Google Plus +

After more than 24 hours of testing out the new social network in town – Google+ (you’re supposed to call it Google plus), I find myself in the middle of a dilemma. Of course, the comparison to Facebook is inevitable. After all, Facebook has evolved into this omnipresent entity in our conversations, our lives and even our offline world. With the new social network, where does Google’s old product Orkut stand in the race, is anybody’s guess. As of now, by the looks of it, Google seems to have taken the best of Facebook and spicened it up with their own goodness, and in the process also incorporated the simplicity of twitter. Confused already? Let’s discuss the points individually.

User Interface:

The overall layout of the Stream as well the Profile page looks very similar to what Facebook has. While Facebook boasts off a very blue theme, as all Google products, white, grey and green are the most prominent colours. The title fonts are in sky blue ( standard hyperlink colours). Google chat lies on the left sidebar similar to GMail. The stream is much smoother than it is in facebook, and the clutter free page is a welcome change. Of course, that is subject to future change when Google Plus eventually takes off and Google Adsense invades the stream page with targeted advertisements. But as of now, I like the simplicity of design.

Circles:

One of the key concepts of Google Plus is Circles. It is similar to what Facebook has in groups – when you can group your friends into categories. But Google Plus has a brilliant advantage. Unlike Facebook, you can decide what to share and what not to based upon the circles created. So you might have some wild night out which you’d like to share with your mates, but might be too embarrassed to  make it visible to your work acquaintances or even your family members. With the circle-centric share,  control of privacy is set at the forefront of this social networking product. Further, there are default Circles created (more can be created/added/customised), one of them being – Following. This could be similar to twitter where you can follow celebrity Google Plus users ( I am following Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg and the like).

Privacy:

Just to reiterate what has been mentioned in Circles, you can decide what is shared and with whom. So you can share publicly (as you tweet ), or share with individual users, circles etc. Also, unlike Facebook where privacy setting as embedded a hundred feet below sea level, Google Plus enables you to edit them just by clicking on the link – Google Plus settings. Most importantly, on the profile page, you can view how your own profile would look like when viewed by a specific user etc.

Ease of Share:

This is similar to what Facebook has in place already. But it still makes sense to mention that Google Plus does the job as efficiently. There’s options to add links, photos, videos or simply text. The Google Buzz is added as one of your tabs on the Profile, as well as all weblinks being +1′ed by you appear under the +1 tab. This should be sort of a deli.cio.us replacement. How are these going to be integrated is a hazy picture as of now.

+1:

A very smart rollout, the +1 button has  been termed as the Google’s answer to the Facebook Like button. And similar to the Like button, the +1 button works on web-links as a bookmarking tool, as well in your stream shared posts.

Animated Gif support:

I am a mad tumblrer. And that means I love animated GIFs. Facebook does not support GIFs in your albums (as in all uploaded animated GIFs are converted into static images). Google Plus on the other hand supports GIFs. I know its not a very big deal for the most of you. But I thought of mentioning it as this was something I missed at Facebook.

Huddle:

Group conversations, Wiki and Forums are going to get a serious facelift with this awesome feature. Now I have not personally tested this feature due to lack of time, but I have heard some very good things about this.

Picasa:

As all Google products, Google Plus has the awesome functionality of integration with other Google products. One of the major ones – Picasa is integrated into the Photos. Again, albums can be chosen to be shared accordingly. Although there have been some complaints about tagged photos on Picasa not being imported on Albums in Google Plus.

Android App:

Unfortunately there is no iOS app for the Google Plus as of now (which makes me very happy). The Android app on the other hand works like a charm. Weighing a very light 2+ MB, the app enables to instantly upload all pictures taken from your phone to an unshared web folder called – Photos from your phone. So, say goodbye to Twitpic. Of course, with Android smartphones sporting front facing cameras, I believe Google Plus would allow video chats as well.

Group Chat / Video Chat:

Again I have not tested this extensively in a group chat, but going by what Google chat video looks like, this thing is going to be a Skype killer for sure.

Sparks and RSS:

Finally, a sort of a data collecter. The Sparks tab allows users to read the latest news feed based upon interests such as – Android, Films, Sports, Fashion etc. The option to be able to add RSS Feeds would be very helpful (after all, all we want is just one place where we can have it all). But as of now, there is no sort of user customisation available on the Sparks page.

