Google+ users will soon begin to see Google+ posts in their Google Search results.

The Huffington Post   Catharine Smith   First Posted: 8/13/11 06:05 PM ET Updated: 8/13/11 06:05 PM ET

This feature is activated only when you’re signed in to your Google Account, according Product Manager Sagar Kamdar, who posted the announcement on the Google Search Blog.

When you’re searching Google for, say, a restaurant, you might see that some results include content shared publicly by members of your Google+ Circles.

Kamdar detailed the new tool thus:

Let’s say I’m logged into my Google Account, and I search on Google for [uncle zhou queens]. I’ve heard a lot of great things about this restaurant, and we’re visiting NYC soon, so we want to figure out all the best eats in town. I also happen to have Andrew Hyatt in one of my Google+ circles. Oh, and it turns out he just made a public post on his Google+ account about Uncle Zhou in Queens [...] Now not only do I get some great reviews on the web, I get a review from a friend about a restaurant with recommendations about what dishes to order.

Check out an example of what Google+ content looks like when attached to a Google Search result:

This new feature will roll out to Google+ users “over the coming days,” wrote Kamdar, noting also that private Google+ posts will not appear in Google Search.

Google plans to further integrate its social network into search results by reintroducing Realtime Search, a recently axed feature that drew heavily from posts on Twitter. “Our vision is to have google.com/realtime include Google+ information along with other realtime data from a variety of sources,” a Google rep said in July, shortly after the search tool disappeared.

Back in February, Google updated its Social Search feature to enrich Search results with content from Google Account users’ friends on Blogger, YouTube, Quora, Flickr, Google Reader, Twitter and others social sites. This was prior to the launch of Google+, and some wondered at the time about the usefulness of placing content from social networks into search results.

The recent addition of Google+ content won’t fundamentally change Social Search. As explained by Search Engine Land:

Google Social Search continues to operate as before. Things shared socially at places like Twitter and Facebook by those you’re connected with may appear with annotations and rank better in results. [...] The main difference is, as Google’s post says, is that things you share on Google+ itself are now part of the mix.

Google+ has grown at an astonishing rate since its launch in late June. An August study released by comScore found Google+ to be the fastest-growing social network ever. Indeed, at the time of the study, Google+ had amassed 25 million members.

And Google isn’t resting on its laurels when it comes to growing the site. Thursday saw the launch of Google+ Games, a social gaming network that includes titles like ‘Angry Birds’ and ‘Bejeweled.’ Among the list of developers jumping on board with Google+Games was Zynga, Facebook’s gaming cash cow.

How I’m Using Google+ (Hint: It’s About Relevance)

As i continue to kick the tires and try to juggle, distinguish and appropriate categorize Google+, I found Melissa Parrish’s blog post insightful. Pricepoints comments follow hers.

Forrester Blogs » Marketing & Strategy » Interactive Marketing Professionals » Melissa Parrish
How I’m Using Google+ (Hint: It’s About Relevance)

Posted by Melissa Parrish on August 8, 2011

If you were to glance at my Google+ profile, you’d probably think I’m practically inactive. But what you’re seeing is the public view of a very targeted set of actions, based on relevance.

I like to have different kinds of conversations with different people, so when I share content it’s with circles that designate not only relationship but topics too, and Google+ makes it really easy for me to be highly relevant in this way. Take, for example, politics. I like to talk about it, but I’m rarely interested in fighting, so when I share a politically focused news article, it’s not enough to be in my Friends circle. To see it, you have to be in my Friends-Politics circle, where I’ve included people who I know I’ll have an interesting conversation with that won’t result in insults and multiple exclamation points.

There is one thing missing if relevance is an aim of the platform. As of today, my relevance-based circles only apply to what I share with others. What would be especially helpful would be a way to limit the content I see from others in that circle to the topic I’ve assigned it. For example, I’m following Christian Oestlien, one of the Google+ product managers, specifically for updates about Google+. So while the YouTube music videos and Onion articles he posts are probably funny, I can’t say I’m particularly interested in seeing them from him. Now, if one of the people in my Friends-Hilarious circle posted them, that’s another story . . ..

So what are the implications for brands?

Once business pages become available, brands may get the most from Google+ by prioritizing relevance over scale, regardless of how quickly the user base grows. If your audience uses the service like I do, it’s going to be in your best interest to get your brand in our Brands-Deals I’ll Use or our Brands-Great Links or our Brands-Things I Want For My Birthday circles. You’re not going want to end up in Brands-General.

