BrackLog

12 Apps for 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Nick) — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 21:10:00 +0000

I don't know if it is the occasional wearing of glasses, the constant rabbiting on about "this cool new app I've found on the interwebs", or my constant ravings (and often rantings) about my phone, but throughout 2011 I've had a lot of questions about the apps I use - both on my phone and in my web browser.

Now we're into month three of 2012, I thought that it's about time I put together a list of my top 12 apps for 2012 - feel free to mud fling if you would replace any of these with others. I have skipped the super-mainstream ones like Facebook and Spotify, and tried to go for the lesser known or less obvious ones.

Mobile Apps

Feedly

News Aggregator

http://www.feedly.com
Android Market Link

Throughout 2011 I played around with quite a few mobile news aggregators, and despite a few short-comings I really like it. The app does a very good job of taking your Google Reader feeds, and just providing you with what it thinks will be the most interesting content from each category. What's more, it comes with several pre-filled feeds that are really quite good. Major short-coming? It doesn't seem to support offline viewing - something other apps cover up for but ultimately needs fixing. I've also recently discovered the Chrome web browser app for Feedly, which is equally if not more awesome than the mobile app. Definitely worth a look at both.

TripIt
Travel Planner
http://www.tripit.com/
Android Market Link

I have to credit Michael Cooper for introducing me to TripIt. It is a travel app that not only really neatly presents all of your travel information, but will automatically extract all of the details from over 3000 different confirmation email types and add them to the app. This includes everything from your hotel's location, booking references, help and booking phone lines, to maps between your airport and hotel. It really makes travel simple.

Mobile Boarding Apps (Eurostar + BA)
Travel Apps
British Airways
Eurostar

While I still have serious doubts about QR codes use within marketing, their widespread emergence within applications as ways of scanning into things has really taken off in 2011. Two that I have used several times this year are the British Airways and Eurostar apps, both eliminating the need for paper tickets and working really quite flawlessly. Just have to remember your phone charger...

Glympse
Tracking App
http://glympse.com/
Android Market Link

Glympse is a relatively simple concept executed very well. There are already a whole host of sports apps that track your runs and update live on your social networks - Glympse takes the same concept and applies it for your day to day travel when going to meet friends. You send someone a message via facebook, text message, or any number of other sharing options which contains a link to a map showing your position, that can be accessed via any kind of browser without installing the app. They can then track you on your way to meet them (or wherever else you may be going). For safety, you also are required to set a timer for the "Glympse" to expire so you aren't tracked indefinitely. Really handy for going to meet friends and keeping them updated on your ETA.

GoLauncher
Android Skin
Android Market Link

GoLauncher is an Android skin which not only provides you with a wealth of new options and cusotmisable features, but really improves the speed of your phone in my experience. I can't say much more than install it, play around and see if you don't notice the difference.

Plume
Twitter App
Android Market Link

I have been through a LOT of Twitter apps on my phone in 2011, and Plume is still by far my favourite. It's fast, works well, has a really nice widget, and most importantly....it's notification sound is a chirping noise! Hooooow awesome!? Seriously though...get - this - app. Really clean interface. Simple use of different backgrounds to track conversations. And a really easy smartphone friendly way of interacting and sharing with tweets. Bit.ly integration is also a big plus.

Web

SocialBro
Twitter Stats App
Chrome Webstore Link

Why is this app free!?!? If you are a marketer working anywhere NEAR Twitter, you need this app! It not only tracks your followers, but it provides a wealth of data on who you are following, who is following you back, who of those people are influential, and so on. In addition, it also aggregates when everyone else is tweeting to provide an hour by hour daily heatmap of the best times to tweet. This app should NOT be free but incredibly, is. Watch the video below. Then go install the app. If you are not using Chrome, install it now - it will be faster than your current browser. And has apps. If you are using Internet Explorer, I'm honestly surprised you made it this far.