So, I believe Google Plus has indeed hit quite a lot of good notes with this one. There is absolutely huge potential in this product and the thing it can do. Integration with Youtube for video podcasting straight from the profile page will be an amazing feature to look forward to. Also, as with Facebook, Google Plus should be able to integrate commenting systems on blogs with the stream page. And finally, I really hope that Google plus never gets cluttered with crazy gaming apps such as Farmville and Mafia Wars. Let them remain with iGoogle.

P.S. There is an official Google Plus fanpage on Facebook, and Mark Zuckerberg has a Google Plus profile. Talk about a social networking full circle.

So, we all know how awesome ‘The Social Network’ was. The posters were amazing, the trailers kept the anticipation levels on a high, and the final product was inspiring, sad, jubilant, and awesome, awesome, awesome. Of course, a movie about social network giant – Facebook, is inevitable to spawn memes across the internet. And this one is a mashup of Tom, creator of Myspace, and the Social Network poster.

Please feel free to share this post using the sharing buttons below . Cheerio!

The following infographic is quite true in most respects. Given the fact that we spend most of our online time interacting with people who we never seem to interact physically, over social networks of different flavours and privacy labels. Do you agree?

via: Stormborn

While many social networking Gurus and Blog aggregators do not get tired discussing about the Big Blogs, we at Techkeyla feel the need to appreciate the wave of change. And I know, that not only the top notch bloggers deserve a mention. How about the ones who are new to the field, but are still making their presence felt. Don’t we bloody deserve a nudge or two – Hell, we deserve to be called AWESOME. So here I am, making my list of the top 20 Newbie tech blogs who will be called the Awesome 20 – Emerging Force of Tech Bloggers. Beat that you elite lot. Entries are now open, and closes Christmas eve. And the winner will be announced on the 31st of Dec, 2009.

And just for a little motivation, Premium WordPress Themes are up for grabs worth 120$.

For the rules, hit the jump!!

1. To enter this competition, you will need to provide a link to this post, by copying the URL below and promoting it in your blog post.

[URL: Techkeyla Awesome 20 -Emerging Force of Tech Bloggers ]

2. Only English blogs please.

3.Only blogs related to technology, Social Media, Gadgets etc. We will scrutinise it thoroughly. Blogs catering to irrelevant categories will not be entertained.

4. Send in your nomination in the comments section with your blog URL, author’s twitter ID, and links to what you think your best 3 posts are. Also include the major categories of technology that your blog caters to – eg iPhone Apps, Android, facebook, WordPress, Web tricks etc.

5. All blogs who want to nominate themselves should have at least 50 posts.

6. You can definitely ask your blog followers to vote for your blog by commenting in the comments section mentioning your blog name, and why they want it to be in the list.

7. If you have more than one blog, you can still enter, provided it is not a sub-domain. I guess you should know what I mean by that.

8. If it is a multi-author tech blog, please give details of all authors.

9. The final poll list will be thrown out for open vote during the last week. And the best 20 with the greatest votes win.[ All previous votes will also be considered in this poll] In case, we are not able to find enough votes, the judgement of Tech Gurus @Techkeyla HQ will be final and binding.

10. Finally, in case of any clarification required, or should you have any questions, drop your comment below, or tweet us @techkeyla 

Also, we will be contacting potential nominees over the next couple of weeks informing them about this competition. So if you do receive a comment from us about this, spring into action and promote this competition to your readers so that they can vote for you!!

Also to be fair, we are not including ourselves in the Awesome 20 list. As sad as that sounds, you can show us your love by linking to us, and/or becoming a fan of techkeyla on Facebook [ Link: http://facebook.com/techkeyla]

And what is there to win?
GLORY, FAME and PRIDE.
Not only will your blog be mentioned and scrutinished thoroughly by the tech gurus at Techkeyla HQ, we will be offering our take on what is good, what is great and what is awesome about your blog. And not only that, we will also do a feature on what your blog should possibly change and what can it do to improve.

