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By now you’ve all heard of Google+, Google’s latest, and in my opinion, best attempt at building a social network that people would adopt and find to be part of their daily lives.  Indeed, it’s growth has been astounding, gaining 10 million numbers in around two weeks.  I actually happen to really see real potential in Google+ and have been an active participant in the early stages of the product’s growth (psst: Circle me here) and think the first product launch has been an amazing success in terms of answering questions about whether Google as a company can build something visually attractive and usable (yes), of whether Facebook and Twitter ever face a real threat in terms of the social networking sphere (yes), but above all, whether a deficit in product feature set based on real-world usage built up over 7 years of Facebook, 5 years of Twitter, and even it’s own largely failed attempts in Google Buzz and Google Wave (features of both of which have made prominent appearances in Google+) can be made up in short order.

I think the answer for this question is also yes, in fact, I think they’ve already innovated in a few key ways:

• Clarity in the definition of the audience for your content through Circles. One of Facebook’s biggest failures has been privacy of content, and Twitter has made it simple for two audiences – either you’re public or you’re private.  Facebook groups have largely failed because they were a bolted on afterthought that never really made it into common usage patterns for more users.  Twitter’s privacy model is simple, but leaves a lot of middle ground in terms of subsets of audiences. In fact, when I made the decision to have a private and a public Twitter account back in early 2010, it was to “group” users into different content audiences.  But Google has gone one step further, allowing you to make your content appeal to as much or as little of an audience as possible, and reminding you of this fact every time you share content.  This, I think is the biggest single win in Google+.
• The ability to find and connect with other users quickly. Need to find someone on Google+? Just type in their name in the search box.   Doesn’t get any more simple than that.  People “Circling” me has grown at an astounding rate through use of recommendations, it took me more than two years to get this number of followers on Twitter.
• Video chat with purpose. Hangouts really are just video chats on the surface, but the key difference is their use case is defined in the title.  Rather than the esoteric “video chat” title many apps have, giving the product a name like Hangouts suggests to users “What it does”, rather than “what it is”.  Apple has done this in the past with countless products, which at their surface are nothing more complicated than others on the market, but are just marketed based on use case.
• Sparks as plug-in content sources for discussion. The concept of introducing curated interest graph level content through Sparks just one layer away from conversation and sharing is a potentially powerful tool for direct content discovery.  The integration there will only get better, and be extremely beneficial for the media sources who are included there.

This is not to say there aren’t problems and issues with Google+ as well, but in my mind, these fall into the “this is a version 1″ kind of bucket, and are to be expected of a product still in early beta.  I think the biggest single question that needs to be answered is far more philosophical.

Back in 2007, when I was working for JetBlue, and this new shiny toy called Twitter came along, we realized that this was somewhere we’d need to be – even though we didn’t exactly realize quite how or why yet.  We saw the buzz growing out of our early adopter friends and realized that they were on to something here – it wasn’t just a service, it was a real-time communication platform akin to a telegraph, more real-time than a website, and more accessible than a telephone in certain situations (i.e. stuck on an airplane with just your cellphone to communicate).   So, I took the step of signing up for username “@jetblue”  with my JetBlue corporate email address, totally expecting some sort of privacy / trademark control to kick in.  And, nothing happened.   We had the username, and the bigger issue was that we didn’t know quite what to do next.   We didn’t even tell our Marketing / Corporate Communications leadership that we had it for some time, because we didn’t even know how to describe what we were trying to accomplish.  We were one of the first, if not the first, brands on Twitter.   I sent an email to Biz Stone, and asked if there was anyway to snag a spot on their featured users list, and to sort of “out” ourselves as authentic representatives of the brand (this was long before Twitter even thought about the need to verify people), and after about three months on the list, we’d grown to a few thousand followers in a time when Twitter had less than half a million total users.