Since business pages haven’t been revealed yet, I can only offer ideas on how brands might be able to accomplish this, but 2 possibilities come to mind:

1) Brands can launch their Google+ presences with a single, focused content theme first (deals, links, new products, etc.). This would mean that users who add you to their circles are interested in that specific content. Then your interaction with customers will be around that particular content theme so engagement expectations will be set on both sides.

2) Consumers could tell the brand what type of content they want, and the brand would create circles and share content accordingly. If business pages work mostly like consumer pages do today, then this would be a manual process involving something like comments from users, spreadsheets, and manual circle creation — probably not something a lot of brands will have the time and energy to do. But this could be a really compelling strategy if Google were to build an easy way for marketers to collect content-theme “opt-ins” and auto-populate circles based on that info. That would allow marketers to diversify the content they’re sharing to maximize the size of their Google+ audience, while still respecting relevance needs.

What business pages will do remains to be seen, and it’ll be some time before true user trends emerge that will show whether I’m alone on the relevance thing or not. In the meantime, what do you think? Is Google+ all about relevance for you? How are you using the platform?

First, I believe the significance initiative will command the appropriate “marketing” resources and commitment to establish it’s value. My experience and take on Google, like many, extremely bright and clever….but like some of my friend’s children’s get bored and move to quickly to another cool thing.

It can be boring to understand the user experience nuance that really makes the service or feature “can’t live without it popular”. Most recently Unless you’ve been asleep the battle over internet (overly dramatic I admit), due to the ability of Facebook to limit data access has finally gotten Google’s attention. It will impact their revenue source, search, and therefore will maintain their attention.

Six Ways Google+ Is Winning — and Losing

Six Ways Google+ Is Winning — and Losing

Why the Social Platform Is a Promising Addition to the Real-Time Marketing World

By: Shiv Singh

Published: August 03, 2011

Shiv Singh

Having played around with Google+ for a few weeks now, here are my raw thoughts on the social platform and its role in the real-time marketing world. Some of these thoughts made it into this Ad Agestory for which I was interviewed last week.

1. Finally a Google social-networking bet that has a chance of surviving.
There’s no question, this is Google’s best bet ever in the social-networking space. There have been so many false starts and halfhearted efforts that I had begun to wonder whether Google could every crack this space. The reason why things are different this time — rather than incubating the product in isolation in Google Labs, from the get-go Google+ is integrated into the rest of the Google ecosystem through single sign on, the navigation bar and the ability to add in contacts and friends. There’s a lot more integration to do but it works effectively as a real-time stream of content being shared to you and from you based on social context.

2. Google’s challenge is that we simply do not know how Google+ fits into our lives.
Maybe Google+ has been intentionally silent on that for a good reason. Facebook has become part of our digital habit — I sit down for a cup of coffee in the morning and I go on Facebook to scan my news feed. I find some really compelling content while surfing the web and I tweet about it to the world. It’s not clear if Google wants Google+ to be an add-on to my digital habits or a replacement. A lot of people — the 20 million people who are playing around on Google+ are asking themselves that question. The funny thing is that Google+ has the best of Facebook and the best of Twitter — you have the ability to broadcast and select closed groups who should receive that broadcast. So is it meant to be a bridge between the two but do we really need that? Targeting for brands in a real-time fashion this way is extremely powerful.

3. Google+ misses a true radical innovation opportunity but all is not lost.
Google’s historic strength has been its search-engine algorithms and its blistering-fast technology backbone. Simply speaking, it has the best scientists and its algorithms are unmatched. That’s why its the undisputed leader in search. But in Google+ I have to manually find my friends and add them to circles manually. It is time consuming and can quickly get overwhelming managing all of these friends and circles.

If I could log in and have Google+ make recommendations based on how I have interacted with people in the past that would be valuable. The home run would be if they could add a “Suggested Circles” functionality that helps me manage my networks. They do something similar in Gmail today with “Important first” and the “Priority Inbox” functionality, so this wouldn’t be a big step for them. After all, who wants to go about adding friends and categorizing them yet again. To take that thought a step further, Google+ could also suggest brands and products in a similar fashion.

4. Google+ can really work for brand marketers if we’re given the right tools.
From a brand perspective, two things matter most — knowing where, when and how we can engage meaningfully with our consumers and in turn being mindful of how they’d like us to engage with them. As marketers, we absolutely want to find ways to engage with our consumers on Google+ that are organic to the Google+ philosophy and in ways that consumers are using the platform. But to be effective we need very strong analytics. We have to be smart in how we engage — we can’t be everywhere or do everything, so we need analytics that help us make decisions on how and where to best reach our consumers at moments in time when we matter. Google has said that when they do launch brand pages they will have strong analytics. Google understands brands because they have worked closely with us on search and they know what analytics we need, so I am happy to wait for that.