Pinterest
Social Content Cataloguing
http://pinterest.com/

Pinterest seemed to be the social media darling of 2011. The site, currently in "invite only but actually anyone can join" mode, allows you to add a shortcut to your browser's bookmarks bar and grab any image from any site, and "pin it" to a virtual pin board. You can create multiple themed pin boards, on follow pin boards made by your friends and other Pinterest users. Think of it as Twitter for cool images. So far I've been using it for travel planning, and very quickly discovered some incredible places in the process. Very interested to see how they develop this app throughout 2012.

Springpad
Note taking and To-Do Lists
http://springpadit.com/

Springpad is a lesser known Evernote-like app. Like Evernote, it lets you take notes and store them in the cloud, accessible from web browsers and a number of mobile devices. I prefer Springpad to it's better known rival for two reasons. The first is the simple grouping of notes into work boxes. The second, and far more important is the "to do" list functionality, which makes keeping track of tasks oh-so easy. The major stumbling block at the minute is a lack of any real formatting functionality within longer posts. Overcome that, and it is a total Evernote replacement.

IFTTT
Put the internet to work for you
http://ifttt.com

Best web app of 2011, possibly? If This Then That, or IFTTT for short, is a stroke of simple, pure genius. The clever boffins who dreamt it up realised that there are a ton of APIs across the internet that you can authorise another site to both read from and write to. So why not create a place where these APIs can talk to one another? IF one does something, THEN another takes an action. With access to over 40 popular APIs, the number of tasks you can automate is endless. Want to automatically add tagged photos of yourself on Facebook to Dropbox? Done. Want to automatically add the content of links inside favourited Tweets to Instapaper? Done. Fancy adding your Foursquare Check-ins to your Google Calendar so you can remember where you've been? Done. Pure genius. Get it.

SugarSync
Cloud storage
https://www.sugarsync.com/

Last but not least is SugarSync. I know it's technically not an app, but having been through a few cloud providers I feel it needs special mention for being the best yet with limited publicity. As a former ZumoDrive and DropBox user, I feel SugarSync takes the best of both worlds. DropBox seems to be the defacto choice for most people, but doesn't involve any built in folder sharing; everything you want to share/back-up has to be placed into the DropBox drive. When you want to keep a bunch of folders all over your computer synced, this really isn't convenient. ZumoDrive overcame this, but was horrendously unreliable. SugarSync takes the best of both worlds - you have a dedicated SugarSync area (cheesily called "Magic Briefcase") but can also sync any folder on your computer. The folder management options are simple, you can throttle the background syncing on a sliding scale, and there are apps for a good range of mobile platforms. All in all, I can't say a bad word about SugarSync. If you need a cloud provider, get it!

So that's my mixed and mashed list of 12 apps for 2012. Get these, play around with them, and let me know what you think. I find them essential, but I'd be curious to know what everyone else thinks. It'll be interesting to see what this list looks like in 12 months time...

Why I couldn't care less about Google's "new" privacy policy

noreply@blogger.com (Nick) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 21:18:00 +0000

With all the talk around Google's new privacy policy from the past few weeks, you wouldn't be blamed for thinking the Mayans had it right about 2012. ZDnet has gone so far as to post a 'survival guide'... all very dramatic.

Is it paranoia, hype, or a general lack of understanding that is leading to this frankly absurd set of protests against the change taking place today? Probably a bit of all three, with a particularly large helping of numbers two and three. Here are three reasons why I really couldn't care less about Google's new privacy policy:

New? Really...?
Have you ever stopped to think about how ads from all over the internet, not just on Google sites or via Google advertising, somehow manage to target you with offers relevant to your personal interests or things you've been looking at recently? Hmmmmm...interesting. The fact is, web companies have been doing this since the birth of the internet. Some tell you about it - others don't.

Case in point - Google's privacy policy from 2005: We may combine the information you submit under your account with information from other Google services or third parties in order to provide you with a better experience and to improve the quality of our services.

