Google+ The Innovation which Integrates in a Social Way

Of all the Google Innovations over the past 13 years, I think I’m the most excited about Google+ While Google’s vision has always been to index everything on the World Wide Web, I’ve often found the many Google projects clumsy, difficult to navigate and hard to understand how to integrate all the touchpoints. Even with a technical background, the user experience has been less than ideal to maximize the value of their robust offerings.

However, Google+ is clearly the solution. It’s biggest win - Aggregation! Google+ finally puts the presentation layer on top of its offerings with a social interface. It is what has been missing from Google over the past many years of innovation. Google+ is now a one stop shop now to view gMail, Picasa, Blogger, Reader, Calendar and GoogleDocs with sharing, collaborating and social networking vehicles.

Prior to its launch, there was much media and social speculation that Google+ plus might be the Facebook killer. However upon testing it is clearly evident that Google+ is a much richer platform and will likely attract a different user base than Facebook. It’s positioned more closely with enterprise collaboration tools like SocialText, Jive, Yammer than it is with a social network, social sharing site like Facebook. While Facebook has announced its parternship with Skype, I don’t think that’s enough to compete with the infrastructure and years of innovative offerings which Google has to boot to compete at the same level

And the icing on the cake? The social layer and integration with Mobile Android devices. Brillant move, Google!
Social Graph:
The Google+ network connects friends, family and other contacts similar to Facebook. I will admit that it was less intuitive to find others when I first got on the platform as I am so accustomed now to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn who continue to send potential contacts my way. But I suspect over time this will become easier. Regardless the organization and ease of building a community (called “Circles”) was an easy Drag and Drop experience. And now I can very easily share my content or information with the appropriate groups.

Social Sharing/ Communication Options:
With Google+ we now have the option of video, email, tweeting, posting, chatting and mobile in an all in one. The Stream works similar to Facebook with posting, sharing, commenting. Hangouts, an ad hoc collaboration space, makes it easy to interact with others. The video app is easy to download and use, making it a rival to Skype. Sharing and watching YouTube videos with friends and family is easy.

Android Integration
The Google+ app is easy to download from the Android Market. Once I downloaded the app, it was easy to upload photos, share and interact. With over 100 million Android users worldwide, I suspect we'll see much more innovation here in the future.

I certainly don't see the 750 Million Facebook followers leaving that platform any time soon either. However, for those with many Google applicaitons running and the Android marketing growing, I definitely see Google+ as a sustainable and growing community once its released to the public.

Social Media Gold Rush Reminiscent of Dot Com Era

This past week I had a flash back. I was transported back to the 90s.

Way back to the time when companies were trying to figure out how to build a web site for their company for the first time. If they did, they’d make more money for the business. They’d be more efficient selling with less overhead. They’d sell more products and services to more people all over the world. The new ebusiness start up ventures would do the same. Only they'd be working from a lap top from the beaches of Florida.

This was the time when new internet companies were coming out of the wood work. Development companies. eCommerce software companies. Hosting companies. Any eBusiness you could imagine. This was the time when venture capitalists were in love with anything internet. This was before Google and way before YouTube. This was before banner advertisements, SEO, PPC and even Flash. This was around 1994. Amazon just gave birth.

I was there. I am that old. I was one of those web developers. And I was one of those entrepreneurs. In the 90s I was with an established enterprise software company when friends of mine journeyed to New York to work for one of the first eCommerce shopping cart providers. I left the firm too. But I stayed behind preferring to make millions with my new venture. I was building my own eCommerce site.

As I created my business plan, I quickly learned HTML. I got connected to the web experts online. I connected to other developers. We shared code openly and freely. We collaborated. I was working towards early retirement via a fine art photography eCommerce web site. The plan was perfect. No overhead. Just a low cost web site with photography for sale produced by myself and my artist friends. No sweat.

sjmPhotography.com went up in 1995. sjmPhotography.com went down in 1997. No sales. The market wasn’t ready. (Remember the part about no advertising costs?) Big lesson – it wasn’t that easy.

Remember any of these startup sites? Boo.com? Boo sold branded fashion apparel over the internet in 1998. The company spent $135 million in venture capital dollars in 18 months. Flooz.com? The site, promoted by Whoopi Goldberg and started by iVillage founder Levitan, tried to create ‘internet currency” – similar to frequent flier miles. Flooz spent between $35 to $50 million in venture capital to get going before it fell. It's currency was worthless in the end. Pets.com? Sounded like selling dog food online was a great idea. But if you’re out of dog food, you need it right away, not days later. They raised $82 million in their IPO before they closed shop.

