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Today we’ve got just a very quick blog post for you to let everyone know of a couple changes to Google+. Now you may be saying, “Google+? Why should I care?” I’ll leave that debate you your own mind save to say, if Google asks you to drink some Kool-Aid, just hope it’s a flavor you like. It’s become very clear over the past couple year that not only is Google not going to let Google+ go the way of Google Wave or the litany of other failed tests, they’re making moves to insure that it thrives or at the very least becomes the control mechanism for your other activities to a point where it doesn’t matter if you use Google+ … you’re information is being stored there regardless.
But today I’m not discussing the benefits of Google+ specifically, just covering a few key updates. So let’s get to that.
Changes To Google+
As of the morning Google has announces that they’re rolling out some changes to how your profile functions/appears. They are:
The size of cover photos has increased to 2120px by 1192px. To me this doesn’t make a ton of sense as it pushes the actual information down the page requiring more scrolling on all but the largest monitors but I can see applications of it for photographers and designers. While I may not entirely believe this max resolution is ideal, I highly recommend toying with different images and this definitely provides a wide-range of options.
A tab for reviews. They’ve added a tab when users can see all the reviews you’ve done. You may want to scan through your reviews and make sure they match the image you want to send publicly. One might argue you should be doing this all along but I know I looked as soon as the announcement came.
Editing your info get’s easier. They’ve made the interface for editing your information a bit clearer and easy to use.
They did note that things are rolling out gradually so if you don’t see it yet, check back soon. This writer doesn’t expect it to be a long rollout as it’s a Google+ change and they don’t want people to check, see they can’t play around, and forget to come back.
Have you ever had a bunch of tabs open, decided to turn on your speakers/put on your headphones, only to find out that there’s something unexpected making sounds but you don’t know what?
Most annoying demonstration possible..
Viola! When you play HTML5 audio in a tab the browser animates the favicon to indicate this. (No, this doesn’t mean Chrome supports animated favicons yet, that’s still not working.)
Now I cheated and used a ‘canary build’ of Chrome to accomplish this, but really, other than working on cleaner animations/UI, this is a ‘must have’ option for all browsers!
I also took the time to show that it’s not ‘visualizing’ the audio in the tab (that would suck up too much CPU resources) but merely drawing on the favicon to indicate that the tab was recently attempting to play audio.
The new build of Chrome apparently also has an icon to indicate when a tab is recording, but I didn’t have any easy examples for demonstrating that option.
One of the things I stumbled on in the process of making this post was too note-worthy to not include in this post.
The ‘canary build’ of Chrome doesn’t use your default Chrome profile, and it can run side-by-side with your currently installed ‘stable’ version of Chrome with no cross-talk.
This meant that I was plopped into the YouTube TV/Movies when I went looking for a video to play, and I stumbled on this bargain:
Clearly YouTube needs to work out some pricing errors because I could get a blu-ray of Red Dawn for $20 brand new, and they go for $8 used online. Seeing that the HD version is $5 more really leaves me wondering how the error was made..
Is it possible there’s a Patrick Swayze fan on the YouTube Movies team?
“Nobody put’s Red Dawn in the discount corner!”
UPDATE: Apparently someone DOES read this, and apparently I am not keeping up on movie releases. This is the 2012 ‘Red Dawn’, a REMAKE of the 1984 original, where the reds are North Koreans, and the plot involves an EMP attack that makes a ground invasion a ‘teeny tiny’ bit more plausible.
Being a youthful person (aka: I never grew up) you could say I was a child of the 90s, but in all honesty, this new ‘Child of the 90s’ video promotion, from the marketing team behind Internet Explorer, just makes me feel old…
I’m pretty sure that generation YoYo came earlier & what’s up with that Apple II?
When I was young we had:
- 300baud vs. 56k
- 5.25″ vs. 3.5″
- monochrome vs. color
- Garfield™ vs. puppies
- Donkey Kong vs. Tamagotchi
- Handi-Snacks vs. Lunchables
- hockey cards vs. pogs
So it’s pretty close to my generation, but still makes me feel old.