Wait a second; isn't that what everyone is so paranoid about with their new policy? But they've already been dong it for at least the past seven years, AND the world hasn't ended? Weird...
How shifty are you?
One thing I really struggle to grasp is why people are so worried about Google holding all this information. They already have it; all they're doing is combining it. Or are people worried the double lives they lead via their YouTube accounts are going to start putting weird ads in their Chrome browser at work? Pro tip: If you're a creepy, shifty, no-good trouble making so-and-so, that's your own damn fault. Don't blame Google for rumbling your creepy/criminal ass.
Customisation - yes please!
Why wouldn't you want Google to know this information about you (aside from point 2, above)!? I see it as a very simple linear scale; the more Google knows about me, the faster, slicker, more relevant my entire web experience will be. In fact, strangely enough, this is exactly why Google collects this information. They are in the business of making money, and the better they can make your online experience, and the more relevant to you they can make the advertising, the more money they will make. This policy isn't some evil plan conjured up to screw you over; that simply doesn't make business sense.

I would even say that if you moan about the new policy and clear your privacy settings, you also forfeit your right to EVER moan about crappy irrelevant ads being targeted at you across the entire internet, or search results not giving you what you want right away, or you general web experience being a bit crap.

So there you have it - three reasons why I really couldn't care less about Google's 'new' privacy policy, and don't think you should either. Google is already collecting tons of info about me, which I am totally fine with because it improves my entire web experience and I have nothing weird or illegal to hide. Do you?

On a final note as something to consider, think about how many accounts you have on the internet. Now think about how many of those might be sharing your data already. Do you know who they are? And what they might be sharing? Can you control it, if you want?

I think not.

With Google, things are totally transparent. Via the privacy dashboard and their simple explanations, you can easily see what data Google holds on you, control it, and ultimately delete it if you want.

But why would you want to go and do that now....?

Footnote
For a much more comprehensive article on why you should get over Google's privacy policy, check out Steven Vaughan-Nichols article over on ZDnet's blog,

#PatentTags

noreply@blogger.com (Nick) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 16:02:00 +0000

In November I blogged about the anti-innovation patent wars Silicon Valley has been waging over the past few months. This got me thinking about the wider issues of branding and logo usage. I'm sure many of you will recall Nestle (or perhaps a lone-individual acting on behalf of the brand) trying to prohibit their Facebook fans from posting with an altered logo, and the storm that ensued.

While it is quite a radical notion to think about today, I wondered whether we could ever plausibly see a situation where a brand attempts to control hashtag usage on Twitter. Imagine: a brand purchases the rights to a promoted hashtag (for a LOT of money), but finds that users start altering it to defame the brand in some way for whatever reason. Instead of altering or withdrawing the hashtag, they try and control it, pursuing the most influential users and putting pressure on them to stop using the altered version or face legal action (or other consequences).

This seems absurd today, but I don't think it is beyond the realms of possibility. Stranger things have happened in the rapidly evolving world of social before...

It's just a (kind of random) thought, but what other unexpected developments or surprises of this kind do you think we might see in the coming years?

Patent The Colour Blue

noreply@blogger.com (Nick) — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 13:52:00 +0000

Over the past few months we have seen the race for innovation be superseded by the race for who can find the best lawyers to twist, manipulate, and generally bend patent laws.

We have Microsoft and Google, where Microsoft thinks it should receive royalties on every Android handset sold (to such an extent it would crush the market) for use of Microsoft design features. While there are certainly features of the OS that I'm sure are undeniably Microsoft technologies, reading through the patent infringement list is laughable. "No. 5,664,133 from 1997 covering "context sensitive menu system/menu behavior," known more generally as a graphical user interface that lets users "quickly and easily select/execute the desired computer resource.""

This is probably why PCPro.co.uk quotes a Google spokesperson as saying [of Microsoft] "Failing to succeed in the smartphone market, it is resorting to legal measures to extort profit from others’ achievements and hinder the pace of innovation. We remain focused on building new technology and supporting Android partners." He has a very valid point. It is the equivalent of the Middle Ages in Europe - if you can't do something as well as someone else don't try and learn from them - just wipe them out altogether. We all know what a prosperous time the Middle Ages were...