By March,2000 things had changed. The Dot Com bubble burst. The Federal Reserve had increased interest rates six times. The economy was losing speed. Only the fittest survived.

So where am I headed with this all? What’s the connection?
Social media to me is a lot like the early 90s. There’s a lot of noise right now. There are a lot of companies trying to figure out what to do and feeling behind in the process. There are a lot of start ups. There are a lot of experts. There are a lot of shiny new objects to play with. There's a lot of hype, a lot of speculation. And there are a lot of folks freely giving advice, sharing information, providing expertise and guidance. To me this is a lot like the 90s.

Social business is here to stay. There’s no turning back. If history repeats itself like the Dot Com era, not everyone will survive the gold digging though. Only the fittest survive.

This time around, I’m connecting with and banking on the experts and pioneers who’ve been down this road before. The ones who survived the Dot Com era. The seasoned ones. The ones approaching this disruptive technology from a solid business perspective.

I’m a huge fan of the team at the Dachis Group (@dachisgroup) – Jeff Dachis (@jeffdachis), Peter Kim (@peterkim), Kate Niederhoffer (@katenieder) and team. They are making smart moves. They are big thinkers with business savvy. Transparent. Collaborative. Humble. Fun. They are pushing through the noise and making headway. I’m also a fan of David Armano (@armano ) with Edelman Digital (ironically he was formerly with Dachis) - he gets and lives it. He shares. And I love the thinking of Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang) and Charelen Li (@charleneli). Smart business.

Where are you placing your gold?

Changing corporate culture is like getting kids to eat peas

Last week I had the humble pleasure of participating in the Dachis Group ‘s Social Media Business Summit (http://www.dachisgroup.com/2010/03/social-business-summit-roundup-austin). I was blown away at the high level thinking of all of the participants and speakers who presented various aspects of social business design – or as I like to call it, holistic social. I’ve spent the past week letting the session wash over me to clarify my take on this journey. The one thing that I keep coming back to is corporate culture – changing corporate culture to embrace social business design.

Leading the social business efforts for an organization is exhilarating, but equally terrifying. Being on the edge/fringe of the organization and trying to move a business and its executive leadership to a whole new way of behaving and operating without tried and true business theories ? Sounds crazy and arrogant. And yet, I know its not. My passion and 'blind faith' (or bat faith as @katenieder shared) were validated in last week's summit. But changing a corporate culture? Yes, even changing a corporate culture.

Corporate culture is messy.
Corporate culture is defined as the sum of values, customs, traditions and meanings of an organization. The stories we tell and the way we speak and behave in a company amplify its existence. Performance evaluations and training define its behavioral expectations and financial rewards and benefits validate its continuation. People conform to those around them, making this all the more complex. So how does one even begin to think about changing an organizational culture?

Charlene Li, Altimeter Group – @charleneli spoke about Open Leadership. (Her new book is coming out this spring). She challenged leaders with letting go of control but staying in command to create a more open environment. An open environment, in her view, is one that shares information (vs. hoarding for power), sees opportunities and optimism (vs paranoia and threats) and is about building relationships, .

Changing corporate culture is like getting kids to eat peas.
In doing some investigation of my own, I found a University of Illinois experiment. The experiment was to find the best way to get a child to eat peas. A number of tactics were researched, such as telling the child that eating peas was good for him, punishing the child if he didn’t eat his peas and rewarding the child with ice cream if he did eat his peas . What the researchers found ultimately worked the best was sitting the child at a table with other children who liked and ate their peas on their own. The child modeled his behavior to confirm to the others – peer pressure works!

Kate Niederhoffer, Dachis Group – @katenieder - gave a similar example in her presentation at the summit. She shared research showing how others confirm to the group, even if they know the answer is incorrect. She also shared how difficult it is to just tell people to stop doing things - like stop emailing and use social, stop hoarding information, stop controlling. Isn’t that like trying to force people to eat peas?

So how do we get our organization to eat peas?
I certainly don’t have all the answers yet. But a few things I’m going to try:

1/ Find people who like to eat peas. Locate the open leaders of the organization (those who share information and decision making) . Get them in key roles and have them share new organizational stories about what’s working with the way they do things. Help them facilitate the peer pressure.

