Google+ Pages: Can it map the real web with the social web?

One of the biggest differentiators between Google+ pages and Facebook pages is that +<BrandName> takes you to the Google+ page for the corresponding brand. Why, you do not have to actually search for your favourite product, it pops up on the Google Instant suggestions even before you've finished typing. You are not even given the time to look at the search results, which may not contain the Facebook page on the first 10 search results. (Angry Birds Facebook page appears on the second page of search results, at number 16, for instance).

Google+ Direct Connect in Action

This also means that Google connects the web to pages, Facebook does pages to web, which is consistent with the companies' core philosophies. Larry-Sergey brought all the websites at your disposal through search results on the web itself, and Mark has built a parallel web inside his website.

This is also evidently made easy by Google Badge, a way to link your website with your Google+ page. Once your website is linked, the +1 count on your actual website and Google+ page are synced. Direct Connect and Badges combined with a customizable +1 button and open APIs, Google+ provides much more traction to your website than the Facebook counterpart.

Like we earlier pointed out, Google+ is available for apps users too—an advantage Facebook does not have. With all the aforementioned features, Google+ pages can be a boon for Apps users.

As with everything Google, simplicity is what drives the creation of a Google+ page. Though Google asks for most the same kind of categories and subcategories to place your page in, a la Facebook, the form looks much cleaner on Google+, with the categories neatly tucked away in a left pane and the subcategories drop down remaining at the same place, unlike Facebook where the six available categories are sprawled across the entire page, and still does not have an 'Other' category. I had a tough time categorizing the Facebook page for Byte Channel. Categorizing is not the only pain point. Once you are done choosing a category and finding a suitable subcategory for your page, Facebook takes you through a three-step-old-school-wizard to add an image, invite friends, and suchlike. At Google+, you'd have pressed Create and your page is ready, you may edit those details later.

At the Facebook F8 conference 2011, Zuckerberg talked at length about removing friction from the entire Facebook experience, however, creating a page provides you all the friction you could imagine. Okay, Google+ was still an infant when F8 was held, and consequently pages were not paid attention to. Perhaps.

Google+ using the divide-and-rule policy in releasing features in installments rather than one complete product has been a major factor in sustaining its popularity and maintaining interests of users, critics, and industry pundits. You are about done marvelling at a new Google+ feature and just before you get used to it, Google suddenly announces another feature that brings it back to the headlines, evokes curiosities among its users, and creates interests among non-adopters. Interesting Intelligent strategy.

Pages was the most-awaited and most-wondered-about, if you will, feature of Google+ since the search-master's social product launch. Now with the launch, every product/business/organization is busy creating pages. Pages add another dimension to Google, another plus for Google Plus, can this be termed as Google++?

Rollback Google Reader using Reader Sharer

Yes, another post on Google Reader. After all, this is my most-used web-app and the source of 97% of tech and business news for me. (The other 3% comes from Yammer, Facebook, Twitter, and newspapers, in that order)

After Google's rollout of most cribbed-about and protested-against changes to its RSS-feed reading software, the entire reader world started showing their angst. Yours truly was no exception, and was quick to retort the announcement and implementation with Reader-Blogger-Plusser and New Google Reader Arrogantly Finds Its Way posts, which also mentioned a few people made unhappy by Google's decision. That did not include Brian Shih, ex-PM Google Reader (Sept 08—July 11), who criticized the changes and pointed out history of neglect (I felt the same once) in his blog post, which has gone viral amongst Readers.

Anyway, the point is, while everyone was busy complaining and wailing and cribbing and feeling helpless in the absence of a single better aggregator, this Shanghain young grad who goes by the pseudonym of Keakon, has developed a Chrome extension called Reader Sharer that rolls back the removal of social features of Reader, but retains the new look-and-feel and Plussing-one and other new features.

While this is an interesting extension, how long will this last would be interesting to watch for. Google had wanted to remove the Reader sharing to promote the Google Plus sharing, and may block, or completely remove the APIs that Keakon is using for his extension. Or, perhaps add the in-built sharing back.

If better sense prevails.

New Google Reader Arrogantly Finds Its Way

As reported in my last post, Google was up to overhaul its RSS-feed aggregator, and there were many unhappy readers out there, some of them leading to protests. Much to the dismay of RSS fans, the changes were rolled out last night, and reported on the Official Google Reader blog.

Though I have been impatiently waiting for the cross-app new look of Google Plus, I am not very happy with what has been done. It looks neat and clean undoubtedly, but there are many disturbing changes:

• I don't like the left panel, and definitely not the custom scrollbar on the left at all. Also, the small arrow to hide the left panel has vanished. You will have to use the keyboard shortcut 'f', which, unfortunately, does not appear in the list of keyboard shortcuts that comes up when you press '?'
• Items do not have any option to change the spacing between them, unlike the dense theme in Gmail and cozy and compact density settings in Google Docs.
• The Super Full Feed extension buttons, including the Super settings button, are still the old ones and misaligned badly.
• Shared items and commenting is the feature missed by millions and the most protested against. I am no exception.
• The "Keep as unread" option has been brutally removed, and the disposal is not even acknowledged. This used to come in very handy if I find a long feed interesting and could not complete it and wanted to read it later, maybe on a different computer.

The thing that irked me the most was not one of these, but the arrogant fashion with which Google announced this on the official blog post, quoting which: "If you decide to stay, then please do send us your feedback..." implying they could care less. Even the sweetener added at the end "Regardless where you go, we want to make sure you can take your data with you." smells of Google's give-a-damn attitude.



The only plus part to these changes is that you can now +1 a post that will appear on your Google Plus stream. Google is trying to develop a social network by stripping off other products of their social capabilities. With the inclusion of GTalk in Google Plus, I am half afraid GMail may see GTalk going out of its layout very soon.

The new interface is okay, people would get used to it in a couple of days or so, but this attitude may prove harmful in the long run. Not many people will quit using Google or even Google Reader, (the pain of changing and getting used to a new feed reader is more than getting used to a new UI and live with the few changes), but the overall experience creates a bitterness and brings about a loss of trust in Google. I think I was right when I deplored that Google Reader was the most neglected child; I may add to it that Google Reader readers, if you will, are the least cared for.

Update: The "keep unread" option as I mentioned as the last point in my list above has come back again. Another useful thing that has gone is the drop down list of folders and tags that doubled up as an input text box and you could type in your folder name. Now you have to choose from the dropdown using the mouse.