Being first definitely helped, but over time, we needed to provide value to our users.  We started with a few Sales and Marketing messages (the first tweet is currently credited as “Woo-hoo! I am the official airline of Springfield! Aye carumba!”, which was a reference to a sponsorship with 20th Century Fox helping to promote The Simpsons Movie, one of the most fun campaigns a Simpsons geek could work on), but, it became obvious that the users wanted something different.  It was from there that Morgan Johnston (G+, Twitter), still at JetBlue, and Corporate Communications team, adopted Twitter as important and took the initiative to build it into the real time support and information system that it Twitter is for them today (and yes, the Marketing messages did end up finding a home through @JetBlueCheeps, something I entertain myself in thinking is the legitimate stepchild of my original marketing version for the JetBlue Twitter – except it too is much better).  We sort of pushed our way in and expanded the intended use cases to include “non-human” entities, to Twitter’s credit, they were always supportive of.

Google now faces a similar crossroads.  With dozens of brands clearly wanting to establish their beachheads early on in the lifecycle of Google+, and dozens of brands and already having done so, Ford, and  news organizations most prominently among them, and Google’s stated intentions as to not allow existing “non-human” entities, save for a pilot program, has left many brands with the decision of waiting for Google to open up their pilot for feedback vs going ahead and creating profiles on the existing personal profiles platform with the risk of losing out on the early-adopter graph.

Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic echoed the confusion perfectly in this post.  Morgan, ironically enough, is waiting for JetBlue, while others like Dan Lewis at Sesame Workshop are pushing ahead.  Dan Patterson at ABC News Radio initially decided to shut down and delete their profile, but then brought it back when he realized the needs of his community, and with the reality that many other brands have taken the same course.   I’ve claimed a profile for AOL and a few of our other brands, but I’ve also added our names to be included in the trial.

Make no doubt about it, brands represent an important part of the growth and longevity of Google+, especially for “regular people” who are trying to find the use case for why they should care about any other social network besides Facebook.  Initial interactivity on Google+ is so high because most of the content is starting to help define the initial interest graph of its users. At the point, the key decision determining if people stick around is finding enough people creating content interesting to them. That’s ok while most people inhale great “how does this work” content from people like Ben Parr, Craig Kanalley and Robert Scoble. But the reality is the first wave of users have moved on to “what’s next”. And Google needs to answer the brand question quickly to build another layer of trusted sources here. Save “hyperinfluencers” who have carried their Twitter audiences here, the best content sources will come from brands they trust.  This will help to make Google+ a “can’t live without” service for people who create and consumer content for business and pleasure.

It seems that the ball is now in Google’s court to decide what identity is, and how to support it with previous precedents set on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Foursquare, Quora and countless other platforms.  This is certainly the first product battle of Google+ young life and can only be answered through swift, decisive, and possibly unpopular action.

Look. I get it.  Smart marketers take a look at their demographics and make assumptions about how to target certain kinds of individuals.  In the new era of “private is public”, it seems that people already know lots about me.   My work.  Where I live.  What I enjoy.  Where my sports loyalties lie.  And through this blog, and my public Twitter account and Tumblr I indeed volunteer a lot of information for “the Google” and the rest of the world to make whatever deicsions they like about me.   And I’m usually fine with that and the spam and the baggage that comes with it.

But, right around this time of year, when the mass rush to “get mom the perfect gift” comes around, I take pause.  This is the part of the story where I share that  I lost my mother about 2 and a half years ago, and think of her often, and this one time of year is when the grief that I have over her loss gets confused and remanifests itself in very strange ways.

Because I get e-mails like this, that remind me of the joy I used to get getting and giving gifts to my mother.  And of the joy she would get receiving them.  And, above all, of her.

And this is when segmentation can go horribly wrong.  Because, there’s no way for marketers to know whether or not my parents are alive, or if I’m speaking to them, or if they are someone I think of often.  And, frankly, I don’t think it’s any business of theirs in the first place.

Because they just make this assumption that:

1. I would want to get a gift from her.
2. That I have the means to buy a gift
3. I would want to get her a gift from you
4. The “cost” of mistargeting this message to me is low.

Yes, I admit, the sensitivity to 1 and 3 are definitely a driving factor behind this post, but I think the sensitivity to this use case is one that is missed by a lot of marketers.  And, yes, I can deal with e-mails that are most logically intentioned (like the copies of magazines I’m getting because I’ve stopped at Babies ‘R Us so much for friends with recent babies), but this case has a particular set of baggage.)