Keeping in mind the importance of people’s privacy, we’d also want to know psychographic information about who we’re engaging. This is not an anonymous platform, so we always have to respect that. If Pepsi could reach out on Google+ and engage a Pepsi fan and then also be able to engage with their friend circle or their work circle that would be a win. In the end we want to participate in a way that makes sense for the platform, consumers and the brand.

5. Google+ functions effectively as a real-time sharing engine.
There’s no question in my mind that Google+ is strongest as a real-time content-sharing engine for me to push out specific pieces of content to specific people circles. Google+ integrates more seamlessly with YouTube, Google Photos and Google Music as Ian Schafer emphasized in an Ad Age piece. That is its greatest strength. It’s something that I can’t do with Twitter (lists are for viewing tweets from select people, not for sharing out tweets to groups), and while I could do it with Facebook, the people-management feature has gotten cumbersome. It’s also symmetrical limiting me from controlling distribution the way I may want to.

6. Google+ streams are very different to the Facebook newsfeed.
That’s an advantage. If someone gave me one wish in the world, I’d probably use it to understand how Facebook’s edge-rank system actually worked. Like the Google-search algorithm, it’s a black box and I’m not exactly sure how many users (and which users) may see a specific post from one of my brands. From a marketing standpoint, that’s a bit of a problem.

However, in the case of Google+ everything published appears in the stream in chronological fashion. I have a much better sense of what a user will see. Now, this can certainly get overwhelming but there’s absolute clarity in terms of what will make it into a user’s feed. You could argue that the Google model is simplistic and not scalable but what’s certain is that it forces you to take those circles seriously. And for Google that’s a good thing, and for marketers it makes Google+ more valuable.

It’s going to be fascinating watching the evolution of Google+. To get 20 million people to play with it in a manner of weeks is no joke. The social network is definitely off to a good start but there’s obviously a lot more to do to create true stickiness of the Facebook variety. One thing is for sure, if Google were to integrate the Google+ stream and comments into its search-engine algorithm, that alone may provide enough incentive for a lot more people to take it even more seriously. Only time will tell whether Google decides to go in that direction or not.

“Are Your Customers Becoming Digital Junkies?” McKinsey Quarterly

Bertil Chappuis, Brendan Gaffey, and Parviz Parvizi

Consumer behavior is shifting rapidly as more people use digital devices and platforms intensively.

New McKinsey research highlights a dramatic increase in the intensity with which people use digital devices and platforms. Nearly 50 percent of US online consumers are now advanced users of smartphones, social networks, and other emerging tools—up from 32 percent in 2008.

We have been tracking consumers’ digital habits through a series of surveys covering more than 100,000 respondents across North America, Europe, and Asia.1 Our 2010
US findings highlighted the growth of advanced multidigital and rich-media segments: the people most likely to be early adopters of new technologies (whom we label “digital-media junkies”), often younger men; those spending more time on social networks (“digital communicators”), often women; and those more likely to consume Internet-based video (“video digerati”). Meanwhile, we have seen a decline in segments focused primarily on one kind of digital use (such as e-mail or gaming), as well as late adopters whose digital consumption is superficial. Behind these broad category shifts are meaningful changes in how consumers use core technologies.

Social networks as communications gateways
Social networks, particularly Facebook, are emerging as the dominant digital-communications channels.
For people aged 34 and under, they already are the preferred channel (by minutes of use per day), displacing
e-mail, texting, and phone calls. Social-network use, growing swiftly among all segments of our survey population, has doubled
among those over 55. Such networks also are becoming information portals for people seeking items such as videos, photos, and
content posted by friends. In our latest survey, 33 percent of the respondents said they use social networks to navigate content
on the Web, up from 13 percent in 2008. While search engines continue to be the leading way consumers access online content, the use of social networks is growing.
As consumers spend more time on them, decisions about what to purchase often reflect inter- actions with friends and other influencers. In response, leading marketers are adapting their strategies to reach increasingly networked consumers and placing more stress on tactics such as word-of-mouth marketing and storytelling.

Smartphone as ‘Swiss Army knife’
As the usage and processing power of smartphones increase in tandem with the rising speed of
3G and 4G data networks,2 mobile devices are invading the domains of single-purpose gear such as game consoles and portable media players, as well as PCs.

