Google+ – Page 2

APIs: A Strategic Tool

Google+ APIs and the lesson from Buzz

Most social media users and application developers I know have one big issue against Google+: lack of an API to write posts to it via 3rd party tools.

While most might feel this is a big drawback, and someone even called it derisively as the ‘stalker API’, I think this not releasing ‘write’ APIs is a very conscious, strategic decision based on the learning from Buzz.

When Google released Buzz, it allowed people to connect some of their existing social networks to buzz and auto-post updates from those networks onto buzz. The problem with this was that most people just enabled that auto-connect and forgot about buzz. Their tweets, reader shares, talk statuses and flickr photos were auto-buzzed, but they never bothered to go in and actively interact there. Add to it the fact that most people who would have read a user’s updates were already following them on other social networks. So, once the followers realised that the users were only cross-posting content there, even they didn’t have any incentive to read the updates there. End result: a zombie network where everyone was ‘posting’ (sometimes even without knowing), and no one was reading.

Google has learnt from that experience and thus this reluctance to provide any ‘write’ APIs. Google also learnt something else from that experience – APIs can be used as a tactical tool to position the network in the market and amongst users.

And this is where its ‘read’ APIs come: assisting, ever so slightly, in making G+ the core content host for its user base.

Using a read-only API, people can auto-post their G+ posts on other social networks, or even list & link them on their blogs and websites. More importantly, using an image-reading API (which Google accidentally announced earlier today), I can use G+ as my photo host for any photos I post on twitter, my blog or almost anywhere else. The 3rd party twitter clients like Seismic, Tweetdeck and Gravity can now integrate G+ image previews using the upcoming API.

So we have a situation where users can’t auto-publish content from other networks to G+ (and thus need to be really active here to have an active stream), but they can use content from G+ to post to other networks (thus reducing, ever so slightly, their active participation on those networks).

Why wouldn’t Google want that?

I’m sure that Google also realises that most people are set in their ways and, without any 3rd party tool integration, will be reluctant to use Google+. And thus, the ‘write’ APIs will come some day. Google is just ensuring that G+ has enough active members using it as the (or a) primary network before it releases those APIs to lure in more users.

[Originally posted on Google+ here]

note2self&others : quick dump of thoughts. Might be edited / formatted later.

Tapping A Pain Point

Every new version of smartphone operating systems (iOS / Android) brings forth a ton of new features. Frequently, these new features include some (IMO) pretty flaky ones like Siri and face-recognition login. I don’t have in-depth knowledge of how Apple and Google decide which new features to include in their OS platforms, but if I was in their place, one way I would like to figure new features would be by addressing pain points.

One big pain point I discovered with my beloved Nexus One was that it could be lost / stolen, and once it was gone, I had no way of ensuring that all my data and applications on it could be secured. Yes, after I lost it, I did find a ton of applications that could have possibly helped me in tracking, wiping and even recovering my phone – but it was ‘after’ I had lost it. And that makes these applications slightly redundant. A person has to feel the pain of loss of a smartphone (or a close contact’s smartphone) before realising the need for an application that could have helped recover the lost/stolen phone.

I’m assuming that smartphone loss/theft would have taken off with the rise in popularity of smartphones over the last few years. Given the price of many of smartphones these days, losing them hurts. But that hurt can be somewhat lessened with phone insurance. The bigger pain point is the huge loss of data that we keep on these phones, specially if the phone was not locked and the data can be easily accessed by whoever got/took the phone.

My question is, given how big a pain point this potentially is, why have none of the major smartphone platform vendors – well, mainly Apple and Google – done anything about it?

Steve Jobs famously told Houston that Dropbox was not a product, but a feature. But, in my opinion, if there’s just one functionality that needs to be a feature of the OS/platform and not a 3rd party product, it is this: ability to wipe/encrypt, lock, trace lost and stolen smartphones.

Most smartphones these days come with GPS chips and regularly ‘check-in’ with the platform provider’s servers. Tapping into these two features, it should be relatively easy to provide a simple lost/stolen phone service.