Finally, a Premium WordPress Theme also awaits you worth 100$. More details on that later.
With so much to win, the stakes are definitely high.
So what are you waiting for? Nominate your tech blog now.

Special tips:
Publicize and Promote this Father of a Blog competition on your Blog, on Twitter, Facebook and each and every social network you can think of. Digg it baby!! Digg it!! The race has begun!

Who the F needs another Social Network? @Microsoft -Seriously?

It all started for me when Google had something to offer. My classmates in Engineering College told me of a something called Orkut. It was fast becoming one of the emerging trendy keywords, and was supposedly the successor of email. The next generation of communication, as we call it, was here. It was late 2004 when I joined Orkut, and have been an active subscriber to it [ except for I deleted my account twice because of spam reasons ].

A few years went by, and my friends list exponentially increased till it was ready to explode. And then, in late 2007, I came to know of a something called Facebook. I was reluctant to join because of all the hassle involved to invite all my friends there, and importing contacts, and yes maintaining the account by participating in the discussions and replying to the posts. I had already been through quite a lot of other social networks like hi5, gazzag, myspace, bebo, multiply et al. My relation with all of the others remained limited to just a couple of months, as I retained my loyalty to orkut.

And then, something happened. All of a sudden, I heard all the social network gurus, the “in” crowd of the blogosphere – from Michael Arrington to Om Malik, John Chow to Darren Rowse- everyone was on Facebook. It was the place where everyone was there. And besides these people, my contact list from orkut had by now started sending me invites for Facebook. After a few reluctant logins to the Facebook, I got used to the interface. Long before I could realise, from celebrities to my local chai-walla to even my University professor – everyone was on Facebook.

Which brings me to this – Windows Live Planet. Really, who needs yet another Social Network in 2009? I do not. I am too old to keep shifting base. I am too used to the Blue and White interface to shift over to the Aero-Flow based Live presentation. I do not want my ‘space’ to look like I am living in an MSN World. And yes, I did check out the initial questionnaire, and it is filled with absolutely unfunny, non-sensical answers to some of the most badly placed questions. The only thing I liked about Live Planet was nothing.

One last thing, the Self-Cool image being posed on the homepage looks excruciating. And the tag-line – Match And Make New Friends – makes it feel like it is not a Social Network but a Matrimonial Matchmaker. The guy with the curly hair reminds me of Justin Guarini [ which is not a good thing ] and the forced usage of “Whats up” seems like a conscious attack to the teenage target audience. Also wtf is meant by the line: Find ur Twin?

I don’t know why I have so much negative about Live Planet. Hmm, may be because its 2009, and its TOO LATE for a Social Network to be born. But again, if I find everyone else is moving in that direction [ as in Windows Live Planet] , who am I stop? But do you really think people will adopt this new Social Network? My prediction- NO!

Morgan Stanley’s report ” How Teenagers Consume Media ” talks about the impact, reach and relevance of different forms of media on the target section of the population – the teens. The importance of this paper is the very fact that today’s teenagers will be evolving into tomorrow’s workforce and the ones who will be shaping tomorrow’s consumer market. This in itself means that the behaviour of the teenagers and their reaction towards media cannot be overlooked.

However, the report is written by a teenager, 15 year old Matthew Robson. The report reflects how a normal teenager perceives media of the current world spanning across traditional media like TV, radio and print, to new-age media like social networking websites, cellphones, game consoles etc. Although the discussion provided in the report does reflect teenage behaviour in a lot of sections, it has its shortcomings.

The basic problem with the report is that it is not a wide study on teenage behaviour and hence, market research figures are not reflected at all. Rather, the behaviours noted and reflected in this report are a biased sampling of the close friends and family of the writer. This certainly would not entirely represent the true behaviour of teenagers. Besides, the facts stated in the report should be quite obvious to market researchers who deal with actual facts and figures and carry out surveys based on age-groups or regions or income groups. The footnote of the report introduction states: While these trends will not necessarily surprise, their influence on TMT stocks cannot be underestimated. Now, if it takes a 15 year old for market researchers to realise such trends, I believe, we can see a lot more positions being made redundant.

