When the CEO of Google speaks a lot of people listen. It may come a bit of a shock though, to hear him suggest that people may need to change their names because of their previous interactions on social media. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Eric Schmidt warns that people have now put so much information about themselves on the web that it may have serious consequences for their future. It may get so bad that people will need to change their name upon reaching graduation. This will be needed to avoid our social media history coming back to bite us.
The teenage years are a time when many individuals rebel and say all types of strange things – these days we automatically publish even our wildest notions directly into our social media feeds. It will soon be possible for bosses to access all this information and something we said on a gloomy Wednesday when we were thirteen could prevent us from getting a job in our twenties. It really is scary and even things that we said as a joke could completely ruin us – many bosses have no sense of humour.
The idea of a whole generation of children needing to change their name might sound a bit extreme but there could be a lot of truth in this. It is not only the young that need to worry, because adults are just as capable of publishing inadvisable information about themselves on the web. Who hasn’t had a flaming match on a web forum? We lose control and forget that anyone could be reading these comments. This is why it is vital that we always consider everything we publish to the web as being things that anyone will be able to see and judge us on.
It seems that Google have huge hopes for their new Chrome web store. Google seemed a bit untouchable up until about two years ago but they have had a lot of failures recently. They seem keen to take on Apple and social media websites like FaceBook, but every time they try to do this they seem to fail. The recent winding down of Google Wave seems just one more sign that the company really has lost its golden touch. It is certain that Google are now feeling a bit desperate to have another great success; it may be that the Chrome web store will help them do this.
The new Chrome web store is likely to have learnt many lessons from the success of the iTunes store. There is likely to be a way for people to rank all the different applications and there are sure to be many of these to choose from. Everything from games to Google TV is likely to be merchandised through this new web store. Apparently it has leaked out that the store is going to have a function that suggests gifts for some of your friends. This really sounds intriguing and probably works the same way as Amazon suggests books to people based on their previous purchases. Some people though, might be a bit concerned that their friends can find out information about their previous purchases – it will be interesting to see how Google manages all this.
I love new ideas so it will be great to see what this Chrome web store really has to offer. Hopefully it won’t be too long before the whole thing is up and running and we can try it out for ourselves. I also hope that there are plenty of innovative applications available and not just the same old same old.
Was it only last year that some of us were practically begging for an invite to use Google Wave? How things change. Google has just announced that it is going to bin the whole Google Wave project. It seems that this next thing that was going to change the face of the internet was grossly overhyped. Instead of changing the online world it has almost been forgotten even before it was released. The problem with Google Wave was that while there was no doubting that it was quite impressive and innovative nobody was quite sure what it was all about.
I remember how excited I felt last year after getting my Google Wave invite. I felt like one of the chosen people about to set foot in a new land; I was going to be a pioneer for the first time in my life. Never mind that I was one of the last to sign up for Twitter and joined FaceBook the same time as David Cameron; this time I was going to be in the vanguard. I opened the application that first time and immediately realised that I had no idea why I would want to use it. I tried to remain enthusiastic and even looked at the tutorials, but after a couple of hours disappointment set in. I tried it again a few times, but had actually completely forgotten about it until I heard today that Google was abandoning it.
Google Wave reminds me of the 80′s band Sigue Sigue Sputnik. They were hyped for ages as the greatest thing to ever hit the music scene but as soon as their first single was released everyone knew they were crap. Many of us tried to force ourselves to like them but there was just not point to them – sort of like Google Wave.
At the moment it might seem that FaceBook and Twitter are untouchable. After all, FaceBook just announced that it is about to reach half a billion users – how can anyone compete with that? The fact is that when others have tried to compete with these two social media power-giants recently they have lost – even Google can’t seem to be able to do it despite their continued attempts. MySpace has failed miserably at keeping up with the big two and seems to be losing users almost as fast as FaceBook is gaining them. There is a lot of excitement about a new social media site called Tumblr though, and this just might be a serious contender.
Tumblr already has about 7 million users and apparently 25,000 new people are signing up every day. These are impressive figures, but very modest when you compare it to FaceBook and Twitter. On the other hand though, there does seem to be a bit of momentum behind this website. There are also a growing number of people who are becoming dissatisfied with the big two, and are just looking for an excuse to jump ship. If Tumblr can convince these people that they have something new to offer then maybe it really can hit the big time in social media. In many ways Tumblr does seem to be offering what the other two are also providing, but it has to be said that it does this in a very unique way.
I would love to see a new social media site enter the fray; even my granny uses FaceBook and this just takes some of the excitement out of the whole thing. A new frontier in the social media world could certainly help make life interesting again.
Let’s be honest here, despite Google attempts at almost compulsory membership the whole Buzz social media venture has failed to really take off. Some people do like it but it’s never going to compete with the likes of Twitter and FaceBook. Not to be dissuaded the good people at Google are going to have another shot at the social media crown with a rumoured new venture. Sources say that this is to be called ‘Google Me’.
To add credibility to this claim of a new social media venture by Google the much respected Kevin Rose from Digg is one of those spreading the rumour. Google themselves have not confirmed or denied anything – this seems to be adding fuel to the fire because you would expect Google to deny quickly if it wasn’t true. There is a lot of speculation about how this new ‘Google Me’ would work but some social media experts are predicting that it will be a mix between Buzz and Orkut. Despite the fact that Google has not performed so well with their other social media ventures they do have at least 400 million potential users who currently have Gmail.
