Some time last month Google retired the “+” operator in Google searches. There was some controversy over why they would do this (as a long time user that’s a feature I often used), but it’s clear now what a clever play this was by Google. Direct Connect changes the way the Boolean “+” operator works on the web. It enforces the “+” style, and gives a distinct advantage from brands to use Google+ brand pages since a user can simply type “+Pepsi” and be taken directly to the brand page. It makes finding brand pages extremely easy… simple type + and then what you’re looking for and it auto completes with the available matches. Check out the video below to see it in action.

          

From the start, it appears that Brands and Business pages are set up similarly to those of regular user accounts.  The only differences noticeable immediate are that users can +1 a page, as well as share a page.  Users who add a page to their circles are also now considered “Followers,” of that brand or company.  Google has also announced “Direct Connect,” with Google+ within their search results.  According to Google, the new feature will work as follows:

• “Maybe you’re watching a movie trailer, or you just heard that your favorite band is coming to town. In both cases you want to connect with them right now, and Direct Connect makes it easy—even automatic. Just go to Google and search for [+], followed by the page you’re interested in (like +Angry Birds). We’ll take you to their Google+ page, and if you want, we’ll add them to your circles.
  Direct Connect works for a limited number of pages today (like +Google, +Pepsi, and +Toyota), but many more are coming.”

Clearly this will be a shot in the arm for Google+, as companies and brands begin engaging with their costumers.  It will also be interesting to see what additional features are made available in the future to business’s on Google+

Here is a quick video detailing the latest addition of Brands to Google+

          

Don’t Notify on Every Post

You just shared something you really like and you want other people to see it, especially me. The natural reaction would be to notify me like you would on Facebook. But Google+ doesn’t automatically notify me unless you you click that little “notify” button and boom! I get a little notification and can’t help but see your post. Notifying did it’s job!

Hey! Hey! Look at me! Do it! I'm notifying you! Do it!

But you really shouldn’t. And why? It’s really annoying. This isn’t Facebook. There’s no way that everything you shared is relevant to me or the other people you notified. Now, don’t get me me wrong. It’s totally okay to share and notify with niche subjects like say, “roller coaster” posts with coaster enthusiasts. But in general? Not so much.

Notify the People who are in your Shared Circles

“Sharing circles” is a cool way of saying “Hey! These are people I think are awesome and you should follow them!” And those people you shared, no matter how appreciative, are going to be very confused, a little overwhelmed, and maybe a little stressed when they get circle bombed.

I couldn't find a better photo....but doesn't it make you happy?

Notifying those people takes away that stress. Generally shared circles are (read: should be) under 100 people and clicking notify in this instance gives people a little more piece of mind when wondering where all those confounded adds are coming from. It would certainly qualm any fears of being shared in a “My least favorite people” circle share. This notification gives you away as the culprit and should be used whenever possible.

Including “via +John Doe”

Let’s say John Doe reshares one of my posts you really like but you don’t see it on my stream, you saw it on Jane Doe’s. In fact, you like it so much you decide to reshare it. Only, here’s the thing. Despite seeing the post from John Doe, when you reshare John Doe doesn’t get any credit. How will you ever let him know you appreciate what he finds interesting?

Well. Fine. Jerk.

Simple! Put a simple “via +John Doe” as the last line (or only) of your reshare. By doing so you give credit to the original person you actually saw the information from. It’s a very easy way to tell someone “Hey, I appreciate your interests.”

Stay on Topic in your Comments

There you and your friends are, discussing intelligent topic X with everyone making really awesome points. The conversation is going as well as it possibly could and then it happens – an off topic comment.

See how dangerous derailing a thread can be? Don't put those lives at risk.

While these comments themselves aren’t the worst, they tend to cause some sort of off-topic avalanche. If you’re not there to moderate, there goes your thread. So please. Keep it on topic. If you have a question or comment (or cry for technical help) leave it at the door and send a private message or create a new post all together.

Don’t Beg for Shares or Followers

It’s often that said begging for anything is a little demeaning. Whether it’s for money or for help, it usually not advised (unless you really need to). And let me just say, you don’t  need those reshares or followers.

Please be my friend so I can feel better about myself.

We see it all the time “Please share! Reshare! Circle me!” And not only is it like begging your distant cousin for an expensive Christmas gift, you’re guilting everyone into spreading your word. It’s most certainly not polite.

Don’t Invite without Asking in Private Hangouts

Hangouts are typically of two types: private and public. While there’s some gray area when you invite “Your Circles” (which should be considered public for this conversation), typically it’s pretty clear when Hangouts are intended for some people and not for everyone. Especially when you’re talking about a niche topic or having an especially candid conversation.

It doesn't end well.

So, why then would you invite someone from the outside into your Hangout? It’s like inviting someone strange to a dinner party about a very particular or personal subject. Let’s just say that not only was there not enough food prepared, but there goes the conversation for a variety of reasons. Don’t be a conversation killer.