What I suggest is this: Google, say, should provide a web page where I can sign in with my Google ID and see a list of all devices originally registered with that as the primary ID. When I mark a device there as stolen / lost, Google should:

wipe/encrypt all the data on the device,
remove all the applications I bought/downloaded from the device,
disable most communication functions on it,
start logging the GPS location of device, and
display a static message on the device stating that it has been reported lost, thus disabled and should be returned to owner / police.

The first 2 steps would ensure safety of any user data that was there on the device, and the next 3 will help in recovery of the device.

Along with the option of marking a phone as lost/stolen, Google could also provide a ‘un-register’ device option so users can disassociate their IDs from the device before selling or disposing it off. The basic action required from Google’s side in this case would be:

wipe all user data and applications from the device,
reset the device to factory settings after dissociating all services and user IDs with it.

Yes, any smart thief might still be able to bypass all this by simply wiping the device and installing a custom ROM, but a lot of devices could still be recovered and it would help protect user data on the phone from easy unauthorised access. More importantly, bricking phones this way would send out a strong signal to people who find/steal these lost/stolen smartphones that they are worthless bricks and they can have a greater chance of reward from returning them than trying to take them for keeps.

Continue reading Tapping A Pain Point

Twitter wins too.

In this feature war between Facebook & Google+, the consensus amongst industry followers seems to be:

Consumer is clear winner and Twitter is clear loser, everything else is still up for grabs.

Well, I’ll go out on a limb and say that I feel Twitter will be a winner too. And my explanation for that is that good old KISS principle works everywhere – in this feature-cluttered fight for social network dominance too. And in that space – for a ‘simple’ social network – there is still no competition for Twitter.

The feature battle between FB and G+ is developing them both into powerful, yet increasingly complex, properties. This is good for users like me and the people I read – we are all technologically adept, willing to trade simplicity & a little time for more powerful features and more control over what we see / read / do.

Yet, that is not what everyone wants. Many, if not most, people just want simplicity.

People like my girlfriend. Her primary network is Twitter – she loves its simplicity in her time-starved life – and the second one is Facebook – because it has an interface she’s familiar with and because that’s where most of her friends & family are, i.e. the network effect.

People like Om Malik, who wrote a short but insightful post earlier today about increasingly feeling social network fatigue and how increasing complexity was adding to it. Twitter should pick up this punch line from his post and use in all their advertisements:

I use Twitter all the time because it is simpler, easier, real-time and always on!

People who Mike Elgan quite nicely categorised here (read that full post, it’s good):

Most Facebook users just want to interact with family and friends. They don’t want to learn anything. They don’t want a more powerful platform. They don’t want Facebook to be more like Google+.

For these people, the increasing complexity of features and controls on Facebook is causing a dissonance.

Why Twitter wins?

Simply because for the first set of people above – like Om and my girlfriend, who are always pressed for time and attention – Twitter provides a clean, single timeline that they can read and update. No likes or +1s, no separate profiles to update, no privacy controls, no circles, groups or smart-lists for sharing, no albums, apps & games. Just one timeline – simple.

The fact that of all three social networks, it is the best integrated and easiest to use on mobile helps it even more.

My hunch is, that for these people who crave simplicity – Twitter will start taking over as their primary social network. Yes, people will still stay on Facebook, many will even join G+ – but Twitter will become their primary network, with cross-posting apps their tool to update the other networks.

And that, will be a big win for Twitter.

Twitter will never be as big and ubiquitous as Facebook already is, or G+ wants to be. Yet, it has a community that is highly involved and committed. These, time-starved individuals, looking for an online community where they can feel comfortable – will not just join it, they’ll love it and commit to it in a manner they never did to Facebook.

Also, though their numbers might be small, these are the people who advertisers value a lot – people with short attention spans but good money to spend. They also happen to be the same people who are hardest to reach through old media TV & print advertisements.

Result: an increase in the ‘quality’ of users on twitter – both from their contribution to the interactions on the network as well as their value to the advertisers. Or in other words – a win for Twitter.

Continue reading Twitter wins too.