Does it make me feel any affinity for IE, as if I can relate to it’s embarrassing past after remembering fanny packs?
Not really. It makes me remember when Netscape decided to put expiry dates on their browser so I was forced to install IE only for fear of support calls asking how to update Netscape.
Still, not a positive moment for IE, just being the browser that ’caused the least issues’, wasn’t much of a title?
How has that changed? Well now IE is, in my circles, the browser that that ’causes the most issues’.
So they grew up, but not the way we’d like, and until they expire all the old copies of IE laying around or break off to a new product name with zero ties to old IE issues, I thin IE is stuck with the ‘difficult child’ image.
When I was a kid..
When I was a kid we had electron guns we’d sit in front of, and the only thing between us and the gun firing electrons was a glass plate.
People said it wasn’t good, told us to keep our distance..
Now with Samsung offering curved OLED screens they are urging us to get close, saying that the screens offer an immersive experience:
OLED technology means less emissions, heat, and power consumption than almost any full color display technology available today.
As someone with less than 55″ inches of screen space curved around him right this moment, I’d have to say that this first screen will make it’s purchasers VERY happy once it comes to market and stops being a poster child for what’s coming.
Displays need to step-up indeed, what with all the 3d options coming out, including the very exciting Oculus Rift that’s been generating some interesting reaction videos (WARNING: Strong Language/Reactions):
Candid Anthony didn’t seem very impressed until he tried it..
So while folks were saying the next step in displays will be to plug into our brains, it appears that we are finding another step closer without the brain jack.
It has been over ten years since people began making the choice to share their lives online, and users buying into social search will be the next step according to Facebook. Facebook has announced the release of their new search tool, called Graph Search; a reference to the network of friends its users have created.
This new search function encourages users to divulge more personal information in order to provide better advertising results.
Google began introducing semantic over the last few years, and there have been numerous attempts from other (Yelp, Trip Advisor, and Hunch) to utilize social search; but nothing at the order of magnitude at which Facebook operates.
This new search function is being regarded by many as a test for the users of the social networking site which could have repercussions for the Internet at large due to the scale at which Facebook operates. The test will show whether users are willing to allow and contribute to more sharing of their personal lives and whether or not social search is the future of online interaction.
If successful, Facebook is confident that it’s over one billion users (1.01 billion as of September 2012) will be willing to share more information from the movies they watch, the places they visit or the food they eat.
Facebook’s algorithms will filter search results for each individual and ranking the friends and brands that it thinks a user would trust the most. Initially, the new tool will mine users photos, check-ins and likes, but will later search through a users complete profile, status updates, and posts.
Tom Stocky, one of the creators of Facebook search, said in an interview this week "People have shared all this great stuff on Facebook," Mr. Stocky said. "It’s latent value. We wanted a way to unlock that."
As anticipated Facebook users have mixed feelings regarding the new search tool. Independent studies suggest that social media users are actually becoming more resistant about revealing more about themselves online. This reluctance may stem from increased media attention given to online privacy and protection, and scattered reports of employers and educators using the medium to investigate Facebook profiles.
In a survey of 500 students aged 21 and 22, Eszter Hargittai, an associate professor of communication studies at Northwestern University stated: "These behavioral patterns seem to suggest that many young adults are less keen on sharing at least certain details about their lives rather than more."
Another study from the Pew Internet Center indicated that social users (especially those on Facebook) were aggressively pruning their profiles by removing friends, comments and tagged photos.
It may be that Facebook is taking a huge gamble with their launch into social search. With many users (including myself) trying to close down the doors of Facebook instead of opening them up, Facebook may not be paying enough attention to the fact that many users are facing a social-saturation-tipping point, or "social media burnout" en masse and may they have missed the mark on this latest endeavor.
On January 15th 2013, Facebook planted it’s so called “third pillar” of it’s social network empire, “social search”.
If Facebook *is* all about social media, and they already had a search function, how is this a big change?
