Google’s Botox: The UI and Feature Facelift of This Week

01. July 2011 · 1 comment · Categories: Social Media, Strategic Communications

I was fortunate to get an invite to Google Plus this past week. Although the feature set seems pretty awesome, I’m intrigued to see how the mass audience of Internet users actually adapt to this “social network” (I don’t know if I consider it to be this or not, but I’ll get to that later) or if it will be another Wave/Buzz snafu.

I had a hunch that Google was up to something earlier in the week (before the Plus announcement) when I went on Google and found that the top navigation bar used a new dark grey color set w/a dark rusty orange highlight. Yeah, it was a minor change, but the shift was a visual avenue that Google really has not used in the past. Then, when I was using my Android phone’s web browser, I found that the UI taskbar had unexpectedly changed and, then later in the night, saw that YouTube’s interface had the dark grey color scheme applied to its video controls.

Needless to say, Google is making an overhaul of all of their products piece by piece throughout this week. I’m questioning Google’s execution. Are users going to soak in all of these changes and take them in like a plant that needs water, or will all of the introductions, as a whole, overflow the how users interact with Google? In other words, will people not understand how to use the new feature sets because there quite a few changes spread out through multiple Google properties.

 

Changes to Google Maps

Just this afternoon, I went into Google Maps and found that the site had introduced a browsing history allowing searchers to view the most recent locations that they’ve viewed in the past few days. Although small, this new feature is something that I’ve been craving for a long time. Additionally, some changes are not good. The content within my Google Calendar is now hidden behind “+1 more event” or +2 more events” reminders because the UI has widened out. As someone who relies on Google Calendars for close to all event scheduling (my college calendars looked as if someone had puked a rainbow onto my screen because I had multiple color coated calendars), I saw this as a turn in the wrong direction. If you’re going to change the look, don’t diminish the functionality.

But now to the big stuff: Google Plus. When I first signed up, I was weary  of Google Plus because it seemed like a legitimate copy of Facebook and Twitter. But over the past few days, I’ve found that the biggest strength of Google Plus is the notification area in the top-right corner of the Google bar on many (but not all – Google, why would you not put this in Google Calendars?????). It’s been nice to get notifications when I’m on Gmail or conducting a search on the Google homepage. The notifications are unobtrusive, which is very nice. Additionally, the little rust orange box has popped its way into mobile: both on the Android Google homepage and in app form for Android. I cannot speak about the features like Huddle because, frankly, I don’t have my best friends to “huddle” with. In theory, this would be a great tool. But I feel like the mass audience of consumers that enjoy good old pen and paper communication would find this overly frustrating as opposed to a group message on Facebook or simply doing a three way call on their cell phones.

And there are aspects of the site that flat out bug me. First of all, when you go to the Circles page where you can add users to your friend groups, Google Plus will show all contacts from your Gmail account regardless of if they are a Google Plus user or not. It took me a little time to realize that these individuals are noted by a small mailbox icon over their image. Google says that these are contacts that can only receive information by “sharing through email.” I’m sorry, but our inboxes are cluttered with enough crap, so why introduce even more messaging into a overfilled space? Also, I cannot feed information from my Twitter into my Plus feed. There needs to be API development rolled out which gives users of both platforms the ability to share information between the two different social networks. I mean, you can do can already do this between Facebook and Twitter as well as Twitter and LinkedIn, so Google Plus should follow in the footsteps of others. I believe that if Google sees their product as the “end all be all” of social media, then they are heading down the road of Wave and Buzz – aka failure.

As I said before, I don’t know if I would classify Google Plus as a social network. Social media – yes. But the site lacks the “networking” aspect of reaching out to individuals who are not your immediate contacts. The flow of information, unless you opt for the share to public option, will only extend to 3 degrees of separation, meaning your friend’s friends (and that’s if you decide to push information out to your “extended circles.”). This isn’t a network. Twitter’s infrastructure actually promotes information flow between the initial node publisher and other nodes that can be multiple degrees of separation away (ie: retweeting someone who retweeted a newsource who tweeted about an individual … I’ve seen this happen before). So I’d actually say that it’s more of a social platform than a network.

Oh Google, you never cease to amaze me.

Collaboration, Classrooms, and Biddy

20. March 2011 · 2 comments · Categories: Business, Journalism, Social Media, Strategic Communications, Tech Goodness, UW-Madison

While grocery shopping yesterday, I decided to stop into Borders bookstore and check out their books because the Madison location is going out of business due to the company’s recent Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. In other words, I wanted to snag a good deal.

I managed to pick up the book Macrowikinomics for a low price and dove into the book when I got home. 24 hours later and I’ve read a 1/3 of the book, which is good for my reading habits.

Currently, online users are implementing the Ushahidi platform to help disaster relief efforts in Japan.

When I first started reading the book at the SERF, I had one of those “wow, this is really ironic and strange moments.” The book’s introduction talked about Ushahidi , an open source program that allows people to map out information interactively via text messages/emails. Ushahidi is a timely topic because I (a) learned about it a few weeks ago in my Digital Media, Law and Ethics course and (b) people are using the platform in Japan to help relay information about displaced individuals.

Needless to say, I dove in and that ironic feeling became even greater. The authors spoke about the imbalance of information sharing in financial communities in the late 2000s, which, according to the writers, lead to the latest economic meltdown. Specifically, the authors explain that the flow of information between investment bankers, rating agencies and consumers allowed unethical bankers to rack up money because the agencies did not provide accurate valuations within a timely manner. For me, this portion of the book fit into my brain like a perfect lock and key combination. In my finance class, we are currently learning about stock valuation. Being a student in a journalism/advertising program that focuses on qualitative information, I could not (and still cannot) rack my brain around using numbers to value a company when there are intangible variables of a company that simply don’t translate to any form of data.