Advertisers must refine marketing plans so that they reflect new video- viewing behavior, while getting creative about targeting users who are time-shifting and
dividing their attention among platforms.

Smartphones are also becoming
the device of choice for e-mail, Web browsing, and product research.
A third of smartphone owners prefer using it for Web browsing or
e-mail even when they are near PCs. Over the past two years, iPhone
users have spent 45 percent more time e-mailing on their smart- phones and 15 percent less time
e-mailing on their PCs. More than 60 percent of smartphone users would
consider buying goods with it or have already done so.

As the power and functionality of devices grow, the possibilities for making money from mobile platforms will continue to improve. We found, for instance, that smartphone users already are more accustomed to paying for digital content and services than traditional online users are. Three-quarters
of iPhone users, for example, now pay for one or more apps each month, though most remain free. As more products are distributed over mobile channels, greater
competition will raise the importance of design, ease of use, and
new mobile payment options. These findings are good news for
content and service providers that wonder if mobile solutions will deliver real returns.

Internet video: Challenging traditional TV

As digital platforms multiply, consumer video-viewing habits continue to change. Among
our survey respondents, 69 percent now view videos on their PCs and

Digital consumers fall into seven distinct groups characterized by the types of digital experiences they prefer.

US example

Source: 2008, 2009, and 2010 McKinsey surveys of ~20,000 US Internet users, aged 13–64

33 percent on their smartphones. Twenty-four percent view
Internet content on their TVs—a percentage that has tripled
over the past two years as Internet- enabled game consoles, DVD players, DVRs, and TVs have proliferated. Although these users
are 1.5 times more likely than the general population to say that
they intend to cancel their pay-TV service, only a quarter of them are satisfied with the experience.

That should open the door to new areas of competition and innovation; pay-TV companies, for example,
are starting to offer their programming across tablets and mobile devices.

Web search and video providers, meanwhile, see opportunities
for services that help consumers navigate the fragmented domain
of online video, a role similar to that of traditional TV-programming packagers. Advertisers must
refine marketing plans so that they reflect this new video-viewing behavior and get creative about targeting users who are time- shifting and dividing their attention among platforms.

We have seen similar digital disruptions in other key platforms, such as gaming, e-publishing,
and music. The digital revolution, still in its earliest days, will continue to upend how we interact, entertain ourselves, buy, and work.

1 This article focuses on recent results from our US research, covering 20,000 people since 2008. Respondents aged
13 to 64 with Internet access were asked about their digital behavior in areas including social interactions, e-commerce, video preferences, and device ownership.
2 The term 3G, or third generation, refers to
a generation of multiple standards for mobile phones and mobile telecommunications devices, while 4G is the fourth generation of cellular wireless standards— with higher speeds.

Bert Chappuis is a director in McKinsey’s Silicon Valley office, Brendan Gaffey is a principal in the Dallas office, and Parviz Parvizi is an associate principal
in the Boston office.

Copyright © 2011 McKinsey & Company. All rights reserved. We welcome your comments on this article. Please send them to quarterly_comments@mckinsey.com.

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Are_your_customers_becoming_digital_junkies_2839?pagenum=1#interactive

Using Video To Drive Online Financial Services Sales

Interesting new research & POV from Forrester. Pricepoints Consulting is current engaged with a bank that is primarily B2B focused. It has carved out a niche for itself and looking to retire some traditional media for more effective efforts. In my mind financial services key success factors are rates, service and personal relationship. And for most, in that order. We are definitely investigating was to use video and social in professional, relevant  and engaging ways to extend brand awareness (telling stories). What do you think? August 11, 2011

How Financial Services eBusiness Executives Can Use Online Video

by Benjamin Ensor, Sabine Poltermann with Martin Gill, Nick Thomas, Amelia Martland, Myram Da Costa

Executive Summary

More people than ever before watch online video. In response, an increasing number of financial services eBusiness teams are using online video to drive sales. Nevertheless, based on our study of more than 90 leading financial services websites, eBusiness executives at financial institutions have work to do to use the full potential of video to drive online sales. eBusiness teams in other sectors like clothing and consumer electronics already use online video to convert lookers into buyers, and financial services eBusiness executives can learn from those examples, drive sales, and build a new generation of digital financial services by developing more product-related videos, integrating those videos into product pages, and focusing on fixing user experience flaws.