Okay, well that *is* some small change..
From what I can tell of the new search feature, it’s an exclusive index of Facebook, powered by Bing. So you get better/different results from the previous search options because it’s been handled by Microsoft’s search methodology.
So, you may be wondering, “Why isn’t Bing offering an improved ‘Social Search’ now that they have access to all this Facebook data?”, and you will be amused to note that today Bing indeed announced an improved ‘Social Search’ to users of their services.
In fact, Bing’s social search results are appended to the Facebook search results, and all clicks stay inside Facebook.
Still, what’s really ‘new’ about this search behavior?
Allegedly if I tack on action words to a search like, “visited by friends” or “popular with friends”, it’s supposed to marry the search results with social data from my friends list.
I gave that a whirl, trying to find various searches that would result in ‘approvals’ or ‘likes’ from my friends and I got very poor results.
Could it be that my tech savvy friends have dialed in their Facebook privacy settings to the point where Bing’s assistance is negligible? Possibly. And I wouldn’t blame them for it.
Then I tried some of the same searches in Google, without engaging any ‘social’ tags or features, and viola, I can see restaurants, pubs, and even retail stores that people in my circles have rated. I also know now to never have lunch with Dave, since he loves all the types of restaurants I try to avoid.
Plus, thanks to Google’s purchase of Zagat, I have a fallback option for accurate/honest feedback if my friends aren’t reviewing restaurants or pubs that I want to try out or are simply closer to my location.
While I’m not seeing a real improvement, FB is seeing a nice reversal of their stock prices, which were on a steady downfall last year, as we mentioned in our May 22nd, 2012, blog post: FB stock drops as SpaceX soars to success!
How long this will bolster their faltering stock value?
Will ‘Social Search’ mature into a feature that entices disinterested users to revisit Facebook?
Clearly that’s anyone’s guess, but at least they are trying to keep the ship afloat, and search traffic could help bolster ad revenue, as it did for Google.
What do you do when your paid columnist wants to write about a product that is the demise of your revenue stream, and give the product an editor’s choice award?
Well that’s exactly what happened over at CNet when the Dish Network’s ‘Hopper’ DVR w/Sling was picked for a ‘Best of Show – Editor’s Choice Award’ by CNet staff.
Apparently the fact that this DVR eliminates commercials entirely, and then lets you watch the recordings from almost any internet connected device, is a big concern for the large media companies.
At one point the new DVR had CBS saying they wouldn’t have anything to do with Dish network if they proceeded with taking this device to market.
It’s enough of a threat that CBS, along with many other ‘major media companies’, have taken legal action against Dish and it’s ‘Hopper DVR’. In fact, this legal action was prior to the addition of the Sling services which threaten to further trample on their corporate profits.
Given this legal action, and the potential risk to bottom line revenue that the DVR implies, CBS directly ordered CNet to remove the Hopper from the running and re-vote on the remaining devices.
This directive allegedly came right from the CEO of CBS, Leslie Moonves, and was given to Mark Larkin, the GM of CBS Interactive News.
Mr.Larkin fought the decision while he could, getting into conference calls with CNet and CBS heads to try and avoid censoring the product.
Ultimately he was forced, against his wishes, to deliver the decree to CNet editorial staff; A task that, according to The Verge, brought him to tears:
“Sources say that Larkin was distraught while delivering the news — at one point in tears — as he told the team that he had fought CBS executives who had made the decision.”
Not only that, but CNET was barred from issuing their own statement about the removal of the DVR from the awards, and had to use a prepared statement from CBS regarding the legal issues surrounding the Hopper DVR!
Here is that official statement:
The Dish Hopper with Sling was removed from consideration due to active litigation involving our parent company CBS Corp. We will no longer be reviewing products manufactured by companies with which we are in litigation with respect to such product.
Immediately, Greg Sandoval, a regular CNET columnist, offered his resignation and went public on his Twitter feed about the incident.
Lindsey Turrentine, one of the ‘heads’ in the conference call with Mark Larkin, and the Editor-in-Chief of CNET News, took a moment to apologize for the situation, and for not resigning immediately when she had the chance.
