Another Google social fail?

Google +1 is being touted as the next big social thing.


Trouble is it seems to me it's going to be just another aggregator of mass - just as Twitter Trends.

I'm waiting for a response to the actual niche peer-to-peer group-forming needs of a network (of the kind that would be delivered by Trends among Friends)

I've yet to trial the product myself - and welcome corrections and comments from those who have - but unless it allows me to share relevant recommendations with relevant people I can't see how it's much different from digg (bar scale).

In short, I want to see what my peers +1, not everyone. And our poorly maintained Google profiles don't seem to me sufficiently rich to make that vital connection.

The focus on publishers may be the give away: less social, more mass for the broadcast internet.

Related articles

• Google Wants You to +1, But Why Would You? (readwriteweb.com)
• With +1, Google Search Goes Truly Social - As Do Google Ads (techcrunch.com)
• Google redesigns Google Profiles, getting ready for new social layer? (socialwayne.com)

Why I love Twitter's 'People Similar To You' feature

I've only just noticed a Twitter feature which I think is a very healthy development: People Similar To You.
Click through to your twitter profile page and you'll find a small collection of people Twitter has run an algorithm against and decided are people 'similar to you'.
On further investigastion I find it's been trialled quietly since the summer - but only with limited numbers of users. Please check and let me know if you are seeing it on your profile?
If I had to stab a wild guess I'd say it was using similar matching technology as found in @MrTweet - which always had a pretty good hit rate for me.
I have to say the first four 'People Similar to You' delivered to me (and it was just four on the evening of November 25, 2010) were all people I'm comfortable with being described as 'similar to'.

Whether or not the others are we shall see. I'll tweet them all to ask for thoughts shortly...

In the meantime - I really like this development. I like it because it suggests Twitter is taking much more seriously our interest in people very similar to us (not just who, for example, use the term social media marketing from time to time - clogging up the twitter arteries with 'internet marketer' spam).

I've never thought much of Twitter trends. They reveal only the lowest common denominator and smack of a broadcast approach being layered on to a seriously adhoc network play.

Which is why I shouted out for Trends Among Friends - revealing what is important among my friends seems more valuable to me.

People Similar To Me seems like exactly the kind of building block that can make Trends Among Friends work.

While I'm really not too fussed about how appalling Gillian McKeith has been on this evening's I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here (ITV 1 in the UK) I am concerned about the metadata being expressed by Tamara, Tony, Neil and Mark.

It could prove to be another wonderful way in which twitter enables us to discover people who care about the same things we do, right now.

And if they are wise they will use this not to message us, but to bring us together to help add value to the thing we care about through intelligent and scalable co-creation.

I have my fingers crossed for it. Though I will note, because I expect others so to do, Twitter will be wise to throw in a little serendipity. The role of the publisher is often to introduce us to things we didn't know we needed to know. The risk of a sealed silo of similarity  is clear and one I'd expect any org with the clear understanding of group forming network theory that twitter appears to have to be very careful to avoid.

I mean, it doesn't want to be Facebook, now does it?

Related articles

• Twitter Food for Thought (theflack.blogspot.com)
• Twitter Is More Fun And More Profitable When You Follow The Right People (wassupblog.com)
• Your Friends, My Friends, Our Friends (webupon.com)
• Twitter Tests People Finder Tool (informationweek.com)
• From Social Graph to Interest Graph: Twitter Tells You Who to Follow (briansolis.com)

The UK's most influential comms professionals - on twitter

Edelman has used its TweetLevel tool to name yours truly among the UK's top 10 most influential comms professionals on Twitter.

You can read all about it in PR Week.
I'm a sucker for these things - which means Edelman's TweetLevel gets the requisite mention on this blog (which is kind of the purpose of these lists... PR types do a lot of this).

Can I recommend it to you?
Well, it apparently takes 30 stats that Twitter makes available to score influence, engagement, trust and popularity. And it churns out a top 10 that has me in it. So it can't be all bad then, can it (it's likely that those of you who do trust/engage with me may agree - that's the communities of purpose thing in action.)?


The power is in measuring within the niche. And at the moment creating a niche (top 10 of most influential comms pros in the UK and on twitter, for example) is a very manual process. So as a tool on its ownsome - little use. When some manual labour is applied? Potentially helpful - but don't underestimate the labour intensity.

Me? I'm still looking for someone to build Trends Among Friends. Any takers?

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• Attending Monitoring Social Media 09 Conference - London - November 17th, 2009 (webmetricsguru.com)
• Reactions to the 100 PR People Worth Following List (conversationagent.com)