiting provider to use Facebook – for example, a product called ‘Branch Out’ has been around for a while and recently been gaining traction – however, it is certainly the biggest.

The use of Facebook, however, was perceived as a real coup. Whilst LinkedIn has an estimated 100 million users and is growing at a rate of nearly 3 million per month, there is an entire world of Facebook users who do not use LinkedIn (yet).  Facebook, with more than 750 million users, taps into a broader audience who uses the network for different purposes.

Now, and here is where we come to the interesting bit; any social networking product or service requires a critical mass before it become effective. Monster had hoped to circumvent this by using LinkedIn’s API to allow individuals to upload their LinkedIn contacts to BeKnown. LinkedIn, recognising the threat that this posed, simply shut down its API.

It’s a clever move, despite being criticised by many in the industry. With a single keystroke, LinkedIn has forced Monster to actually go through the difficult process of creating its own network, which takes time and effort and will act as a barrier to take up by many individuals. It has prompted a huge debate about data ownership and also gives LinkedIn time to consider a response.

Expect a LinkedIn Facebook app to arrive imminently…

Creatively, it is always nice to keep an eye on new and engaging formats, so we turn to a couple of sites spotted by Steve Lo Presti: Media Mind (aka Eyeblaster) run a blog which allows users to look at a wide range of differing advertising formats. In the spirit of openness and collaboration, they helpfully provide the code for these, too. Atlas also runs the Atlas Institute and download centre which can be useful sources of information.

Lego announced big profits this week, fuelled by the success of the strategic decision a few years back to develop bespoke Lego sets as part of movie franchises. The fact that Lego has seen a resurgence amongst adults (10% of Lego purchasers sit within a category known as AFOLs (Adult Fans of Lego)) has also been a great help. Anyway, Clone Wars is the current hot trend, so this site is quite fun to play with. Watch out for ‘Cars’ which, according to my 6 year old, is the next big thing. Oh, and by the way, I came across this site, which seems to be an interesting set of musings on Gen Y, Kids Culture and Community online. Worth a peek.

Finally, Charlie Sheen has recently broken the Guinness World Record for the fastest person to reach 1 million followers on Twitter, achieving this dubious honour in just over 25 hours (at the last check, he was standing at 1,489,036 followers) Socially irresponsible? Or just an age old human tendency to laugh at someone else’s misery, whilst taking comfort in the fact that it isn’t us? I’ll let you decide.

Just for fun
•    You are Not a Photographer – a vitriolic commentary on ‘professional’ photography shots
•    City Forward – a mashup from IBM that allows users to delve deep into the detail about their city
•    Red Bull Street Art – a collaborative collection of sites using Google Street View that showcase street art from around the world. Mashups, crowdsourcing and Urban Graffiti – so hip, it hurts.
•    Language Development Live – a bright spark at  MIT has charted the development of his child’s language acquisition from birth to the age of 5. It is a fascinating insight into the human brain (especially for anyone who studied psychology). Watch out for the TED talk when it is released.

Enjoy. Oh yes, and good luck to England for Sunday.

Google has been pretty active of late. First came the announcement that Google Voice has shifted from Beta to freely available. Then came the news that the Google Street View team are now sending photographers out to capture the inside of business premises for Google Places. With the ever increasing mix of acquisitions, this means that on pretty much a live basis, Google now has the to identify who you are (from a combination of search and facial recognition), where you are (from Google Maps, Street View, geo-tagging) and intelligently guestimate what you are doing (looking at status updates from Facebook, LinkedIn and sites like foursquare). That a hell of a lot of information for one company to hold… (and powerful for our clients if they know how to use it).

I came across this site a couple of weeks ago: Mixergy is a social networking site for Entrepreneurs. It seems to be a philanthropic counterweight to Venture Capitalism, which is an interesting notion. I have nothing against the notion of VC-funded firms, simply that the goals of a VC firm and those of entrepreneurial management tend to be very different. I’ve worked with some entrepreneurs before and they can be a tough bunch to work with – passionate (zealous even), determined and in many cases highly destructive. Most entrepreneurs will have gone bankrupt more than once in their life… and they tend to drag other people with them . However, their zeal can be incredibly infectious and I think that people like to work somewhere where the owner is truly passionate about the ideal. And as they quite poetically state, the world isn’t changed by people who have an eye on the exit.

A few years ago, I left my bag on a tube train. It was one of those dozy daydreaming moments when you walk out of the carriage, realise you’ve left your bag inside, sprint back only for the doors to glide firmly shut in your face. Anyway, I was concerned about the tube network being shut down (it was pretty soon after the July bombings and it WAS a dubious-looking rucksack) and dutifully reported my error to the tube station manager. Unconcerned, he simply accessed a section on the TFL Intranet which showed exactly where my train was and then called the driver in the relevant train to let him know what had happened. I pointed out that having such information (specifically live data of exactly where tube trains were at any point in time) readily available would be fantastic. We then had a chat about terrorism and why the management at TFL were worried about releasing such information. Anyway, I digress. Some smart Alec has now done exactly what I suggested back then – provided a live map of all tube trains running in London. OK. The interface is quite ugly but as tends to be the case with such things, the creators have provided the source code for all to see, so expect to see modifications on the horizon.

Finally, you can’t move anywhere without someone asking you about social media these days. Given the breadth of applications out there and the pace of both adoption and cast-off, it can be pretty tough keeping up with the game. Anyway, I came across this blog that is pretty useful, outlining what you need to know in easily digestible chunks.

Enjoy

Searchable video from Google (http://labs.google.com/gaudi)
Another great new feature from Google labs called Gaudi renders video content searchable. It’s in Beta (testing) at the moment, so you can only search political content on YouTube, but imagine the implications when the service goes fully live – all the video profiles that we produce for clients suddenly add to the search engine ranking of our clients. Scary stuff…

Garfield minus Garfield (http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/)
Absolutely nothing to do with Recruitment Marketing and HR, but a great reminder about context. Ever wondered what happens to a comic strip when you remove its central character? Some bright spark has gone through all the Garfield comic strips and removed all the images of Garfield. The result? Well, Jon just comes across as a manic depressive. Disturbing, but amusing at the same time.

LittleBIGplanet (http://mysackboy.littlebigplanet.com/)
I thought I’d share this as it has been developed by an Omnicom sister agency (Agency Republic) To celebrate the launch of this year’s must-have computer game, Little Big Planet, Agency Republic created a ‘Sackboy’ generator to showcase the unprecedented customization available in the game. The microsite lets you create and control your very own 3d version of the games stuffed hero, Sackboy from over 1,000,000 possible variations. Then, once you’re done, you can then share it via a number of options, including your own embeddable Sackboy widget.

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