Don’t Ask why you’re not in a Shared Circle Publicly

Oh gosh. This one makes me really uncomfortable. Imagine this: you just shared a circle called “G+ Geniuses.” Almost everyone in there is certifiable genius according to you and you’re confident that anyone who sees the circle would just be happy that they have new people in their stream.

What does it mean that I'm not included!? Whoop boop boop boop!

And then it happens. “I’m not a G+ Genius?” says someone. “Left out again…sigh” from another. Basically…exceptionally uncomfortable. That half joking thing doesn’t make it better. It’s like begging for reshares as in, now that person is guilted into including you as one of the G+ Geniuses. If you really feel that you’ve been left out, send a private message. Calling out the poster publicly doesn’t do anyone any good and makes you look a little desperate.

“NSFW” Doesn’t Give you a “Get-Out-of-Jail-Free” Card

Google officially states that nudity, hate speech, and violence have no place on Google+ but some people still insist on sharing images that would clearly be considered Not Safe For Work (NSFW) for the vast majority of employers. These images skirt the line sometimes or are blatant other times. I don’t really care what you share, but putting “NSFW” right above one of those images isn’t grounds for “What?! I told you so!” when you share it publicly.

Ignore it or don't, you can't help but see it in your stream.

It’s still in your stream there for your consumption. If you really want to share graphic photos, ask if people want to be included in the circle where you share them. Don’t share them publicly. No one wants to explain to their kid or boss why a man’s erection is covered in a ghost costume on your stream.

If you can Google it, then Google it

This one isn’t so much about being rude as it is common sense. The Google search engine is an incredibly advanced tool where you can find answers to the most obscure, thought provoking questions….and even the simplest of questions. This echoes back to the staying on topic tip earlier, but it isn’t just confined to comments. It can be in posts too.

Good advice for everyone.

Let’s just say that clogging up a stream with “Does anyone know the population of country x?” isn’t going to get your question answered faster than it’s going to be answered if you Googled it….mostly because someone else Googled it for you (probably to look smart). You have the entire internet in front of you and it can answer your questions faster.

Post Bombing isn’t so Great

Why do you feel the need to post a million in 5min? Just…please…Don’t take over my stream with your post bombing. It’s like yelling “Hey! Hey! Hey!” and no one likes to be yelled at. That is all.

I imagine those people look like this.

Now. I’m sure I missed something in here, so you’ve gotta help me out! What are your finer points of G+etiquette? Let me know and if I get enough I’ll feature you in a user generated follow up!

Circle me on Google+

          

Google+ Ripples

First we will start with Google+ Ripples.  Ripples is basically an analytics interface for Google+ posts.  Ripples shows the sharing tree behind each and every post ever made.  To views the Ripple behind any post, users simply need to select the “View Ripples,” option on any post they see.  From that point, they can zoom in, and move the sharing tree around to discover who shared the post, and who in turn reshared the post.  It’s a very interesting way to visualize the spread of information over Google+.  There is also a neat little feature that allows users to watch the sharing take place within a time frame.  Below is a quick video showing off the latest feature.

Photo Fun

The next addition to the Google+ user interface has to do with photos. Users now have several editing and enhancement options within the Google+ photo section. Whether you wish to add text within a photo, change it’s basic appearance, add fun little clip art graphics, or crop an image, Google+ allows it all. Below is a video showing off some of the fun photo editing features in this latest roll out.

          

Certainly this new feature will allow users to discover breaking news, trending topics, and new interesting people to follow within the social network. The new feature should be rolling out to all users sometime today. Below is a quick video a Google engineer, explaining the new feature:

          

I happened to be an early adopter and make friends with people like +Mohamed Mansour, +Cam Meadows, +Amanda Blain, and PlusHeadline’s owner +Brian Krassenstein. A few months later and some blog posts, over 5,000 people added me to circles. It’s a little overwhelming to be honest and part of me can’t help but to think how awesome it is. Now, this post is a little longer and “less fun” than some of my other posts so here’s a picture of a cat.

I was all like, say what?!

Now let me tell you why I think…

…Big Numbers Don’t Matter.