Lindsey defended her decision, stating that she didn’t want to abandon her team and she felt she could affect change easier from her current position than if she were to resign.
What if you paid a writer, who specializes in gaming topics, to go cover a Panasonic Toughpad press event and he decided to get drunk and channel Hunter S. Thompson?
Well that’s exactly what Grant from ‘LOOK, ROBOT’ did for his coverage of the Toughpad:
“[January 14, 2013]Panasonic are launching a new tablet computer for the business market. I am not a tech journalist. I have never done this before. I don’t know what’s going on.”
You can read the whole thing here, it’s a lot of fun, and if you’ve ever been to one of these events you should be able to relate to most of his observations in one way or another.
All press is good press?
Well the folks over at Speed-Sew™ certainly seem to think they can get away with anything in promoting their products:
I also keep pulling out the same old tube of Speed-Sew™, pop the cap off, wonder if it’s still good, and then sniff it!
It doesn’t smell good, and it’s not like it gives you a ‘buzz’, it’s as illogical as smelling your shoes when you already know they are going to smell awful.
By doing something in their YouTube video that I can relate to, by making the video down to earth, and funny, I am now motivated to laugh and share.
I want to say this is brilliant social media/video advertising, but sadly it’s a bad example because it has yet to go viral (some adverts never do).
Google has released a new service to promote your YouTube videos online, called AdWords for Video. Google has taken many of the familiar components from their popular AdWords service and successfully applied them to video in a new video campaign management tool that allows for quick video ad creation and better video ad reporting.
Google announce back in November of 2011 that they discontinue the original ads.youtube.com service. The new service is located at http://adwords.google.com/video. Existing users of Google AdWords can sign in with their current account credentials or sign up for a new AdWords account.
"If you have an ad or a video, YouTube is the only place where you can surround your brand with relevant content and YouTube makes sure that it is appropriate for your audience. With the millions of views that YouTube gets every day, they are certain to find a perfect fit for your message."
This new AdWords service allows users to easily promote their videos on YouTube and the Google Display Network. The GDN includes videos and content from thousands of websites and claims to allow you to access to 80% of the "online video content space."
Google AdWords for video allows you to:
Reach the right viewer at the right price
Pay only when the ads is viewed
Allows you to easily manage video ad campaigns
Users will get valuable information such as the number of views, video reporting, easy to setup targeting for your preferred audience(s).
Co-Workers and clients ask me why I stopped using MSN Messenger, like it’s a surprise to them that I don’t willingly sign into an application that spends most of it’s time trying to download videos/advertisements to distract me?
To me the more advertisements I see on a service the more I see that service as coming to an end, with one final attempt to monetize the fleeting popularity of the service at it’s peak of it’s traffic volume.
So clearly then Facebook is signalling that now is the time to monetize and cash out, with executives promising video advertisement opportunities in 2013.
To quote the original article on AdAge:
“By April at the latest, it(FB) will offer video advertisers the chance to target video ads to large numbers of Facebook users in their news feeds on both the desktop version of Facebook as well as on Facebook apps on mobile phones and tablets.”
There’s also some advanced speculation that the goal will be to keep the video adverts capped at 15 seconds, which would help minimize the amount of data transfer that is wasted on content you never wanted to see in the first place.
Additionally, if advertisers have to compete in 15 seconds or less, this could produce ‘light’ video spots that are then re-used on other sites around the web, hopefully just replacing existing clips that are 30 seconds.
To the advertisers out there (some of which are our clients) this means that if you were in the planning/edit stages of a video promotion for your site, and social media was one of your target audiences, then you would do well to plan on a 15 second version of your clip in advance.
Speaking of Video Advertising
What would happen if YouTube paid a handful of the most popular YouTube video creators together to make a ‘popular mashup’?
I think this is what would happen (this is NOT the cheap re-mix you may be expecting):
Felicia Dayand Minecraft? It’s almost like I helped make this.