Then there is of course the Apple vs Samsung Galaxy Tab spat. Without a question Samsung's tablet (and indeed phones) look extraordinarily similar to Apple's. The issue is that Apple seems to wholeheartedly believe that they are the first to come up with the concept of a tablet. In the ongoing legal battle in the US Apple's attorney stated that because Apple's tablet is far superior to previous designs that no comparison can be made. Slippery slope, much?

Then we have the issue that entire case is not about technology, but about design. Apple seems to believe it can patent a rectangular device with a glass screen... Step back for a second, and imagine someone on an episode of Dragons' Den going up the stairs, and pitching a tablet claiming they had a worldwide patent for a rectangle covered in glass. They would be laughed out of the room. Which is probably why Samsung is requesting to have the patent lifted, and rightly so. (Just last week it has said it will relocate "The Bezel and Speaker" - somehow I doubt it will look any different). Yes it looks very similar, and that is a separate issue, but you cannot patent such a ridiculously simple concept that has existed for decades. If you can, it turns into a very slippery slope of what can't you patent. Aspect ratios? Hashtags? Fundamental basic shapes? The colour blue? A black rectangle with glass on the top? Wait a second....

The global tech giants are relying less and less on their innovative spark and more and more on their lawyers (whose interest it is in to drag every one of these cases out for as long as possible. They must be laughing). If you have made an awesome device and your competitor's is a cheap knock-off have confidence in it! Consumers are generally only fooled once... I would love to see the estimated loss in sales vs. the bill run up by constant global legal battles.

Do you find the tech giant legal wranglings frustrating, or do you think they actually have a point? Rant away in the comments box...

Picture-Perfect-Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (Nick) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 10:26:00 +0000

Over the past few months I've read a few fascinating articles about how most of us use Facebook and our other social networks to present an idealised version of our lives to our friends. We talk about all the cool things we've been up to, the cool places we've been and the fun people who were there, and document it all with pictures and videos to prove it happened.

Nathan Jurgenson wrote this fascinating piece and argues that we now all view the world in a way previously reserved only for photographers; always imagining how every scene and experience might best be captured to share with our friends. From my own experience I think he makes a very convincing point.

Last month TheNextWeb wrote about how brands are increasingly using envy amongst friends on social media to encourage purchases. The article was based upon a TeleText survey that found 13% of survey respondents said they had booked an almost identical holiday after viewing a friends vacation pictures. That's a staggering figure!

Now, I am a big fan of bridging online and offline experiences, and the research above started me thinking; if people are eager to project an exciting idealised version of their lives online, why don't we make it easier for them to do this? I'm not talking about Red Bull scale events or Ken Bock style awesomeness, which absolutely already tick this box, but much simpler, miniature versions.

What can we each do to make our clients' customers look good and like they're living awesome lives?

Hypertransparent Awesomosity

noreply@blogger.com (Nick) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 08:17:00 +0000

I don't think you will find a social media marketer who isn't talking about the need for brands to be hypretransparent on the web, and have a clear value exchange proposition for their customers. And they are absolutely right to. These two fairly simple concepts (essentially be honest and give people something cool or useful) are often massively overly complicated though. Maybe because we attach absurd technical jargon to these principles we feel the ideas themselves have to be equally complex and technical. Or have some kind of super-complex messaging interwoven into them, the likes of which even the CIA couldn't decode.

One person who understands the need for bringing it back to basics more than anyone is Ken Block and his Gymkhana series. If you haven't seen his stuff before, check out the fourth and latest instalment here: Gymkhana - The Hollywood Megamercial.

The value exchange is laid out so simply and clearly that it even features in the title of the video: "The Hollywood Megamercial".

- We're going to show you some products
- We're going to show you some really cool shit
- We're going to show you some more products

Simple. And 9.2 million views says it's working pretty well for him. The second video in the series (with 29 million views) even begins with an opening title card which reads (in florescent greeny yellow) "Warning - The following is a product advertisement. You are going to be bombarded by visuals of great looking products, and then entertained by motorsports eye candy. Do not resist the temptation to purchase the products when tempted to do so. Enjoy!"

