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Monday, June 13, 2011

Google Social, Google Circles, Google Buzz and beyond

Here is a short summarization of what I found today:

Google Buzz is here to stay. It will carry the activity stream of Google Profiles which will be the host for Google's social experience.
Google Circles isn't so much a social network, it is more of a "contact/group management" system that lets you control which information you want to share with who.
Like: Family, Friends, Coworkers, Followers and so on. That's circles... nothing more and nothing less.
This will control which information will be visible for who on the web. There will also be a better control over followers etc.

The picasa-tab on Google Profiles will get split up.
It will become a "Photos" and a "Videos" tab.

Photos:
The Photos-Tab will get the option (it is an OPTION you are NOT forced to do so) to share the location info (where were the pics taken / GPS coordinates) directly on profiles. There is also an option to sync a camera directy with profiles/picasa. This is highly likely a feature for the Chromebooks. Remember the Google IO when they showcased file-handlers? Plugging in a camera and automatic upload and such on chromeOS? It is exactly that.
Google profiles will also offer the possibility for facial-recognition on photos. No poo, I'm serious! But that's an opt-in, not facebook-style, so don't worry.
If someone tags you on a photo, you'll get a tagging-request. If you approve, it will appear in the "Photos of you" section on profiles.

Videos:
Will combine Picasa video-uploads (yep, that's possible... now we know why up to 15 minute videos are not substracted from the free space quota) and youtube uploads.

There will be also the option to browse photos and videos of certain users... (tags) so, that's very handy too.

+1 Is here to stay, likes and reshares are something different and will also stay.
It will be possible to +1 single posts (I guess Google Buzz posts). This is something very important for us buzz users! Why? Because it shows, that Google indeed wants Buzz to evolve even further and we all love Buzz.

Uhm, what?
Ok... You can also "recommend"/+1 a comment... very cool

And there will be... sorry for the analogy... a summarization of how many people +1'd a comment or a Buzzpost  next to the entry.

There will be advanced sharing and privacy features, way better than facebook's stuff.

Profiles will also have a touch-compatible interface, probably optimized for tablets first.
There will also be a variety of content-sources like "posts from mobile devices" "twitter" "email upload" (note the word upload), "Google Talk" and "Gadgets" ? this one will be interesting.. (look at my post from yesterday, there could be a relation..)

You will be able to post directly on Google Profiles (just to clarify) and there you can attach links, videos, photos and locations to every BuzzPost.

Locationbased Posts:
You can select places to attach to a post (yeah, those from hotpot/Google Places), or just an address.. or GPS coordinates.

You will have better Privacy Control (thanks to circles) about the audience that will be able to see certain posts and so on.
You can now also prevent resharing of a post (yeah some of you will love that!)

Aaaaand you will get a super-neat Google Talk chat in the Google-Bar :D

So, that's basically it.
Enjoy

It will roll out real soon.. compare my post about Google Music beta and the time when they finally released it... just took a few days or two weeks? IDK, you have to check...

EDIT: Jannik Lindquist pointed out that we are still missing a main page for the collective consumption stream of all the people that we follow in this scenario.. That's totally true. Exciting times... Will there really be a Google Circles page? It seems possible! One big puzzlepiece is still missing. Profiles will represent us, but where will we consume the gathered Information? On buzz? Or somewhere else?

Discuss on Buzz

3 comments:

Tahin Rahman said...

I don't think there will be any page for Google Circle. To me it seems like Google is focused about Gmail as the central hub for all sort of communication. So, I think Gmail (& Buzz) is the place where we will consume the gathered Information.

Random Geek said...

Awesome. But I don't want it "real soon". I want it *now*! ^_^

NoName said...

We all want it now :D I'm suspecting that the dust of the work on the new Google social product causes all these woes in buzz :-/

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