2/ Build relationships – work to create bridges between teammates and others in the organization.. Build relationship based on trust, respect, inclusion. Most of all build human relationships.

3/ Share Decision Making - involve people in decisions. Give up the need to be in control and empower others.

4/ Value Feedback –feedback of our teams and employees is just as important as our customers feedback on social media sites. The good the bad the ugly – need to value it all

5/ Open up information – share metrics/reports/information with others and be honest. If the project isn’t going well, fess up. Share conversations and information along the way to create a culture of sharing with one another.

6/ Create Guidelines – create guidelines for social computing so boundaries are clear.

7/ Experiment – this is a new playground. I heard this in a number of presentation. Expect to fail at some things but keep trying.


So this is a long way of saying, what I learned from the Dachis Group social media business summit (#sbs2010) relative to culture change is this: “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” (Mahatma Gandhi). Or as that classic rock song goes, “All I am saying, is give peas a chance”

Holistic Social

Holistic social, enterprise social… it’s the buzz of the future. Industry leaders and analysts watching the social media space continue to point organizations in this direction. This disruptive technology is forever changing the way businesses do business. But organizations are grappling with how to get on board. What does enterprise social really mean? And how does an entire organization begin to get socially calibrated?

Holistic by definition means the practice of addressing or healing the “whole". There are a million ways to skin a cat and in social media that statement is no different. There are marketing and brand tactics awaiting execution, salespersons eager to sell, customer service and CRM issues to address, PR and crisis response plans to put in place, and operational and legal challenges lurking in the wings all with an eye towards doing it in the social sphere. Each of these areas converse with a variety of audiences - customers, prospects, employees, bloggers and media who are then categorized into buckets as influencers, advocates and detractors. Layer on all the channels, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs and holistic social sounds evermore confusing and complicated. And the race to the finish line is going 900mph.

In order to become a whole and healthy organization in the social space, its important to develop a social media strategy anchored to its key business goals. The worst thing an organization can do is let every team or department go out into the social space as a silo - putting real focus to social strategy enables a company to get holistically calibrated.

But getting started is not an easy task. How do you organize around social? How can you get your organization to live socially? Where does social live in organization? Which tactics should your organization embrace? Which audience should you address first? How do you measure results? The first step to getting socially calibrated is to recognize that there are no easy answers or text book solutions. Each organization needs to define and chart its own course which aligns with its unique business goals and culture. While each organization is different and each ecosystem unique, I do believe there are some initial steps an organization can take to begin the journey:


1/ Build an Integrated Team
Develop a core team comprised of cross functional leaders to define social strategy. It’s a great idea to engage leaders from the marketing, communications, customer service, sales, operations and legal departments. Even better if you can have executive sponsorship. Do, though, make sure there are folks on the team who are socially savvy. Social media integration for many functional business leaders require they get socially educated and receive guidance from the folks in the field.

2/ Determine a Beacon

While the integrated team can help steer the strategy and ensure all leaders are engaged in policy and how the organization will move together, determine a beacon to help execute the plans. Many organizations are building social media teams and departments to help the organization manage through the programs. Where this team resides and how its structured is up to the organizational structure. At the end of the day everyone owns social in a holistic organization but initially you'll need the drive and support of a few key folks who get it and can move it.

3/ Embrace a Social Culture

Change for most is difficult, particularly if it means becoming more vulnerable. Yet that is exactly where companies need to stand today with the advent of social. Consumers expect and demand brands to be in the social space and to listen to their wants and needs. In order to survive and succeed in social, companies need more than ever to build an internal culture of transparency, engagement, responsiveness, and nimbleness. Some companies like IBM, Dell, Best Buy and Coca Cola have developed amazing strategies and policies to include the vast majority of their employees in the social media space. Company leaders now need to ask themselves tough questions, "How comfortable am I in giving employees access to information and engaging on line?" "If our consumers are asking us to change our product, will we able to execute on their requests?" "How comfortable am I in giving up some control of my brand?"


4/ Develop Strategy Based on Business Goals
In order to create a holistically social enterprise, it’s important that the tactics implemented all ladder up to the mission and strategy of the organization. Only in this way will the entire organization be able to successfully calibrate to embrace the new world order of holistic social media. Aligning with business goals also makes it easier to attribute and report out the effectiveness of social media.


To truly become a holistically social enterprise, I’m reminded of this mantra, “personal progress for the greatest number depends on unity”.