The most substantial value I can see from obtaining many followers (other than being able to whip out your circle count and measure it) is relative fame. I don’t mean that as people fawning over Google+ celebrities, rather more people following you  equals more people seeing your posts and having a chance to reshare it (or talk about you somewhere else). Keyword there is “chance to.” Let’s look at some examples to illustrates how more followers doesn’t correlate to having a higher chance of them engaging you. For reference, here are my engagement statistics via AllMy+

At the time of writing this post I have 5,460 followers and for my last 413 posts I’ve averaged 6 +1′s, 4 reshares, and 13 comments per post. Let’s compare these engagement stats to someone very popular on G+, like Mashable’s +Ben Parr

Ben has 56,980 followers for 416 posts which makes him a good person to compare my stats to since we have about the same number of posts. He gets an average of 19 +1′s, 26 reshares, and 35 comments per post. In order to see a correlation between engagement and number of followers (and to make my point….stay with me here), let’s compare my engagement to Ben’s engagement adjusted for number of followers thanks to a little math by +Patrick Shampine. To do so we’ll use the following equation: [([Total 1s+Reshares+Comments]/Total Posts)/Follower Count]*100

Carter: [(2341+5033+1667)/413]/5460*100 = [(9041/413)/5460]*100 = .40

Ben: [(8090+10668+14417)/416]/56980*100 = [(33175/416)/56980]*100 = .14

So what this math tells us there’s a 40% of one of my followers engaging with me in the form of  a +1, Reshare, or Comment while there’s a 14% of Ben’s circlers engaging him. This equation is unweighted and doesn’t take a lot into account like dead profiles or value in Hangouts, but it shows, on average, the chance of one of your circlers engaging in a given post. The point here being: more circlers does not correlate to higher levels of engagement despite simply more +1′s, comments, or reshares. But these big numbers aren’t really that important because:

1. They don’t measure quality of engagement
2. Dead profiles aren’t omitted
3. The user has no control over who follows them
4. None of the engagement numbers are weighed
5. No private engagement is taken into account

Does this make me unpopular now? No. Not necessarily.

And not to knock people that share GIFs and cats all day long (trust me, I love +Linda Dee with all of my soul), but their engagement may not be as thought-provoking as +Mike Elgan’s, +Tom Rolfson’s, or +Ryan Crowe’s who post some of the most interesting and complex thoughts about Google+ and the internet as a whole. The point here is that their type of engagement is different. While +Linda Dee  may have more +1′s per followers, +Mike Elgan is having an in depth conversation about the future of Google+’s integration with Google services.

Engagement is like these triangles. They're all the same general shape, but are skewed on way or another. Isosceles still sounds the coolest.

So in the regard that matters most (engagement), numbers don’t really tell us anything other than, in general, people with more followers have a lower chance of each follower engaging them (which +Amanda Blain would be quick to point out isn’t up to the person being measured).

Additionally, as people gain more and more circlers it becomes increasingly harder to engage them. It’s easy to continually engage 100 people and it’s nearly impossible to engage 10,000. So what happens is that a person who engages a popular person steadily is left high and dry and never responded to. Those people will eventually stop commenting (if they have any self respect) but may keep that person in circles because they like what that person says. For a personal example, I’ve done it with +Robert Scoble. Try as I might, he just won’t respond to me. As this happens more and more often I feel less interested in engaging him and move on to other people who are just as smart and will. It’s a curse because (I don’t think) Scoble has beef with me, he just doesn’t have time to read what I think.

So if numbers can’t predict engagement other than “there’ll be more of it, but a lower chance of each follower engaging you” and that bigger numbers make it harder for popular posters to engage, what can they predict? Well, let me tell you…

…Why Big Numbers are Awesome.

We’d all be lying to ourselves if we didn’t have a mini celebration for every thousand (or 100) followers we hit. Let’s not kid ourselves there. And it’s okay! Like winning a superlative in high school (which means nothing) it’s still a fun party fact (I won most huggable…probably because girls are less intimidated by me touching them). So if they’re supposedly meaningless, why are we so obsessed with raising our numbers? It really boils down to ego and exposure.

"I'm awesome!"

Well, first and foremost, more followers must, due to reasonable and logical deduction, lead to higher levels of exposure. Now while theses numbers aren’t available, exposure leads to fame, and who doesn’t want to be famous? Now, while the value of “fame” is hotly debated, if you have a good idea, you want people to listen to you. There’s this weird psychological thing that tells us “Exposure is more important than engagement!” And those people aren’t very smart, but they have a point: exposure is important.

+Steve Ward is infamous for valuing exposure and big numbers calling Google+ a videogame and followers equating to a higher score.

This is kind of douchy.

Now, because I can’t resist, here is +Dan Soto’s genius response:

Ha!

But let’s look at this from another perspective. +Steve Ward is using this service for different reasons than +Dan Soto (comments about the Dalia Lama’s manhood aside). Ward is here to promote his show and Soto is here for a rewarding experience (yet Ward is on the Suggested User list and Soto isn’t. More on that in another post…). In other words, Ward wants people to see his advertisements while Soto wants to know what people think. Soto may be (much) more in line with what Google+ is all about, but they both value exposure of some degree. Ward’s engagement is super low with rarely more than 4 or 5 +1′s but it doesn’t really matter to him. Soto has very strong engagement with over 10 +1′s on most posts and being in a lot of circles has helped him to engage those people and for other people to discover his awesomely sarcastic humor.