Nice work YouTube! Clearly, at 28million (and counting) hits since it was released on Monday, people can’t get too much of a good thing, which is shocking considering how overplayed some of those videos are, especially the Gangnam Style remixes.
The end of the clip has some references to the video sources, some of which were fresh links for this old dog.
There was a huge online outcry from users when Instagram introduced a new privacy policy and Terms of Service that will take effect on January 16, 2013. Concerns were raised over changes that would allow for Instagram to sell users photos to advertisers without notice or compensation.
Instagram’s 100 million users use the popular app to take stylized picture of everything from food they enjoy to pets or any other aspect of their daily lives to share online. When the news of the proposed changes hit Twitter, the story and accompanied anger towards them went viral.
This change comes just four months after the social media giant Facebook purchased Instagram for one billion dollars. The new policy states: "A business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness and photos."
Later that same day, Instagram issued a blog post stating:
"Advertising is one of many ways that Instagram can become a self-sustaining business, but not the only one. Our intention in updating the terms was to communicate that we’d like to experiment with innovative advertising that feels appropriate on Instagram."
"Instead it was interpreted by many that we were going to sell your photos to others without any compensation. This is not true and it is our mistake that this language is confusing. To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos. We are working on updated language in the terms to make sure this is clear."
Now that Instagram is owned by Facebook, it may be a similar scenario to how updates to Facebook have typically played out. Facebook has a tendency to roll out mass changes with the anticipation of user backlash; only to retract part of their updates. It’s a case of moving 10 steps forward and taking 1 back, ultimately the changes still get adopted.
The simple truth is that whenever you are online, whenever you use an App, it is very likely that your information is being used by the site or is being sold as data to interested third parties. The best way to maintain some semblance of privacy is to not go online at all – which wherein lies the irony.
It is almost impossible for most of us not to be connected to the internet at some point every day; be it through a PC, a Smart Phone or tablet. When we go online our user data is collected, stored and researched by a multitude of companies for a variety of purposes; some benign, some nefarious.
We are only now becoming aware that we are no longer just consumers; we are in fact walking product endorsements and advertisements for big business. What happens in the next few years will determine our new role in the emerging global marketplace. Do we want to protect our privacy, or do we want ads that are geared towards our relevant interests?
You may want to re-think that decision, perhaps even focus on a ‘mobile’ provider for your site, or an Android app instead of one for Apple’s store.
Why? Well lets list the reasons:
- Android OS is shipping on more phones currently than any other mobile OS
- 2013 should be the year that Android overtakes iPhone in subscriber #s
- A mobile ‘face lift’ should load on any phone/browser
- Apple is cracking down on all ‘Apps’ that generate revenue outside their store..
The last one is a real kicker, especially for Microsoft who is currently unable to update their SkyDrive app after Apple realized it was handling in-app purchases without going through the Apple Store.
Essentially Apple is rejecting all Microsoft app updates and 3rd party apps that communicate with SkyDrive until Microsoft has a solution to Apple’s need for a 30% cut of all transactions done through it’s App Store.
So if you made an Apple Store ‘App’ for your site, all you can do with the ‘App’ is browse information and provide free resources, since any attempt to engage in a financial transaction would require the Apple App Store to participate, at a 30% margin.
That’s just.. wait for it.. rotten.
Making Easy Money by Ignoring Copyright Infringement
On the surface, it may seem counter-intuitive to your profit margin, but not letting people steal your content could be what’s stopping you from getting rich.
PSY, the chubby Korean behind the most popular YouTube video to-date, is raking in the profits from his ‘Gangnam Style’ video, and it’s all because he didn’t censor his own work by chasing copyright violations.
If you look at TV commercials, ad revenue, product endorsements, and other direct revenue from his popularity, PSY is making over $8 Million in 2012 alone.
Clearly there’s a trade off between copyrights and profits that doesn’t favor always locking down your content.
I’m wondering though, once fame has taken hold, if next year we’ll have a story about PSY suing people for copyright infringements?
