Over the last few weeks I’ve had quite a few posts up about comics. Over the last two days, I’ve been hitting the Google+ meme. Now, finally, I shall combine them. Or two other people will.
Seriously, Google. Do not bring games and pokes and all of that stuff onto Google+. That’s what Facebook is for, and if you want to succeed at being a better Facebook and making current Facebook the new My___, then keep things simple. More Berkshire Hathaway (yes, that is their real website), than, well, whatever the oppo WHAT? WARREN BUFFET OWNS DAIRY QUEEN? WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN?
Yes, I think they did, and those sneaky sneakersons did it with Google+. They also snuck relevance into Picasa while you weren’t looking.
Within Google+, GoogleBuzz is like a separate feed of whatever you’ve set to automatically go to Buzz (since no one, ever, uses Buzz on purpose). So if your Twitter is set to go to Buzz, it now also goes to your feed on Google+. The same is true for whatever you Buzz on the web. There’s also a +1 feed for whatever you +1. Both of these are separate from what you post “in” Google+ I think this is convenient. I haven’t figured out all of the privacy issues, but +1’s are public by nature. The Photos stream integrates Picasa, which, by the way, can receive automatic uploads (set to private by default) whenever you take a picture on your smart phone.
Two days ago, I did a 15 minute video blog about why I thought Google may have finally found a way to do social and to drive a wedge in the Facebook monolith. The video quality wasn’t great, so I’ll summarize here:
The Circle:
From all the previews I’ve seen, the Circles feature looks really promising. I’ve always wanted an easy, intuitive, built-in way to share certain things to specific groups, and I feel like Facebook’s lists and groups are too cumbersome, mostly because they were an afterthought. By all accounts, Google+ was built around the Circles concept.
Nativism:
Google users don’t need to opt into Google+ or rebuild their entire social graph. Google+ is a social layer, the big picture of all the other services combined (see black bar). If you’re already on Google, you’re already on Google+ (once it rolls out to you). Because so many of us who work in creative fields or freelance use Gmail as a professional address, Google+ is a natural place to begin drawing circles around what we want to share privately, with friends only, with family, and with bosses, coworkers, and clients. This may mean that adults who are already using Gmail will be the early Google+ adopters and will use it for easy sharing to their professional and social graphs. Which leads me to the next piece:
Grown-ups:
If creatives and other professionals in their 20s-40s make Plus their own, the Facebook demographic might get much, much younger This is what happened to MySpace. Maybe it sounds far-fetched, but Facebook was built for college kids and has been retrofitting for adult use ever since. Google+ was designed the managing of adult relationships (business, personal, and so on) as a core concern. It’s different by design. I’m going to hop on soon and see if I am right.
I’m hoping to record and post two new video blogs later today or tomorrow. One is going to be about social media in the hands of people watching the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt from afar. I’ve talked about it already here, but I what I think I’ll end up saying in the new post was inspired by a question from my good friend and frequent reader/commenter here at TDC, Chad Hogg. Chad is a supremely super-intelligent and thoughtful man. You should read his blog. By the way, Chad, I’m listening to a track from Tragic Kingdom as I type this. I thought you should know.
In related links below, Andrew Sullivan makes fun of Malcolm Gladwell for the later’s agnosticism on the impact social media has had on the Tunisian and Egyptian movements. Confession: I love Andrew Sullivan and am a frequent reader of his Daily Dish, but I haven’t read the linked piece yet.
The history of social media contained in an outmoded archival paradigm. Wait, what? Yes.
That said, you probably know that I’ve been very interested in this whole topic and have been following it across various forms of media. Something immediately apparent to me is my almost shocking desire to refer to news sites as “Old Media” in this discussion. I really was just about to say that I’ve been following the story across New and Old Media online, but New Media is, by definition, online. We’re realizing more and more, though, that online media is not necessarily New Media. In many cases, New Media has become old media, and the unquestionably new New Media is social. Twitter and Facebook are to CNN.com what CNN.com is to newspapers. I think that’s becoming clear. But the new New Media isn’t just new. It is, in very real senses, a media outside of time. It almost doesn’t make sense to call it New or to even call it real time. It is the media of witness, and that’s what I’m going to talk about.
If you’re following at home, I’m now listening to the Ronettes.
Last night, I came across this very well-done cartoon that outlines a popular essay about which plausible dystopian anxiety (George Orwell’s or Aldous Huxley’s) is more likely in our present and emerging future. It’s long, so let me say up front that I think both propositions need to be guarded against (that might be the most obvious thing I’ve said, ever), but that I obviously can’t go all the way with the “Huxley is right” argument when it comes to things like social media. (And neither should you. Pesky normative statement alert.)
Needless to say, I believe in curating beauty and that loving things worth loving (and sharing that love) will actually make us better. Loving crap is something different. Loving pop culture? Like anything, that’s a mixed bag. I love Pet Sounds because its beautiful. I love Elvis because he’s singular. I love “Sweet Child O’Mine” because it’s awesome and life-affirming. I think the balance lies precisely there…do the things we love encourage us to live bigger, more fulfilling, more creative lives, or do they diminish the expectations we have for ourselves by their sheer size and repetition? Friends, isn’t that finally up to us?
The other video will about about The New Sincerity. That is to say, I think I’m going to encourage everyone to keep on being awesome.
Chris Cocca 