Clothing brand Vooray has taken on a similar approach, which after 2.7 million views on this video also seems to be working. And of course, we certainly can't forget Red Bull who have taken it to a whole other level.

While of course this won't work for every brand (I can't quite imagine PG Tips drifting cars round corners following a call to buy tea bags...) and neither would it be financially viable, the principle still stands that if you provide some simple value and don't try and hide the reasons behind why you're doing it, if the material is genuinely cool people will engage with it.

Do some cool stuff. And don't try and be high and mighty and pretend you're doing it for any reason other than trying to sell more products. Why is this over-complicated so often? Answers on a postcard.

The Early-Only-Adopters

noreply@blogger.com (Nick) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 19:16:00 +0000

Like any normal person (or at least I think it's normal), I love reading about "what the future holds for [insert area of interest here]". I happen to have a fascination with technology, so when someone like Matt Taylor of the Future Foundation comes along and writes a great article about The Mobile Future of Social Media I get quite excited.

In his article there are lots of things that make people like me want tomorrow to come today (without the inconvenient problem of wishing your life away at the same time). Things like the even deeper integration of social into mobile, the rapid growth of location services, or the development of even more awesome augmented reality apps. These developments inspire us to think of all that might be possible; something I absolutely think is essential we do.

As marketers though, I think we also need to approach this with a degree of caution. To us it seems perfectly logical that if a consumer has the means to be totally connected to other consumers and given the ability to share our experiences in return for rewards, they will do it with shameless abandon. Reality check: most of them...won't. There will be a select few who of course do; let's call them the "Early-Only-Adopters" (primarily made up of tech geeks and marketers), but the majority won't. My brother is your perfect example of a standard mobile consumer; he uses the basic functions of his phone (or insert any other latest must-have common gadget here), recognises the awesomeness of any new technologies or networks I show him, uses them a fleeting few times, to then only abandon them after a few uses. And there are so so many people I have met who are just like him. In fact the majority of people I meet I would argue.

The following quote from the Future Foundation article sums this up perfectly:

"58% of consumers expressed enthusiasm for being able to scan barcodes with their smartphone to find out where a product was available more cheaply nearby or online"

People hear about the technologies, are enthusiastic about them, but in most cases are unlikely to actually use them (unless of course the barriers to usage are ridiculously low).

Again, let me re-iterate that I absolutely agree that despite so many of these next generation revolutionary ideas ultimately being destined to only ever break into the "early-only-adopters", we still need innovators to carry on working to Facebook's principle of "move fast and break things" (which I LOVE as a motto). As marketers, we just have to be careful not to get too wrapped up in our own hype of what that latest app, gadget, or Facebook gizmo might herald for our client's customers. The real skill is increasingly becoming who can spot not the coolest technology, but the one that will be most widely used (even if it does seem a bit lame compared to what you can potentially do).

The latest shoelaces which automatically check you in to your favourite coffee shop, shares the deal automatically with your social networks while at the same time pushing a message to your phone that will send a mini-ringtone to your headset reminding you that your next coffee automatically has 2% off if you perform the coffee shop branded jig (10% extra off if you can do the triple spin mctwist) might sound awesome to us....but ask yourself..."would Nick's brother who doesn't work in advertising use it? Or would he simply express enthusiasm for it?"

Battle: Mobile Apps vs Mobile Sites

noreply@blogger.com (Nick) — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 09:16:00 +0000

There's a short but interesting article in NMA from a week or so ago that cites a Forrester study, and brings up what should be an old question: do we make an app or a mobile site? I think the more pressing issue is why are we so often not even asking this question, with marketers jumping staraight to apps?

I believe it is the age old novelty issue. Let me draw an analogy; the car is invented and there are two types initially created - a regular road car and a Lamborghini. You have to choose one type to invest in for the long run. The law of cool-shiny things says you will instantly be drawn to the Lamborghini for its sheer awesomeness, but in terms of who will sell more cars in the long run you'd be a fool not to invest in the more accessible road car.