Here's a really cute dog to make sure you're still with me. I'm almost done!

While Ward uses numbers to inflate ego, Soto uses numbers to engage. Numbers are important to both, but again not equally. But here’s something I’ve rarely seen discussed: big numbers add legitimacy to profiles. Like or not, more people are going to care about what you say if a lot of other people care what you think. It’s mob thought.

"Yarg! We all think the same!"

You could be a genius, and while Google+ does a good job of rewarding those people (I’ve written about it before), but if you only have 50 followers people are going to ask “Hmm. If they’re so smart, why don’t they have so people circling them?” It’s not ‘fair’ and while people who think like that may not be your target audience, I’m going to make the assumption that you want people to care what you think (especially if you’re a genius). Bottom line, big numbers are also awesome because it somehow validates your thoughts.

So. What does this boil down to? In my opinion, big numbers matter less than engagement, but that they also serve a function like helping you get discovered to open you up for more engagement. In the end, engagement triumphs…but I’m still excited about my 5,000+ circlers. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Let me know what you think in the comments below!

Circle me on Google+

(this message has a little more irony than usual)

          

When you go to make an edit to a Blogger profile you’ll now be greeted with a message asking you to connect your Blogger to Google+. Sadly, neither of the links work at this time, but it is obviously an indicator of further integration of the Google web properties into Google+ ecosystem.

The Google Operating System blog states, “It’s obvious that Blogger profiles will be discontinued and replaced by Google Profiles, but it’s not clear how Blogger will integrate with Google+”. Moving existing Blogger profiles and consolidating them into Google+ certainly makes sense. The statement about upcoming Google+ features on Blogger is pretty open ended. Easily adding the +1 button to Blogger certainly comes to mind. Google released information about adding sharing buttons back in 2010, but good luck finding them in the new Blogger site redesign. Cross posting content also comes to mind as well as offloading of comments to Google+.

Blogger has been able to use Google’s FriendConnect for quite some time as well. Could FriendConnect get folded into or replaced by Google+? That would make sense given Google’s statements about being an identity service. FriendConnect also powered a drop-in gadget, providing the ability for Blogger authors to monetize content through Google AdSense. We all know Business Pages are coming, and that they’ll want the ability to run ads.

In an interview with Steven Levy, +Bradley Horowitz (Google’s VP of products) says that Google+ is actually Google itself.

Until now, every single Google property acted like a separate company. Due to the way we grew, through various acquisitions and the fierce independence of each division within Google, each product sort of veered off in its own direction. That was dizzying. But Google+ is Google itself. We’re extending it across all that we do — search, ads, Chrome, Android, Maps, YouTube — so that each of those services contributes to our understanding of who you are.

I’d pondered in the past if Google+ would replace Blogging. Again, I do not think that is the intention. However, Google already has an easy to use content creation application with Blogger. Blogger already supports the ability to apply themes, something Business Pages will surely demand so that they can have a distinct brand identity on the Google+ platform. Again, Blogger already has the ability to leverage Google ads and gain analytics.

Are the coming changes to Blogger the first indication that the inbound API’s for Google+ are coming together? Until the links go active it’s speculation, but clearly Google is aligning all their various web properties around Google+. Leveraging Blogger for content creation, folding in FriendConnect, themes, analytics, etc certainly makes sense. Integration would make Blogger and attractive platform for publishing, and certainly furthers the concept of making Google+ the central hub of everything “Google”.

          

When you click on the extension you can see all of the Hangouts currently happening in your stream and join straight from the browser. It’s a super simple app that updates in real time. Downloaded in over 50 countries so far, Hangout Canopy will collect data to show what the most popular public hangouts were that month and help you discover new ones. Integrated with Twitter, the extension clearly displayed with Hangouts are public and which are only shared with certain circles. And here’s what it looks like:

Enjoy! You can download the extension here.

          

This afternoon, however, Senior VP of Social at Google, Vic Gundotra, made a quick announcement about the the policy.  At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, he stated that Google initially wanted to set a certain atmosphere upon the launch of the social network, but has realized that there are legitimate uses for pseudonyms within Google+.  He said that Google+ will be supporting other forms of identity within the next few months.  Whether anyone, will be able to use a nickname or pseudonym instead of their real name, or if users will need to privately provide their real names, has yet to be answered.  Either way, this announcement should appease some of Google’s recent critics.

What is your opinion on the real name issue?  Are pseudonyms something that is needed in a social network like Google+?

          

This is, we hope, one of the most relaxing and addictive games you’ll ever play! The original version of this game, which launched on the Kindle, is still to this day one of the highest rated games on that platform. And this version has bears.  Giant bears.

In Triple Town, you build a colony in a brave new frontier.   By carefully planting trees and bushes, you’ll craftily grow huts and then houses and finally the mythical floating citadel.  Can you build the city of your dreams?