Group Video Chat

I had to research Group Video Chat for a teenager. Free and easy were the requirements. I figured all the big social sites had it by now. Turns out that is not true yet, though soon I’m sure. Here’s the current state:

Facebook – Facebook has group chat and video chat (through Skype), but the two don’t meet. However there’s a third-party app for Facebook called “Social Hangouts” that provides group video chat for 20 people, it’s free, and is supposedly pretty standard for a Facebook app.

Skype – Skype has free group and and free video chat, however the group video chat is a premium feature, and at least one person in the chat has to have a paying or business account.

Google+ – Google does provide group video chat, for free, in a feature called “hangouts”. It’s supposed to be really easy to use as well.

There are lots of other chat and video products/sites/companies, but this really has to be quick and easy, and the teenager already has some experience with the ones mentioned above.

Google + Circles, Part 3

http://www.google.com/+/learnmore/
http://www.google.com/+/demo/

I just heard, on Paul Thurrott’s latest podcast http://twit.tv/ww215, where they were actually demo-ing Google +, that you can add people to more than one circle, so there’s that myth busted! Makes me hope for a quick invitation all the more.

Google + Circles, Part 2

http://www.google.com/+/learnmore/
http://www.google.com/+/demo/

So the first post got into why we needed Circles. This second post will hit on why Circles doesn’t go far enough. Remember, the point is to mirror real life, so that the product naturally extends and enhances what we already do.

Yes Circles allows grouping. However what about when the church leader is also your brother-in-law? What about when you hang out with one of your work associates? With Circles, a person can only go in one group. That is a completely artificial, limiting distinction, that I believe will limit Google+ usefulness, perhaps even dooming it to a fate worse than Buzz.

It’s a mystery to me how all these companies can keep getting this wrong. Sure there’s a sneaky reason why they don’t want us to have good grouping. But it’s shortsighted to make something we don’t want and can’t use. The first company to get this right wins.

Google + Circles

• http://www.google.com/+/learnmore/
• http://www.google.com/+/demo/

Well Google beat me to the punch here. I had been meaning to put up a rant about social networks, and how the lack of fine-grained “grouping” was keeping them from getting to the next level.

What I mean by that is Twitter and Facebook (and all the other lesser players in social media) only allow for the concept of a friend. Everybody in the whole world you have any type of relationship with, is a friend. And all of your social interactions go to all of your friends. This is one level below everything you do is public, and belongs on television.

Social networks have to model, mirror even, our real world social interactions, in order to augment them (and provide value we will pay for). That means Facebook needs to grasp the difference between my boss and my wife and my bowling buddy, and allow me to naturally control what I share with each one of them, not just lump them all into a group. This is not just about damage control (the classic drunk at the bar photo). It’s about value. I’ve got a cute story about my kids that my mother and my sister will find amusing, but it’s just clogging up the feeds of the rest of my “friends”.

Well, to get to the point, Google has had the same thought, and built friend-grouping into their newest Facebook-killer/social network, Google+, and is calling it “Circles”.

Friendfeed

To my mind there were three parts to Friendfeed. (I’m using past tense because of the sale, as the site/application is still runny happy as a clam.) I should say first that I am writing this as a big fan of Friendfeed.

Piece 1 was “content aggregator”. This part worked wonderfully. It met a big need, that being we create content in many different places on the web, and we need a way to pull all that content together. Friendfeed did that. If the Friendfeed site goes away, we’ll need another solution. Yes you can post announcements about content in various places on Twitter, but that feels awkward, plus the auto-aggregation tools are not built-in like with Friendfeed. Yes you can link to all your other content from your blog, but that’s ugly. Friendfeed was easy to use, and homogenized the different sources somewhat, so that it became a package.

Piece 2 was “comment aggregator”. Unfortunately this was a tough nut to crack. The problem statement is simple enough – it’s very hard to have a conversation around a say a piece of content on my blog when part of the conversation takes place in my blog comments, part of it takes place in response blog posts from others, and perhaps part of it takes place in comments on watering holes like Digg. My rough understanding was that Friendfeed was hoping everybody would just comment on Friendfeed instead, which didn’t work out. Some people did, which just added to the fragmentation.

Piece 3 was “social network”. This part I have to confess I never got. I followed people, and it was great to get all the content in one package for the people I cared about, their blog posts, Twitter updates, Google Reader (RSS) shared items, etc., all in one place. But there was this expectation that the whole thing would sew itself together into something like Facebook, where you can just keep track of your whole social network by watching your “feed”. In Friendfeed the big feed with all the comments, and all the content from people you hadn’t subscribed to (friends of friends) was not useful. Too much to follow, and not what I was interested in. And I can’t even describe what “rooms” were supposed to do, as I never understood them.

So despite panning the last two sides of Friendfeed, I feel so strongly satisfied with the content aggregator aspect, that I hope that it sticks around for a long time, or that somebody can create something even better at doing that job, by building on it’s legacy.

"formerly called the cellphone"

The title is a quote from Elizabeth Corcoran at Forbes from the article http://www.forbes.com/technology/2007/11/02/apple-google-iphone-tech-cx_ec_1105innovate.html . Google has certainly done it again with the twin left hooks the "Open Handset Alliance" (formerly the "Googlephone" :)) http://www.forbes.com/2007/11/05/gphone-google-phone-tech-cz_qh_1105gphone1.html (thanks for the link Pete), and the "OpenSocial" toolkit http://www.forbes.com/technology/2007/10/31/google-facebook-networking-technology-cx_rr_1101social.html .