Admittedly this is an exaggeration, but it illustrates a point. I think marketers are drawn to the very expensive and comparatively inaccessible app solution because it can do a few cool tricks, compared to the more plain, much cheaper, and far more widely accessible mobile website.

With the increasing penetration of HTML5 on smartphones you can actually throw some cool functionality onto your mobile site. Just check out Facebook, or bit.ly, or Youtube or Google or Twitter or TripAdvisor on your mobile; arguably many of these are better than the native apps (particularly Facebook on Android, and Gmail on the iPhone).

Don't get me wrong : there are certainly a great many situations when mobile apps still work well or do things a mobile site simply can't (i.e. augmented reality); indeed nearly all of the examples I listed above also have an accompanying app. It just seems that all too often I will download an app to find it basically just references a bunch of mobile pages anyway. Or is incredibly slick and beautiful but has been created for a one-off event. What?! Why? Surely that can't provide good ROI? There was a time when these worked because of their awesome novelty, like the hugely successful IBM Seer, but I suspect on a whole that novelty period is coming to an end.

What's your experience with clients (and indeed colleagues) around this debate? Am I talking any sense or rambling about something that isn't a problem. Hit me up with some comments or on Twitter.

What Foursquare needs...

noreply@blogger.com (Nick) — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 12:00:00 +0000

I recently got back from backpacking around Europe for 10 days (which was awesome), and while racking up a gigantic data roaming bill I noticed a handful of deals on Foursquare that I haven't seen anywhere else before.

Almost all of the deals I have seen so far on Foursquare in the UK, are frankly pathetic. I love Foursquare, and check-in all over the place and even then I only have 7 mayorships of mostly novelty locations (my flat, a hostel in Barcelona, and an art installation in Canary Wharf being among them). Yet the majority of deals are only for mayors, and provide a laughable discount. "Free burger for the mayor on the last Thursday of every month" "15% discount on all purchases for the mayor" "Buy 1 get 1 free on your first t-shirt for the mayor" I use my mobile a LOT and am very much an early adopter, and despite being on the lookout have yet to redeem an offer.

Let's not kid ourselves...for the amount of effort (currently) needed to become mayor, the deals are embarrassingly lame and totally inaccessible for your casual Foursquare user. For anyone not interested in the gaming mechanic or novelty badges, without the discount incentive there is little reason to use the app let alone share news of discounts with their friends. 10 million users is good (0.1% of the world's population), but the majority of my friends outside the marketing world still haven't even heard of the app, and I struggle to see how this will change on the current path.

Why doesn't Foursquare start encouraging companies to provide "micro-discounts"? We've seen how successful micro-payments have been online; why can't it work the other way around just as well? Instead of offering inaccessible mayor-only deals, why not start offering much more simple "Check in here and receive 2% off any purchase, every time" style offers. Simple little things that anyone can access without any difficulty, for a small but satisfying reward. I would bet that the company offering this deal would receive many more check-ins and hence valuable data, and for sparing 30 seconds to give the company this data consumers would get a small reward.

This is not to say that bigger, more elaborate offers won't work and should be taken away. I just think that for Foursquare to genuinely hit the mainstream it needs a mechanic like micro-discounts to give it purpose and make it accessible to your average consumer. If anything, having more consumers vying for mayorship of locations will allow the mayor-discounts to grow in value and be genuinely quite desirable rewards.

With the rapid growth of NFC technology, a micro-discounts system could work even better. Who knows - the discount could be applied automatically if Foursquare links up with Google Wallet or Visa's Mobile Payment solution, or as part of their Amex partnership. Now that really would take Foursquare to the next level...

News of the What?

noreply@blogger.com (Nick) — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 17:43:00 +0000

News of the World shut down on Sunday after nearly 170 years in business over allegations that they hacked into a whole myriad of peoples' phones in the early part of this decade (though are they really shutting down...?). While I won't go into that here, it does make me wonder what allegations will surface for the 2006 - 2011 period in years to come. With so much personal information available online, and with such a complex web of privacy settings to control it, it does make you wonder what journalists are currently doing while we're all focussed on (the fairly archaic) phone hacking side of things...

