On why Google Plus is brilliant, but nobody cares (including Google)

On why Google Plus is brilliant, but nobody cares (including Google)

Let's start this off with something everybody loves. The social network that brought the world to it's knees. The one that was so big a movie was made about the company that founded it, the one that became such a social iota that not having an account is unheard of, and the one that could very well shape the entire face of how we interact with our technologies, our social networks, and the interconnections between all our various apps and internet...dohickies. The social network that will end them all.

What? Facebook? Are you crazy? Wait...Myspace? Myspace?! That was your second guess? What is this, 2002? No, you fools, it's Google Plus, the most brilliant thing Google made and then somehow completely failed to capitalize on.

And the movie, of course, is the 35% rotten tomato blockbuster The Internship. 

So...what's up with Google Plus, you might ask (or, Google+ for the hipsters)? Well, if you have a Google account, you've got one: that much is known. "Ok," you respond, "that's great, but what  is Google +? Don't people hate it? Didn't YouTubers just whine about it like crazy when they integrated it? Isn't it Google's biggest failure and also biggest darling that they can't just bring themselves to kill so it's leeching onto other Google products like a paracistic leech in an attempt to garner some sort of life support and live on as an undead social network zombie?"

To that I say, "Wow, take a breath. And yes, that one. But listen up, voiceless internet man: Google+ is actually totally the future."

It just doesn't know it yet itself.

Pictured: The FUTURE. AGAIN. 

It might be a good time to point out two things: I don't work for Google, and I don't actually post social stuff to Google+. I am on Facebook, yes, and that's primarily where I limit my online social networking interactions. In my experience, there are basically two key users who are currently on Google Plus for the status-updating based social networking bits: 1. Computer hipsters who reject Facebook and 2. Google employees.

So now you're wondering how I can talk so highly about this thing when I don't use it. Well, that's the thing, I do use it. And you use it. And everybody who has a google account  uses it (whether they want to or not). And if you reread my sentence above, you may note I said that I use Facebook for my "status-updating based social networking bits." That italicized part is important, because it's not G+'s strength. What is? Ubiquitous...ness.

Pictured: Ubiq computer, as interpreted by MS Paint. 

In very basic layman terms, the idea of ubiquitous computing is that everything you have can be interconnected. You have computers in everything, and they all talk together and work together seamlessly and so you don't even know they're there. It's important and cool and great and everybody wants to do it in one way or another.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let me talk about the new internet. And I swear I'm not going to say "Web 2.0" in any of this, because that's just dumb.

Ok, so the new wave of internet stuff is about being social. I think we can all agree on that, yes? As evidenced by the fact that everything in the entire world wants to post to your facebook now, the idea of sharing things you like, things you do, and stuff you enjoy at the easy click of a button is quickly becoming standard. And, as such, Facebook has become a decent unifying system for that. You can post anything to it (or it'll do it for you, often without your permission) and share all your information. Write a review on Rotten Tomatoes? You can toss it to your FB so your friends can know how much you loved The Host. Buy something off Amazon? Post it and show your friends you needed more HDMI cables for some reason, again, after buying ten last month. This idea of total social interconnectivity between multiple spheres is not new, but it is getting big, and it makes for a better, more connected, more social internet.

So here is why Google+ is perfect at that and how it completely screwed it up.

Pictured: Sadness. 

Flash back to 2011. Facebook is All Da Rage. Twitter is still...there (it hasn't really re-surged like it did the past year or so). Google announces it's gonna do something, something cool. It's called...Google Plus! and the Plus (+) is Plus you!

Yes, you! And if you have a Gmail, you are now a part of it! All your friends can join, and you can follow their feeds in their "circles!" You can follow businesses too; anybody! Add 'em all! Isn't this great? IT's almost exactly like Facebook only Google made it!

I remember it very distinctly. With Google Plus as their Moses, the mass exodus from Facebook occurred. Then, like a week later, the mass exodus back occurred. Why did this happen? Why didn't it catch on?

Well, here's my theory in two bite sized reasons:

1. It was pretty much Facebook, only with about 1/3 of your friends
and the big one...
2. It didn't offer anything new. 

At the time, Google + was basic. It was just a status-sharing system. Yeah, it had a few games, and it was tied into google so everybody who had a gmail was added super easy, but that was it. Facebook had already a running head start, and it had grabbed everybody already. Why switch to what is, basically, a crappier version of the same thing? The answer is don't switch and that's what happened, and now G+ is a status-updating wasteland.

