How Google+ Sees The Allentown Arts District and Environs

27 Jan 2012 ~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment

I just started on Pinterest because I’m looking for an intuitive, visual way to tell the story of the arts infrastructure in Allentown. I pinned pics from a Google+ gallery, which turned out to be a less intuitive process than I supposed. To really make the Pinterest board look the way I want, I think I’m going to have to upload pictures individually, and that’s sort of not the point of Pinterest. The more I think about it, though, the more Google+’s default layout for this album feels exactly right. Check it out here.

Divergent Visions of the Past: What Would Google+, YouTube, and Facebook Have Looked Like in 1997? (And Some Guest Apperances)

11 Dec 2011 ~ Chris Cocca ~ 2 Comments

Once Upon has their answer. I love the spirit of their project, but I believe the truth is much simpler, and it’s called AOL. Circa 1997.

Speaking of which:

Beck in 1997

I literally cannot watch that video for fear of the uncontrollable mourning that might pour forth. Not a longing for my teenage years as such, but a sadness at how the Beckthos just didn’t stick.

MTV in 1997

That song is as good now as ever.

Is Google Rebranding or De-branding?

11 Jul 20112 Feb 2018 ~ Chris Cocca ~ 3 Comments

Resolved: People, for whatever reason, tend to view Google as less of a brand and more of a utility.

Suggested reasons: Google is, in fact, utilitarian. It’s under-branded to the extreme, and even its logo is generic. Before anyone had Google accounts or Gmail, we were already using “google” as a verb. The lack of flash, the absolute dearth of iconography…the lame font and funny multi-colored name, these things are disarming almost to the point of making you forget that Google wants each and every bit of your personal information even more (perhaps) than Facebook.

Facebook is nothing if not a brand. Rightly or wrongly, we think we get what Mark Zuckerberg is all about, and that necessarily flavors our understanding of his company’s ethics, ambition, and culture.

I said last week that when I’m using Google+, I don’t feel like I’m in some proprietary fishbowl circa 1990s AOL. Google looks and acts like a utility, and we’ve come to think of access to what Google does best (search) as precisely that. Facebook is a fishbowl by design, and Zuckerberg’s quest to keep you in/on Facebook for all your webly needs shows that he’s bound and determined to validate and more effectively monetize Steve Case’s old vision. Maybe Google+ does, as Zuckerberg claims, validate Facebook’s (old) vision, but only in terms of ambition. Plus is built with the relationships grown-ups have in mind, and Facebook was built as a college network. It has adapted over the years to fit the needs of adults, but it still feels like your last visit to the pediatrician. Early adopters are hitting 30 and needing a social network that’s intuitive and easily customizable, something more akin to real-world connections than “friending” and more useful and dynamic than boring old LinkedIn.

Last week we learned that Google will retire the Blogger and Picasa brands as they begin to roll those services into Plus. Is everyone starting to understand that Google+ is Google, and Google is Google+? Blogger.com is the epitome if Web2.0 branding, and if you’re not already using Picasa, it just feels like another thing. So Google is rolling these brands into itself, making them more useful and more generic than they’ve ever been. The lighter the brand recognition, the more likely we are to trust you with our data. Silly, isn’t it, given Google’s size, influence, and sometimes-faltering commitment to publicly stated values? Sure is. But it’s also true.

Don’t think so? Check out Delloitte’s recent study proving that we already hate branded apps. While Facebook is busy becoming the largest branded app in history, Google is de-branding everything but YouTube (which also doesn’t feel like a brand). Interesting, isn’t it?

Goodbye, Blogger. Hello, Bloggers! Google To Rebrand Picasa and Blogger.com

6 Jul 2011 ~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment

Google's homepage in 1998 — But seriously, can we please bring back the ! ?

Eagle-eyed reader Joey the C sent me a link with the news that the Picasa and Blogger brands are going bye-byes. I said the other day that Google+ is a great way to make Picasa relevant, and the shift to Google Photo and Google Blogs makes total sense as Google positions itself for the widespread rollout of Google+. They need a unified front, afterall. And before we compare them too much to the old AOL fishbowl (which Facebook is trying to become), the seams between Google’s products feel…nimbler…to me. With Google+ and the overall Google account experience, I still feel like I’m out on the web, whereas with Facebook, I feel very much like I’m on one site or in one social network. Thoughts?

I, for one, will be glad to see the Blogger name retired. We’re all bloggers, and most of us use WordPress =).

Google To Rebrand Blogger and Picasa in Google+ Push (jobcontax.wordpress.com)
Blogger and Picassa to Be Retired by Google (accesscomptech.wordpress.com)
EXCLUSIVE: Google to Retire Blogger & Picasa Brands in Google+ Push (mashable.com)

Did Google Just Find a Way to Make GoogleBuzz Usable?

1 Jul 2011 ~ Chris Cocca ~ 2 Comments

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.

Google, you are sly. Very, very sly.

I Just Got Google+ and These Are My Thoughts About What It Might Be. Also, if You Want an Invite, Let Me Know.

1 Jul 20111 Jul 2011 ~ Chris Cocca ~ 13 Comments

I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m excited.

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.

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