The Steve Rubel Stream

Insights on emerging technologies and trends.
Steve Rubel
Steve Rubel (bio) is SVP, Director of Insights for Edelman Digital, a division of Edelman - the world's largest independent PR firm.

He is charged with helping clients identify emerging technologies and trends that can be applied in marketing communications programs. Rubel also explores these topics on his site, a monthly Forbes.com column and in a bi-weekly AdAge column. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook as well.

Steve can be reached via email at steverubel@gmail.com.

Note: Everything posted on this site is Steve's personal opinion. It does not represent the views of Edelman or its clients.

               

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Google Buzz is About Protecting GMail's Ad Dollars, Not Social Networking

One of my chief issues with Google Buzz is that there's no "there." Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc all have destination sites or apps that allow the user to mentally switch contexts from one-to-one/one-to-few communication to one-to-many. Mike Elgan touches on this here. 

This got me wondering: why didn't Google build a hub for Buzz to begin with? I suspect the reason is simple. With Buzz, Google isn't trying to create a new social network. Rather, it's trying to sure up GMail - a major source of ad revenues - from the forthcoming Facebook onslaught. 

Even though Gmail has hundreds of millions of users, they actually have much to fear. The enemy is Facebook. With its integrated chat, Facebook Connect and its forthcoming full-featured mail product, Titan, the social network giant has a good shot at syphoning users from Gmail just as Google did to Yahoo Mail and Hotmail half a decade ago. Ponder that.

In addition, here are some of my other thoughts on Google Buzz...
  • After playing with it for a few days, there's definitely a lot I like. I still don't see it going mainstream - especially given the privacy kerfuffle. This will only scare mainstream users. However, that said, I bet Buzz will become an important niche player for enthusiasts much like Friendfeed was during its heyday. What's more it will encourage everyone else to up their game. 
  • Yesterday on Buzz I outlined 20 ways it can improve. The product team, notably Bradley Horowitz, chimed in and said they are taking all feedback seriously. This weekend's privacy tweaks back up words with action. What else are we missing?
  • Finally, tips are rolling in around the web. The Next Web and Google Operating System blogs have great tip round-ups. Most notably Google Operating System details how you can search all public updates, even people you're not following (#8). They also reveal how to save these as persistent searches (#9). As you can see from the screen grab below, this is a really handy way to search social content from within Gmail.
Filed under  email   Facebook   Gmail   Google   Google Buzz   search   social networking   social search  
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Posted 1 month ago

The Next Great Social Network? Your Address Book

This morning I logged into YouTube and I noticed that it now helps me find me find videos and channels from friends who have linked their Google contact information to their social profiles. Meanwhile yesterday Google rolled out its social search program (which so far I like). And recently Google Reader too became a lot more social. So the Gmail address book/contact list is finally showing that it can be a powerful tool for connecting you to your social connections. This is something we saw coming.

Here's what I love about this... 

First, because I have lived in Gmail the last five years, there's loads of data in there that can make social networking even more powerful. Google will do a lot to mine these connections. This is just the beginning. But third parties will assist too. I love what Remail is doing by helping me easily find emails from contacts on my iPhone - even when I am offline.

Second, its agnostic. Google doesn't care which social network you join. If a user links their profile to their social graph, Google will hep you harness it.

Finally, I like that you're in complete control. If you don't want people to be able to search your Flickr photos, make them private and do not connect them to your Google Profile.

However, here's the big question - will consumers set up their Google profiles? And, if they do, will they link them to their social networks? If they are tech adept, yes, they will. But what about the rest of us? I am not so sure. This has to get as easy and as elegant to use as Facebook.

Watch for Google, and perhaps Yahoo and AOL, to make a big push in this direction in the coming months. Google will start promoting Profiles heavily and on its spartan home page so that they can get smarter about social networks. And Facebook, meanwhile, will do the same by encouraging more sites to use Facebook Connect so that, over time, they can help you search the annotated web as filtered by your friends.
Filed under  Facebook   Google   search   social networking   social search  
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Posted 4 months ago

The Age of Social Search Dawns

During the first fifteen of years of the Internet's gestation, we searched the web unassisted. In the second era, we'll do so with the curated assistance of our social networks - and be able to spot trends from friends. As we wrote in our search white paper earlier this year...

"However, on the whole, social networks are becoming a key way for people to find content that's meaningful to them. In response, all of the major networks are building out search tools that could, conceivably, threaten Google."

Well, Google made it clear they're not waiting around to get beaten. This is the opening salvo of what will be an all out social search war in in the next few years. Watch this space.
Filed under  curation   search   social networking   social search  
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Posted 4 months ago

Friendfeed Brings "Best of Day" to Lists, Helps You Spot Trends from Friends

   
Click here to download:
Friendfeed_Brings_Best_of_Day_.zip (756 KB)

One of my favorite Friendfeed features is called "Best of Day." I use it all the time to hone in on the most liked/commented conversations. If you're logged into Friendfeed, you can hit this link to see the most interesting conversations from your friends over the last 24 hours or this one for the past seven days. The problem with the feature, however, is that it only worked across all of your friends. This can be problematic if you follow hundreds of people, as I do.

Last night, however, Friendfeed quietly added a killer feature that brings "Best of Day" to lists - groupings of friends you categorize. Now you can more easily spot trends from friends. The screen grab below shows you the most interesting items over the last month just within my "favorites" list. This smart filtering of content plus the recent addition of real-time search on Friendfeed is exactly what those of us who participate in the social web need.

This incremental innovation gives me just another reason to be excited about Friendfeed. It's also why I love Gmail, Posterous and Evernote. They constantly keep innovating all the time even through the tough times.

Filed under  aggregation   friendfeed   search   Social Networking   social search  
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Posted 8 months ago
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