But then something happened. Something magical. Something that everybody hated. Google plus started to sneak into other stuff like the creepy house arrest guy you see on the signs to look out for.

Pictured: Google+, circa 2011-2014

First it was google maps. Stores found their pages now somehow having Google+ circles tied to them. Maps tied directly into Google +, including the google reviews of the various locations: all in one spot. Uh oh. Then there was the big one: YouTube.

Oh man, the riots are still going on.

And Google Play store. And Google Music. And on and on and on. But for the sake of not making this longer than it already is (and since I still havent' explained the whole point, which is why G+ is brilliant), let's just say this: Google+ has wormed it's way into many different google apps, and the general consensus is that it sucks, right?

As this scientific diagram explains, Google Plus is, and I quote, "THe WoRST"

Right guys? It sucks having everything unified, right? Everything combined under one banner? A place where you can see what your friends like and dislike across apps, a conglomeration of social information integrated into apps previously used strictly for business or personal interest, that's...baaaaaaaad?

Wait, that's not bad. That sounds awesome! Totally awesome!

And now we get to the good stuff.

See, the big problem with Google+ is how they marketed it, and the fact that they released it too early. I was going to save this part of my article for later, but I'm doing it now because I feel good about it. Maybe I'll copy paste it later, who knows.

When G+ came out, it was bare-bones. It had nothing but an improved "circle" system for friends, and...Google integration. That was it. You could post statuses, and...well...play some really bad games? Yeah, that was basically all it was. It was a social network nobody needed, and they advertised it as a social network that was exactly the same as the other ones, at least in terms of functionality. Yeah, you could follow people like on Twitter but also have friends like on Facebook, big whoop. I already had Facebook and Twitter. I don't need what you's peddlin', Google +! Who is gonna +1 search result, EH?! That's just BANANAS!

That's right, DK, you could have all your Google systems unified under the G+ banner.

But as time passed, Google Plus began to spread out. Now when you go on the Play Store and look at an app, it'll tell you if your friends +1ed it. If you go on Google Music, it will tell you what your friends listened too. If you hop onto YouTube, you can see what is popular amongst G+ friends. You are being social (or having a social interaction) not through a status update, but through the tools and products you are going to use anyway. It's brilliant.

And also appears hamfisted in as some attempt to keep Google+ alive, which makes everybody hate it. Because it was released too early.

Ok, so the idea of unifying all this stuff is great, right? So it's the users' fault for not recognizing it, right? RIGHT?

Well, no, it's actually Google's fault. Sort of. At least for not using it as well as they could. Let me explain this using an example: Google Now.

Google Now is basically what the future will be when we decide privacy is for noobs and we'd rather have everything be convenient. It's a nifty little tool on Android phones (and maybe in browsers? I dunno) where google will glance over a bunch of data it's been gathering anyway (your recent searches, map lookups, location data, etc.) and use algorithms to attempt to generate an interesting news feed for you. If I pull up my Google Now right now, here is what it looks like.

I like Archer and Game of Thrones, OK?

It's brilliant. And that's not all it does. It scans your email for tracking numbers and gives you updates on your packages. It checks your calendar and provides important updates for upcoming events. It can even look at your Play store history and recommend apps based on that.

So that leaves me one question: Why is this not Google+?!

Social networking as integrated into different systems is very obviously the wave of the future. Companies like eBay, Amazon, and others are trying to implement it to get people to better talk about their products and build communities around them. Google, which has a plethora of tools at its disposal, already has a system that touches all it's apps. Actually, it has two systems. Why two? Why not one? Why is this not the biggest, most awesome ubiquitous internet thing that has ever happened?

Let me share my vision of what Google+ could be. I'd have made graphics or something for it, but I've already written like a billion words so they'll have to come later, so just use your imagination.

1. Change circles from people to products.
Right now you can add just about anything to a circle and follow it. Changing between circles isn't exactly super intuitive (it's easy, but it isn't in the forefront), and they're mostly used to do what Facebook already does better: share status updates. What if instead of people, each circle could be a Google product instead? Here's just a few examples:
      - My Google Music circle would read my data for how often I listen to a particular song, or artists I've Favorited. When I hit my Music circle, it would show me updates (like Google Now) for artists I've favorited. It could even look at my most recently listened to songs and put preferences for those artists higher up on the list.
       - My Google Apps circle could show me apps my friends have installed recently. I could add apps to a "Wish List," and the Circle's feed could show me which ones were currently on sale. It could post popular reviews from my friends (which, remember, are already in my google network thanks to G+ already, just never posting status updates) on various apps, and even offer to algorithmically recommend more apps (Google Play store does this already, but in the app itself, not in G+).
 These are just two examples. Don't worry, there will be more in #2. Speaking of which...

