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Google+ reached 10m users in 16 days

The Next Web did a great job of comparing Google+’s growth compared to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (with a snazy graph to boot). 16 days! It only took Google 16 days while it took Twitter 780 and Facebook 852.

As mentioned by TNW, Google has established a solid brand and an array of useful tools over the past 13 years which definitely contributes to its success.  But more importantly Twitter and Facebook were a first of their kind. The comparison of adoption rate is a little misleading because Twitter and Facebook, for the most part, were a first of their kind. A lot of users didn’t know what to expect or the purpose of these platforms.

My Perspective: Reality To Soon Set In On Google+

One of the perks of my job is we have a direct relationship with the search engines, which means that they field our questions when it comes to their new product and services. Having just had a meeting about this today, thought I would expand on Jason Falls’ “Reality To Soon Set In On Google+.”

The biggest thing that stands out to me is that too many tech/social/digital dorks are proclaiming it the holy grail without putting it into proper context. Steve Rubel has pointed out consistently in his stream that the demographic makeup of Plusers is still very tech and engineer/developer heavy. What that means to me is that it’s the echo chamber’s echo chamber. The Scoble Clones and Brogan Heads think G+ is the Shizzle, so the, “next Facebook,” just happened.

While this is definitely true, isn’t this what was great about Twitter when it first sprung up? I loved the fact that the core user-base were the “digital dorks” and like minded – the people in my industry that pass along valuable information. Granted, I know that the general public is going to adopt whatever platform gets picked up by the media frenzy, it is nice to start learning a service when the people that really care are adopting and innovating.

Honestly, there’s a lot to like about Google+. One thing I don’t, however, at least from a marketing standpoint, is the majority of people aren’t there. They’re on Facebook. We also don’t yet know how G+ is going to handle brands and businesses. There’s a lot left to be determined. Jumping ship on a 700-million person behemoth of a marketplace is just short-sighted and hasty.

Having heard reps hash out ideas of what business profiles/pages could look like, there is a load of potential here. Imagine your famous celebrity connecting their profile directly to your brand. If I don’t care about your brand, but care about the celebrity, there can still be a connection there. Same goes for different categories of products. I guess it all depends on how the hierarchy is set up, but I think it is fair to wait until they push out a few iterations.

Own your identity

Marco Arment’s insight — Own your identity:

I’ve always built my personal blog’s content and reputation at its own domain, completely under my control, despite being hosted on many different platforms and serving different roles over the years. It has never been a subdomain of any particular publishing platform or host.

This entire article is very similar to something I wrote a while back, but I neglected to include (or even think about) creating an email address at my own domain. I think the problem I’ve had with this is the transition from gmail. Maybe I should begin to look in to this again.

Enough with the Gluten-Free and Vegan Talk

Stop wearing your diet restrictions like a badge on your sleeve. Seriously.

It is unfortunate that the way our food is processed and how our body’s react has caused food allergies and diseases (celiac). And I completely respect others’ personal choices to adopt a vegetarian or vegan eating regiment.

But we don’t need clarifications that every [catch phrase] food you consume is categorized as gluten-free or vegan. We don’t need to tell be told that you are eating “vegan gumbo” or “gluten-free cookies.” Really? Why can’t you just say cookies? If you just say cookies do you think we are going to be worried because we know you have celiac disease and you made an ignorant choice to consume gluten?

Vegan diets aside, there needs to be medical documentation of celiac disease’s mental side effects:  thinking that everyone cares that you are g-free. I understand the importance of the clarification when ordering food, otherwise describe food for what it is — a gluten-free cookie is still a cookie. This is not a self-proclaiming, highly-selective circle — not a hipster food movement — you just can’t process food as well as most can.

If I am not your waiter, I don’t care if your food is gluten-free. I cringe when I hear that phrase.

Google+ = Users’ Opportunity to Define

I feel like I’ve read too many in-depth articles reviewing Google+. Reviewers are quick to point out pros and cons, compare against other services and speculate Google’s direction all because the platform is a trending topics.

Honestly, here is the best review I’ve read thus far (and ironically in 140 characters or less) from @LisaFrame:

Simple enough. Google has created plenty of robust products, which look to be linked together quite nicely with Google+. With the service only being a few weeks old, it is hard to speculate the future or decide whether or not it’ll be a Facebook/Twitter killer.

For now, I think users have the chance to define the platform by digging in to the features currently available and leveraging them in a personalized way.

Discovery is what makes new technologies fun, right?

