Social Media | John A Robb

Anyone that has spent any time around me knows I like tools. All kinds of tools. Everything from my Swiss Army knife to my portable projector. I even like online tools like Facebook and Twitter. I’ve discovered that the right tool makes a job go so much easier. When Google launched their social networking tool I wanted to get a crack at it and see if it will make what I do online any easier. It’s too early to tell if it really will. Facebook has a HUGE network that will not move en masse to a new platform. I do have some thoughts on why Google has a shot at being successful with this product.

Google already knows who my friends are.
Google knows stats.
I already use Google products every day.

I like almost 200,000 other people, use Gmail for email. This means that Google already knows who I communicate with most often. The suggest tool in gmail prompts me to confirm the recipient if there might be confusion over which John or Bob I’m trying to send a message to. Google could apply this or similar algorithms to my plus account to help me figure out who belong in which circle. Google isn’t doing this yet but some variation of this is going to come.

I’m a big fan of Google Analytics. I use it on a large number of websites including Google Knol (Google’s Crowdsourced encyclopidia) and just recently Google Picasa (Picture Sharing website). The latter are two are Google servicess you don’t generally associate with Google Analytics. I don’t think it will be long before you can track your Google Plus traffic in Google Analytics. Facebook offers stats if you use their “Pages” but you can’t see them for your profile. Would we be alarmed to see how often our profile is viewed? Is this something we want to know?

Today on Facebook one of my friends said he wasn’t switching to Google Plus until he had to. I get his thinking. All his friends are on Facebbook so why switch. This is a sound rational if you are are already on Facebook and really, who isn’t? I invited another friend to join me on Google Plus and he declined because he doesn’t use social media. This is where Google has an edge. Pretty soon all Google services will have a g+ hook. Any Google service that offers sharing today will easily hook in to g+. Services like Google Reader, Bookmark, Library and others will all be made more useful when attached to Google Plus. The social graph is a powerful filter. These services all have an installed base. Leveraging that base is a way for Google to overcome the enormous inertia that Facebook has.

Ultimately who knows if Google Plus can usurp Facebook’s dominance in the social graph. The folks at Facebook will have something to think about if the adoption rate keeps up with the current pace I’m seeing.

In case you haven’t heard of it before Geocaching is an activity that is part treasure hunt, part social web. The tagline at geocaching.com is: “The game were you are the search engine.” What I find most interesting about participating in Geocaching is it’s ability to to bring people together in realspace via an application in cyberspace.

In order to find a geocache someone first has to place it, so right out of the gate you get a kind of a social interaction. It takes at a minimum two people to make geocaching work. If it was just two people you wouldn’t really need a website now would you? The process works something like this: place geocache and post it on the web, participants go to the web to find available geocaches, go outside and look for the geocache, come home and post a log about your experience. As it turns out there are a lot of Geocachers. There have been almost 700,000 logs written in the last 7 days by almost 87,000 members. This is an active community.

Not only is the community active in cyberspace it is also active in real-space. There are many geocaching events going on in a given month. These events are an opportunity for geocachers to get together and share experiences and in some cases make exciting new ones. My trip to Ishpatina Ridge was one such event. For that event me and my geocaching buddy Bakers Dozen along with four other people flew to within 4 km of the cache. There were other’s that boated or hiked in. It was a diverse group that is for sure. It was also a ton of fun. We celebrated our hike to Ontario’s Highest point with a glass of wine brought along for the occasion by Zoeker Bill.

Geocaching is an excellent example of how the social web increases real contact between people. The more events you attend the more people you will meet. All of this is enabled and facilitated by a social application in cyberspace.