I think that a quality alternative to the FaceBook and Twitter would be great; you need competition to keep things moving. It would also be a real shame to see FaceBook one day completely dominate and this could be dangerous as well. Without competition to keep these huge enterprises in check who knows what they would get up to; privacy issues being one of the main concerns. Google are finding social media to be a hard nut to crack, but if they keep on trying then it seems likely that they will get it right eventually. Hopefully this will involve something new and innovative rather than a repackaging of other social media sites with a Google badge.
On June 8th Google launched caffeine. When I first heard about this I thought that perhaps Google was attempting to take on Starbucks with some type of coffee delivery service where you ordered online. It seems that was completely wrong though and caffeine is actually the name of a new Google algorithm. It is not just any old algorithm because this promises to be faster and more comprehensive than anything else we have seen so far – sounds impressive doesn’t it.
This new Caffeine algorithm promises to improve our experience when searching on Google. Unlike the previous algorithm this will be constantly updating the index while analysing the web in small portions; the old system consisted of an index made up of different layers. The new system will be able to add 100,000 gigabytes of information to its database every single day. It is also thought that the new algorithm will continue Google’s efforts to ensure that their users get quality search results and not just SEO dross.
Many people who rely on SEO to promote their content may be worried by the arrival of a new algorithm. The fact is though that while Goggle Caffeine was only launched a couple of days ago it has probably been affecting web results for months already. It shouldn’t mean too much of a change to search engine results overnight. What it does mean is that there might be more of a push for quality with the new algorithm and some of the old SEO tricks might no longer work so well. Google seem determined to provide quality results for users and every change they make to the algorithm seems to reflect it. Quality always seems to win in the end so maybe the thing that Google Caffeine will achieve is to emphasise this.
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There have been attempts to bring the internet to the TV in the past but nobody has managed to do this successfully. This is a real shame because the ability to have the internet on such a big screen is a tempting idea. Now Google are set to release a new type of TV that will allow viewers to mix the best of both types of media. This is all very exciting stuff and could completely revolutionize the way we watch television.
The idea behind Google TV is that people can move flawlessly between both types of media and be able to use both simultaneously. So if you are a football fan not only can you watch the game but you will be able to shrink the TV picture and surf the internet to get all the facts about the game you are watching. If a new player impresses you with their skills you can find out all about them by searching their biography while at the same time continuing to watch the game. The possibilities are endless here. I often find that my interest is piqued by something somebody says on TV and this new technology will allow me follow up on this without having to exit the TV program.
Another great benefit of Google TV will be that it will mean we can now watch internet video in a full-screen format. Personally I find that these days there is probably a lot more interesting video on the web anyway so the idea of a high quality picture gets my vote. I can’t wait to see what happens when Google TV becomes a reality. Hopefully we won’t have to wait too long for this technology. Despite all the fuss surrounding the iPad at the moment it could be something like Google TV that really impacts our lives the most.
If you search the internet for information in regards to quitting FaceBook you will have no problem finding information; in fact you will get over two million hits on Google alone. It seems that these days there are nearly as many people interested in quitting FaceBook as there in joining it; it is becoming quite a fad with people boasting about how they have broken away. People not only want to log off permanently from this social media site, but they want all evidence that they were ever a member eradicated.
There are plenty of explanations that people give for wanting to quit FaceBook. These reasons range from those hip folks that believe it is no longer cool to belong to such a popular institution to those who have real fears about how it is affecting their privacy. You will also hear the common complaint that having a page on FaceBook is more like a job than a fun activity; all those emails and requests. People want to get their lives back and they can no longer see any benefits of staying with this social media site. The fact that FaceBook has been frequently been used as a means to pass on viruses has also caused many to become disillusioned with the site.
Despite the flood of people who are leaving FaceBook it still remains one of the most popular places on the web. The reality is that many of those who are abandoning the site may not have been big users anyway. I personally believe that there will come a day in a few years when FaceBook will be completely forgotten about but that day seems to be quite far away. Some of the recent changes at this social media site do seem to have alienated a few users, but otherwise it seems like business as usual.
Recently we discussed some of the problems that review sites like Yelp were having when it came to keeping their reviews fair. A system where strangers review products and services is often wide open for exploitation with business people writing their own praising reviews and giving terrible reviews to their competition.
The biggest problems with internet product reviews are that you just don’t know who is writing them. We are all anonymous on the web and have our own motivations for doing things. It would be kind of naive to think that those trying to sell products and services wouldn’t go out of their way to stick some flattering testimonials out there. This means that it is hard to know that the product review you are reading is actually fair or not.
Despite these failings with online reviews, it does seem that many of us are prepared to make purchases on the basis of the things we read online. In fact a recent survey has shown that 57% of consumers trust the reviews they read online, and probably a lot more than this act upon them. Google has never been one to miss out on any opportunity and they may be moving further into the world of product reviews as they are teaming up with Bazzaarvoice.
Personally I think that product reviews are useful enough so long as you take them with a large pinch of salt. It is good to get as many opinions as possible from a few sources that you trust; keeping in mind that the whole online review business is open to abuse. The success of these product review sites seems to indicate that we can expect a lot more of this in the future. Hopefully more of these review sites will toughen up their submission policies to ensure increased fairness.