An Excerpt From ‘The Late American Novel’

I’m halfway through reading The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books for the 2nd time this week. It is no coincidence that certain excerpts stand out long after I’ve closed the pages. Here is a portion of one of my favorite essays “An Interview with Tom Piazza on the Future of the Book”:

TP: Computers and e-books and smartphones all basically look alike. They are strictly vehicles; you pick them up to step through them into some consensus reality; you’re wired in. Everything is leveled out. When everything has equal weight, everything is weightless. The world they offer is one of infinitely diverse information with a common denominator: the screen. The computer is neutral in that is gives you access to limitless amounts of information, but the one requirement is that you have to get it on the computer. The information has no smell, no weight, no texture. Nothing that seriously impinges on your reality. People think it represents some kind of democratizing of information because everything’s the same size. But democracy is when things of different sizes get a chance to mix it up and work it out, measure themselves in their perspective strengths. If everything is the same size, there’s no perspective. Perspective, as in, you know, painting. Everything becomes two-dimensional, flat…

A common theme throughout this collection is the digital age of books, but this definitely has one of the heavier impacts for me. There is, without a doubt, an irony in reading this book on an e-reader; either way, I highly recommend cracking open the pages (or scrolling through it).

Google Analytics First Benchmarking Newsletter

I received Volume 1 of Google Analytics Benchmarking Newsletter today and found that it was full of great information, but there wasn’t an efficient way to share this information. So, for the time being, I am going to post the email in it’s original form right here. Enjoy!

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Google Analytics Benchmarking Newsletter
2011, Volume 1, July 2011

1. Introduction

Welcome to the first volume of the Analytics Benchmarking Newsletter!

This month, we are replacing the standard “benchmarking” report in your Google Analytics account with data shared in this newsletter. We are using this newsletter as an experiment to surface more useful or interesting data to Analytics users. Data contained here comes from all websites which have opted-in anonymous data sharing with Google Analytics. Only those website administrators which have enabled this anonymous data sharing will receive this “benchmarking” newsletter.

You may be wondering, how many websites are in this “anonymous data sharing” pool? Currently, hundreds of thousands, and we’ve endeavored to make all of the metrics here statistically significant.

The date range of comparison for this newsletter is from November 1, 2010 – February 1, 2011. Comparison is done with data from November 1, 2009 – February 1, 2010. Absolute metrics such as total # visits, pageviews, or conversions for all opted-in websites are not reported.

To simplify the prose, the phrase “websites” will represent “websites which have opted into anonymous data sharing with Google Analytics” for the rest of this newsletter.

Tiny Desk Concert: Great Lake Swimmers

I’ve watched this video about 100 times. I’ve shared it with everyone I care about. Now, I am sharing it with you.

Revisiting: Hyper-Connected, Ultra-Casual Waste of Time

I stumbled upon some posts from my old blog runinthefront.com and was thoroughly tickled. Sometimes I really question what runs through my head; I mean, there were blog posts entitled “Baby: The Other White Meat” and “Energy, Schmenergy!” I’ll have to revisit those later, but for now I want to focus on the post below, which was posted January 2008.

This rant all came about via a post on the now defunct DoshDosh. I’ll admit, there are some parts below that confuse me a bit, but for the most part I still feel the same three years later. I still think there is an impersonal divide between the development of social media and users. More and more people join without actually developing a voice themselves — and to me, this becomes a lot of noise to filter.

I feel like these sites are growing rapidly because they are all the rave, the hot topic and because, well, everyone else is doing it. This carries a heavy learning curve for those users in which they get bored quickly or neglect to see the value.

I won’t critque myself below because a lot has changed. Just thought I’d share.

On Creating Novel Experiences

The past six months have been a complete whirlwind.

I finally took a little time last night to stop and reflect upon the constant, chaotic changes (for the best) in my day-to-day. Looking back I realized everything is flying by so quickly, I haven’t had much time to properly digest my experiences. That led to two realizations:

First, being driven isn’t the same as being passionate. For the first time in my career I really enjoy what I am learning, the challenges I am facing and applying it all to the greater good of a cohesive team. I haven’t even thought about the destination I am looking to reach; instead, I am focusing on each step of maturation as a person and professional. It has become about the journey, not the destination — passion, not the drive.

It’s quite possible the destination isn’t important because it is ever-changing. Ask me a year ago if I’ve enjoy the field I am in now and I would tell you unequivocally, “No.” That is a clear sign of the openness I’ve adopted recently. When I thought I knew what I wanted, I wasn’t happy. Why not throw caution in to the wind and allow good fortune to take me where it pleases?

This rings true in my personal life as well. When I am not in a hurry to “be somewhere” or “with someone,” things begin to fall in place. Enjoy the company of friends, be open to meeting new people and mostly importantly, don’t read in to things. A tough lesson I’ve learned is that sometimes things are just the way they are, nothing more.

So what is the next step of the journey? Who knows, but I am going to embrace it regardless.

Second, I need to focus on making everything a novel experience.

When experiencing something for the first time, it seems so much easier to remember all the details and senses of that moment. It is almost as if you can remember the experience in slow motion — everything about the situation is novel. There aren’t many complete firsts anymore (ie., jobs or relationships), so it is easy to drawn upon previous experience and somewhat write off what could be new and exciting.

It is time for me to slow down, realize these are different experiences and enjoy. There needs to be something novel about day-to-day things. I’ve taken for granted so many potential memories that is it time to cement more small wins in the memory bank.