You also have to ask yourself how accountable the new wave of citizen journalists will be (discussed in this very interesting economist article), who are incredibly powerful as a whole but individually not particularly accountable? The Ryan Giggs Twitter super-injunction saga is a perfect example. I think it's one of the greatest developments journalism has ever seen. No exaggeration. Whether the powers that be, such as the politicians who are now more easily exposed by an anonymous mass, will agree and legislate accordingly is a different matter...

One in 57,454

noreply@blogger.com (Nick) — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 17:13:00 +0000

BOOM!!! *Flash of light* *Cue some dramatic music* *Epic movie trailer guy says some poignant stuff that sounds awesome but means very little* And so another blog is born; one of 57,454 today apparently (I lie - I set this up months ago and have only just started posting).

To cut to the chase, I'm an Ogilvy first year grad currently based in Ogilvy PR on the 360 Digital Influence team. Like every other marketing man in the 21st century I'm a fan of this wonderful umbrella term "social media". But unlike many others, I'm also a closet technology geek (in what is possibly the most poorly constructed closet ever made...I'm not kidding myself here) and have a love for start-ups, emerging tech, and mobile. While I love Twitter (catch me on @NickBracko) it's a little bit short for ranting and debating. So here we have it...a blog for me to dump everything new and cool I've seen during the week in one place, rant or rave about it, and then have you tell me how much or little sense I make.

Awesome? Yes. Life story over. Let's get cracking...

Google+
After a painfully slow week waiting for an invite (which I finally received from 360 DIer @DanielaBadalan) I now have Google+!!

It's very interesting to see that Google have taken a page out of the Facebook, Spotify, Windows 7, and RockMelt launch playbook (among others), by starting out as an invite-only "beta", thus creating artificial-scarcity; something otherwise completely lacking in the digital era we live in. Compounding this is news last month that early adopters are starting to leave Facebook (though I doubt this will ever happen, and it will instead sit as a ubiquitous tool that everyone has and uses in varying amounts, like the telephone). What better time and way to attract this crowd of early adopters, all searching for something new and cool?

As someone who loves Google's integration with everything (I have my browsers, phone, and a whole mix of websites all synced or linked. If they let me sync with my toothbrush, I would), I really like the way it seamlessly grabs all my content and lets me choose who I want to share it with (rather than doing it automatically). What's more, their attempt at simplifying privacy settings down to "circles" seems like a great idea. As TNW points out, this ability to do minimalism quite well is what might differentiate Google from Facebook.

The main issue that any new social network has is how they will entice people to shift hundreds of existing friends, profile information, god knows how many tagged photos, and messages over. I think Google has slyly sidestepped this hurdle by making it incredibly easy to add friends in categories via the social circles feature, and by integrating itself relatively unobtrusively into your activity away from the social network.

While it is certainly missing a few easy tricks at the minute (Martin Bryant has ten suggestions), and needs to make it easier to share content between different parts of the profile (still working out how to move my +1s to my wall), perhaps its minimalism and ability to escape Facebook's clutter is what will make it take off. Zuckerberg thinks sharing is exponential, meaning that in twenty years time we will be (in theory) sharing around 1 million times the amount of content we are today. Errmmmm....without a filter....that ain't good.

I seem to remember leaving Myspace because my wall was filled up with too much content that I didn't care about. Perhaps basing a social network on filtered sharing is the way forwards. Perhaps Google really is onto something here...

Is Facebook's major flaw the (relatively unfiltered) content storm? Is Google's solution of simply filtering it enough to make it take off? Post your comments below.

*On an interesting endnote, despite how much we all bash Myspace, LinkedIn has only just overtaken the beleaguered social network in terms of UMVs in the United States, while Twitter sits back in fourth place. One not to forget.*