Why? Because I have no way to tell marketers I’m not interested in these messages.  They just come.  One good example of one place where I could, the one place that DOES know I had a mother that I had a good relationship with — my online florist — would require me to go in and delete her address from my contact book, not the most elegant solution on a literal or metaphysical level.  But then I realize,  I shouldn’t have to opt-out of having a mother who’s alive to avoid callous e-mail reminders that she isn’t.

It’s ironic when you compare the other milestones of her life, her birthday, which doesn’t have quite the spam impact and the anniversary of her passing.  Which, no marketers are interested in.   It’s a day I choose to mourn in different more deeply personal ways, and no marketer is interested in that.

So I’ve decided to start opting out of e-mails from any advertiser who makes this assumption about me and encourage you to do the same.   And I encourage those of you who are marketers to consider this use case more carefully.  Because, someday, sadly, we’ll all be on the other end of this last segment.  And the loss will always supercede the gain.

Tomorrow is my last day at CafeMom, and I wanted to take this opportunity to thank the team there for a wonderful time as their Director of Emerging and Social Media Strategy.  It was a very tough decision for me to leave, and I really enjoyed my time there.  They have (somewhat quietly as least in terms of NYC tech press) built something very unique within the industry, a product that major brands want to emulate, a team that genuinely cares about their product, and a niche that advertisers love into the #75 most valuable startup in the world (yes, worth even more than Foursquare at least by Business Insider’s evaluation).   It was a very tough decision for me to move on, and I will very much miss the amazing people who work there, and the amazing amount that I learned about startups, community and content marketing with social media.

As I wrote just over a year ago, I’ve always tried to diversify my career with amazing opportunities to work for all different kinds of companies, and as I thought about the next step in my career, something drew me to AOL.  I applied, somewhat on a lark, to see if they were looking for people like me to help their growing team, and I’m now extremely excited to announce the next step in my career.   It felt a lot like JetBlue to me in culture, vision and passion, and I realized just how much I missed that sort of team environment.

So, after many amazing conversations with smart people, and after seeing their spirit and their belief in the goals of the company, and more importantly, getting to see them for the people that they were, I was hooked, and floored when I got word that I would be their new Social Media Director. AOL has made amazing acquisitions, added smart tools, make great investments, added smart people and executed on great ideas, and I’m just flattered to be given the opportunity to join AOL at this point in it’s history.   AOL did a lot for bringing “Social Media” to the masses, with their little invention called AIM, and now I’m looking forward to helping the organization into the next wave of community and content marketing.

I’m beyond excited to get started on my first day of November 15th, and join a bunch of friends and make a bunch of new ones down at AOL’s NY office on Astor Place and thrilled at the opportunity to help AOL continue to grow and distribute their content, and build communities for some of the best brands on the Internet.

I’m very proud to be an AOLer, and hope I will for a long time to come. I can’t wait to take this huge step in my career, and I thank them wholeheartily for the opportunity.

Thanks to all of my friends, and family for their great references, and continued support as I make this move.

More to come, I’m sure

Earlier today, I clicked on a photo shared on Twitter through DailyBooth.  As I’m not a regular user of the site, I got a sign-up prompt at the top of the page:

Oh snap, <username> is on DailyBooth!

DailyBooth is your life in pictures. Join today to start following cool people like <username> and start snapping pictures!

And something “snapped” in my mind.  It finally occurred to me that perhaps the time for failwhales, and broken axles, and cutesy error messages containing (ZOMG, LOL, #fail, etc) is over.

While I proudly carry my geek card, and will for the rest of my life, it seems like the part of the geek culture that’s insular, the part where we make memes and jokes only understood by other geeks, is wonderful for the geeks in this world.  And, yes, I get a kick out of Double Rainbow, and Sad Keanu, and most other Internet memes.

But, a lot of the time geeks forget that the rest of the world aren’t geeks.  Colleagues. Potential investors.  And most importantly, potential customers.  And when you start to cross that line into the promised land of “critical mass”, the geek culture starts to alienate people who may want to give you money.