Re-Analysing the Media analysis.
Radio: The popularity of traditional Radio or FM is still relevant inspite of internet radio stations and sites like Last.FM. The peak periods of radio listening are early morning – more so as a wake-up alarm, as a baathroom accomplice etc, in the car or bus to work, and in the evening on the way back home. Distribution of radio over FM transmitters have been reduced, and portable media devices such as a mobile phone or PMPs are where radio is being listened to. And in a country where Radio DJ are national celebrities and have shows running on National TV, can we discard the popularity of traditional radio?

Television: In the UK, due to services such as BBC iPlayer, Sky Plus and Virgin Record, and similar services offered by ITV, Channel 4 etc, prime-time is quite non-existent. BBC has no system of advertising based revenue. Whereas Channels like ITV and Channel 4 are freeview channels and completely rely on advertising based revenue system. With On-Demand viewing which enables users to skip advertisements, ad revenues are set to decline.
For teenagers, the trend of watching their favourite shows depend on
a) no. of televisions in their respective house
b) Availability of a computer with broadband. As most channels offer online catch-up facilities.
c)The channels subscribed for by the earning members of the family.
Since more than often, teens are not the earning members of the family,the final decision of what channels their TV is subscribed to is decided not by them, but by their parents or elders.

The choice of Virgin Media over Sky on the price criteria is another example of sample bias.
Sep 2008 figures: Sky has 9 million customers, which is almost thrice the size of Virgin Media, which holds the second place. Television viewing hours are again dependent on the demographic of teenagers selected.

Internet:
The popularity of social networking websites is evident amongst teenagers. While Facebook remains a favourite, Twitter seems to be not so popular amongst the teens. Even when Twitter occupies much of the attention in the internet buzz-zone, it is absent from the buzz-words amongst the teenagers, primarily because of lack of connectivity, or the cost of it. More of this will be discussed in a later post.

Much of the other information shared in the report regarding Newspaper, Viral Marketing, Cinema and Music is basic common sense stuff. Print media is struggling to get revenues; Viral Marketing works; Cinema has to look for other avenues to compete with Home Entertainment – hence 3d films, Movie experiences etc and Music industry keeps struggling with Piracy.

Please comment below and let me know your thoughts on the observations stated in this post. Thanks!

Image Courtesy: Service-Now’s Flickr Photostream

Twitter is on a rampage to improve user experience not only in terms of simpler user interface and ease of using, but also by emphasising on the User Identification methods. A large portion of Twitter users are followers of their favourite celebrity tweeters [like Jonathon Ross, Ashton Kutcher, Stephen Fry, Demi Moore - the list is endless]. Now with fame and power comes the curse of image vulnerability. For e.g. the existing Twitter account for some celebrities like famous Bollywood actor Aamir Khan and James Corden are not real. Those are fake ones, and Twitter is pushing it hard to do a check on these, so as to prevent such acts of creation of fake accounts.

In the latest blog post on Twitter, they have discussed how a certain manager, Tony La Russa has filed a lawsuit for impersonation of his name to create an account. Twitter, however has not agreed to pay any settlement for the lawsuit. To prevent occurence of any such future activities, Twitter will be rolling out identity checks termed as Verified Accounts. This check will show a tick mark next to the Profile name of a user, and will be performed on select users [comprising of public figures, officials, organisations etc.]

An important tip to check the identity of a Twitter user is to visit the URL linked in the user profile. Fake users often tend to use the Official URL of that particular user [searchable on Google]. If this particular URL links back to the twitter ID, it is certain, that the user is real and not a fake one.

Issues with this form of verification though, is that there are loads of users out there, who have shortened URLs on their profile, and these URLs lead to some dodgey website [often having an appended username at the tail] talking about affiliate marketing or money making on the internet in the next 2 hours.

In the latest post at the Twitter Blog [titled: Hello New Zealand], twitter has announced of the new-two way SMS service on Vodafone in New Zealand. So to all the Kiwis out there, here’s some Tweet Tweet Love!!!

Here is what they have to say about this.

The shortcode for Twitter in NZ is 8987 or TWTR. As always, Twittering over SMS is a standard rate message or deducted from your bundle and receiving notifications is free. If you’re not a Vodafone customer, don’t worry—we’re working on it.

Also, Twitter seems to be having their eyes now on to Australia. Happy Tweeting in the South!!