Sponsored Tweets / Forrester’s POV

A repost of a Forrester summary Sponsored Tweets

Executive Summary

New product launches involve many moving parts and require tight synchronization between product management, product marketing, sales, service, and engineering — as well as a multitude of third parties — to meet corporate goals. Customer and developer feedback has emerged as an essential information source to help disparate groups quickly build consensus regarding launch priorities and decisions, which decreases time-to-market. As a result, tech marketers seek better ways to more frequently incorporate customer and developer feedback into the product launch process to introduce a new product that is truly ready for the marketplace. By monitoring and measuring social media conversations on new products throughout the product launch cycle, technology marketers can gain valuable and timely customer and developer feedback to help accelerate, improve, and influence product launch readiness.

 

Twitter‘s Bad Idea

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by George Colony on July 13, 2011

Twitter is searching for a way to make money — a prerequisite for a  Bubble II IPO (http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/investment-values-twitter-at-8-billion/)

An idea it’s been pushing since April is something called promoted tweets

(http://support.twitter.com/articles/142101-what-are-promoted-tweets) — auctioning the rights to place advertising at the top of popular Twitter streams.

Google places ads — why can’t Twitter? One big fat reason:  Twitter’s ad imposes itself into a discussion among real people. It’s as if you held a dinner party and an uninvited stranger barged into your house screaming self-serving non-sequitors — and you can’t get rid of him. A search ad has the potential to help you; a “conversation ad” is simply disruptive.

Promoted tweets appear to be directed at the B2B space. Only one problem: Forrester’s research indicates that Twitter possesses very limited influence over B2B transactions, at least in the technology space. Twitter influences one half as many Business Technology (BT) buyers as Facebook, and only a third that of LinkedIn. You can find a very short precis of the report here (http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/social_tech_product_launch/q/id/59509/t/2) . Promoted tweets are a bad idea on many levels — Twitter should scrap them and head back to the whiteboard in search of a less intrusive way to justify its irrational market valuation. I’d love to get your comments..

Pricepoints : Some interesting comments show a variety of POV’s. I can’t disagree with Josh’s accurate assertion of Twitter’s rights as a business to monetize its system. Capitalism, right? As a marketer, I see the value of right time, right place relevant communication. Relevant is key and open to debate sans clarification.  And, importantly, still subscribe to the theory of market correction, in this case, marketing‘s  ability to correct itself. Bottom line for me, the promoted tweet needs to add value, not be a re-tweet retread and most certainly be identified as an injection into the conversation.

Assessment is right on (/george_colony/11-07-13-twitters_bad_idea#comment-12627)

Comment from Jason Freeman (not verified) on W ed, 07/13/2011 – 11:18

Your assessment is right on. That said, would love to know what you think the revenue model should be. Thank you for the post.

Get used to those Twitter ads (/george_colony/11-07-13-twitters_bad_idea#comment-12628)

Comment from Josh Bernoff on W ed, 07/13/2011 – 11:19

Twitter has to find a way to make money — just like Facebook and Google and Yahoo. It’s a heck of a lot better if it makes that money from advertisers than from charging users.

Promoted tweets don’t get in the middle of conversation any more than paid search results “get in the middle of” natural search or display ads “get in the middle of” the news in the New York Times. It’s just that we’ve gotten used to those other ads — meaning we know how to read them and how to ignore them.

In my opinion (I’d say “in my humble opinion” but nobody ever called me humble) the problem is that the ads look TOO MUCH like tweets. I’d be happier if the ads looked more like ads. Then people would read them or not, just as they do with any other ads. Twitter needs more advertising.

The problem with promoted Tweets… (/george_colony/11-07-13-twitters_bad_idea#comment-12638)

Comment  from George Colony on W ed, 07/13/2011  – 15:01

There’s a big difference between promoted tweets and ads in the New York Times or in Google search. Tweet topics and streams are created by the users — they are private ideas and conversations. Ads in the Times work because that company created value (the articles), so readers will put up with ads. Same goes with Google — that company deployed its amazing algorithms to get the users accurate search results — so the user will put up with the ads. But let’s say you created a conference, let’s say SXSW as an example. You spend a lot of money getting people to your conference, you rent a facility, and you create a hash tag for the conference, #SXSW. The attendees (and others) now use Twitter to talk about the conference and the content, but there’s an interloper who bid to persistently appear at the top of that stream — a very, very strategic spot. That’s unfair to the content provider (SXSW) and disruptive to the Twitter users. Ads only work when there’s a fair trade at work. In the promoted tweet case, that’s not the case.