Using this sort of “l33t” speak (yes, I hate that word too), has a very definite impact on perception of brands.  If you as a company desire nothing more than to cozy up to your Internet geeks, and create an enduring relationship with them, then, drop all of the ZOMGs you want in your error/support language.  But, the minute “regular” people start to value your product or service for it’s merit, and not it’s cultural definition, your “l33t” speaks starts to alienate people and make you look pompous.

When it’s time to “crossover” to the general public, it’s time to retire the snark (at least publicly) and take your company, your brand and your product or service more seriously.  It’s as if many of the people who run Internet businesses still have to rely on “cute”, when more often “solid”, “recommended” and “useful” are adjectives that they should be aiming for.   There are many ways to inject corporate personality without resorting to “cute” or “gimmicky”.

The modern Internet has been a viable concern for something around 20 years now, and while a lot of the cultural impact it’s had on corporate society, media, marketing and PR is revolutionary, the one thing that’s never changed is at the end of the day, it’s about making your users happy and offering them the best user experience you can, and supporting them when things go wrong.

Let’s take the hard work we do a little more seriously.  The Internet isn’t a toy anymore.

What do you think?

(reposted from my Tumblrrrrr)

Most of the value created in digital today is from the perceived (and often overblown) difficulties in actually creating things.

Websites, ads, blogs, whatever.  Acronyms like HTML, AJAX, PHP, FBML, etc are made to sound scary, especially by agencies who like to make a buck off of selling you services that prevent you from ever having to “get your hands dirty” with this “nasty code stuff”.  This is a very large reason why digital agencies get business – because most business folks can’t “speak geek”.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t legitimate reasons for using agencies, especially when there really aren’t any people capable of doing things digital within your organizations, but even in those cases “speaking geek” you call “BS” when people claim they can’t do something you need them to do, because you can understand what goes into it.

I always try to tell Marketing and Product folks who work in digital to at least take an course in HTML/CSS, or JavaScript, or something that actually allows them to get under the “hood” of the Internet.   Understanding technology ALWAYS helps.

Of the people give these things a try, 9 times out of 10 realize they aren’t as difficult as perceived, or whoever sold it to them says it is, and they all up more empowered over the success of their products and services.  A lot of time they find it to be a fun exercise.

“Speaking geek” allows Product people/Marketers to become the glue that holds projects together.

In my 13 years of digital experience in just about every type of role imaginable, I’ve spent my time in the space between Marketing/Product and Tech.  I’ve found dozens of really smart people who just couldn’t communicate what they wanted, and tried to help them reach their goals.  In that time, I’ve found three things that remind the same no matter what the company is:

- Developers like to develop and build, but often have great ideas about better ways to solve problems that they can’t communicate (through political channels, or just not in a “non-geeky way”) to marketing/product people.

- The marketing/product people don’t always know what they want, and even if they do, this miscommunication makes it really difficult to explain in a geeky enough way to make it crystal clear to the developer what they REALLY want.

- This miscommunication ends up causing the deliverables to be different than expected, and requires a phase in the project where things are normalized.  And this is where a lot of time is lost on projects and launch schedules.

I genuinely believe that people are too defined in particular roles to be extensible (You’re just a *project manager*, you have to do A, B and C.  Or you’re an *analyst*, so you can only do X, Y and Z).  At the the end of the day, GOOD IDEAS come from anywhere, and product people need to understand and embrace that.

Being able to understand the guts of the Internet really helps to solve this problem, because now you can (pardon the cliche) “walk a mile” in another person’s shoes.  You can see in their mind the problems they are looking at, the issues they see during the project, and, most importantly, be able to communicate with the entire team on terms everyone can understand.  Teams learn best from each other when small groups of different disciplines work closely together, and the more the non-tech person can get out of those informal conversations, the better everyone feels about their knowledge.   When you’re on that level playing field. people are also more willing to give you the benefit of a doubt as a Product person, simply because they know you are trying to help.

There are a wide array of resources available for individuals to learn technology.  Try one.  It’s not as difficult as you might think.