2. Uses Google+ as a means to unify everything in Google. 
My biggest problem with Google is that it is so close to being the Greatest Thing Ever. Google has brilliant people working for it with brilliant ideas. They create awesome stuff and provide free tools that are outstanding and are all web-based, which make them ubiquitous by nature. However, with their whole "One Account, all of Google" philosophy, that is really the only tool combining them all: your login. Apps don't talk to each other, and if they do (as evidenced by Google Now), they don't do so in a forward facing way. Why not have Google+ be that forward facing unification? By making an app that combines all the other apps, you have a hub of information for all your Google products. And rather than simply being a launcher to get to all these apps (like in the Google app on iOS), it's actually a useful system for giving a quick overview of your latest apps. Imagine if you could have a circle that, at a glance, could tell you in one app:
- What your next calendar item is
- If someone has updated files in your Drive (useful for us college kids with collab projects!)
- What the weather is like outside
- What your friends thought of that restaurant you looked up five minutes ago when you were dying for sushi
- How long it would take you to get home from your current location

All in one system! And yes, this sounds a lot like Google Now, but that's kind of the point: take Google Now, take Google Plus, and take the billions of apps Google has, and fuse them into a social networking app that unifies Google within your sphere of contacts. How useful would that be?!

3. Kill status updates, make the apps themselves the social network
Here's the big clenches for me, and it ties into the other two: make the apps social. The majority of people in this world will do something because their friends recommended it. I will preference not only apps I buy, but places I eat and movies I watch and games I buy and everything on what my friends say. Why not have that information readily available?
As an example, looking back on that Sushi example a minute ago:
I boot up google maps and search "Sushi Irvine." It pulls up a list, but next to every location you have a friend's review, preferencing the results my friends have been to. I click on one and it pulls up the G+ page, giving me both a map to the establishment, the time it takes to get there, but more importantly it tells me what my friends said about it. That is the key point: it uses my friends first. I then can decide where to go from there, or to go back and skim other reviews my friends gave of things in the area.
Now take that, and apply it to any app. I pull up Google+ and go to Music and see what my friends have been listening too, and Google knows (it's got all the algorithms) that these particular songs they liked are a similar genre to what I've been listening too, so it recommends them. It encourages me to recommend my tastes to the friend, or my friend has already recommended their tastes to me.
I pull up Google+ and go to Apps Circle and it shows me what my friends have not only been playing, but preferences based on how long they were in the apps. In addition, it shows their reviews, notices that I like a certain game that my friend might like, and recommends it.
I pull up Maps and, as said before, it shows me my friends activity. Not where they've been, stalkers, but their favorite locations and food reviews, or maybe (if they opt to share it with friends) where they've eaten or visited recently and enjoyed.
I pull up my Blogger Circle (which ya'll need to bring back) and I can see not only what blogs I follow have been updated, but what Blogger blogs my friends have been reading.
I pull up the YouTube Circle and I can see what my friends have been watching, based on my tastes, and can dig deeper and see what they like. Not the people I subscribed to, not who Youtube recommends, but my actual friends on G+ that have obviously been using youtube.
Google has the apps. It has the data. It has the inter-connectivity. Now use it.

Longest. Post. Ever. 

If you made it this far, congrats. I warned you brevity is not my strong suit. But, for the sake of summation, here it is in super brief:

- Google+, as it is, is a social status networking tool that nightlights as some sort of weird interconnecting, +1 system on the back end.
- Google+, as it should be, should be a ubiquitous system across Google apps that uses it's data on your friends to create social networking experiences through Google's products.

And that, in a nutshell, is the idea. We get our status updates from Facebook, Google. What people don't do is create social meaning through web applications, at least not yet. However, you can do this. You can take the sort of half-baked recommendation algorithms in Play and Music and turn them into something great. You can take the fact that everybody has a Google account and so does their friends and combine this data into something that unifies all your products. You can use all that information you have, both socially and statistically, and fuse it into a big, great, social-networking-meets-internet-productivity Frankenstein that lets you get everything you need from one source, and lets your friends know when and how you do it.

Google Plus could be the future. It could be the start of unifying everything we already know and love about Google into one giant, great, socially networked system. It could be the design that shapes how all future companies view their products, their customers, and how these two interact.

So please, kill the status updates. Kill trying to be Facebook. Google Plus could be the future. It could be. But as of right now, I ain't +1ing Google+.

A sad day, for us all.