But the cherry on top of this 380 page Sunday was this passage:

“In short, it is time to shine the light on the opaque products and activities of the financial sector that have threatened the entire economy, and the Web provides a platform to do this. A digital response involving collaboration on a mass scale may be the best way to properly evaluate and assess the value and risk of new financial instruments as they are produced. New models based on openness, transparency, and participation are already changing many parts of the industry from venture capital to mutual funds and even models that value the risk of expected returns of the most complex instruments: expose them to the scrutiny of the thousands of experts who have the knowledge to vet the underlying assumptions?” (Tapscott and Williams, 40)

This passage lead me to the overarching question/theme of this post: why are my business classes not embracing collaboration when my journalism/advertising classes & other forces at UW-Madison are using collaborative technologies to help shape my future?

Using collaboration in the classroom environment

If you would have approached me during high school and told me that I would blog, use wikis and create video podcasts for my college classes, I would have thought you were smoking a substance illegal in all 50 states. Looking back on my last four years, however, many of my instructors exposed me to collaborative online.

During my freshman and sophomore years, I participated in three different classes where students were required to submit their thoughts about specific topics to blogs. The scary part (well, scary at the time) was that the blogs were open to the public for viewing.

A class blog from my sophomore year.

My thoughts during the first class went something along the lines of:

“Gasp – open to the public! But what if a future employer sees what I wrote? What if he/she doesn’t like what I have to say? What if my blog post ends up following me for the rest of my life? What if someone comments and scrutinizes me for my writing. Oh No!”

A few semesters and internships later, I’m happy to say that I don’t think this way. During the classes, I DID have people argue against my posts/not agree with me. These experiences helped me understand that digital footprints do exist and that I shouldn’t fear online involvement, but instead embrace it and harness digital media to show that I’m a strong analytic thinker with a good sense of humor.

Last semester, my teacher made us create a wiki and post our stories to this wiki. It was an interesting experience because we had to use special code to format the wiki and, once we posted our stories, a spambot went into the site and switched out all of our great academic content with links to porn sites (and you thought that smudging your pencil on a loose-leaf sheet of paper was bad).

A screen capture of the online conversation in my 676 class.

And this semester… well, I have collaboration overload in my Digital Media, Law and Ethics class. Where to begin? Well, I’ll just list the collaborative activity that has/will occur:

  • all students are required to post to a private blogging/social network site + comment on other postings
  • one guest lecture within the class occurred over Skype video chat because the speaker was in Haiti, my teacher was at a conference in Florida, and our class was in Wisconsin. Personally, I was out of town and had to follow along on Skype as well. Oh, and while the lecture was going on, the students were interacting between each other using CoverItLive.
  • a collaborative test (yes, a test where you actually talk with other people) where students could share ideas via an online Google Docs study guide and in-person during the test… trust me, it was one of the hardest tests I’ve gone through in college.

Through all of these experiences, I never thought that my teachers were pushing myself/my peers to interact online solely for the sake of saying “hi, our curriculum is state of the art because we use the Internet.” Instead, the traditional power/classroom environment shifted. I felt as if I, being an undergraduate at a big university, had the chance to influence the thoughts of my peers/teachers. These experiences were more than just studying for multiple choice tests where I’ll forget the answers in a few months; instead, they provided me with “on my feet” opportunities to execute challenges – something that I have used in all of my internships.

Collaboration can be scary, but its rewards outweigh those of a traditional course where the professor is an almighty force who simply lectures and you regurgitate his/her thoughts onto a 8.5 X 11 scantron test.

Online tools from an administrative standpoint

So I’ve talked about collaboration in the classroom, but what about university administration?

UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin collaborates daily with individuals connected to UW-Madison through Twitter. While some people may say that Twitter is not a collaborative environment, I would semi-disagree, saying that Twitter can serve as a catalyst towards collaborative actions (this could be another blog post, but I digress).

Here’s a look at how Martin uses Twitter.

As a student at UW-Madison, I’m very proud of Martin’s Twitter activity. She could have used Twitter as somewhat of an RSS feed, simply re-posting news releases from University Communications. Instead, however, she puts a voice to the administration, showing that she has a genuine interest in the integrity and success of her students. I’ve heard many students talk about her Tweeting, saying “oh, she’s really responsive and get’s back to you right away” or “I like that she actually talks about the university issues with honesty.” One of my friends told me (in sheer happiness like he was riding a high horse of “coolness”) “dude, Biddy sent me a DM.”

So Biddy, if you happen to read this, I want to say thanks. You rock at online communication.

Rethinking business courses

Like I mentioned before, I’m currently taking a finance course for my Certificate in Business. While I heavily enjoy the professor, a comment that she made regarding social networking rubbed me the wrong way. Each class, the teacher allocates a few minutes to talk about business-related events in the news and she mentioned the valuation of Facebook and Twitter. Then, she went on a tangent and said that she doesn’t see any value in Twitter.

This statement is very ironic because, according to this teacher, students within the business school are tuned-out to global events and need to pay attention to the news. Interesting, considering that Pew just reported that online news is outpacing print news and also published results from a study that show group engagement in higher with online media users than those who don’t use online media. Of the later report, non-Internet users were 56% likely to engage in group activity whereas Twitter users are 85% likely to engage.

Case-in-point: professors need to change their thoughts about technology and its implementation in the business world.

If you’re a student and reading this, do you know any of these events/items:

  • SXSW
  • Basecamp
  • Foursquare
  • Salesforce
  • The idea of open-source
  • A wiki (no, not Wikipedia; an actual wiki)
  • HTML5
  • The Long Tail
  • An API
  • Mashable

If you’re finding yourself saying “huh” or “what is he talking about”, my point was made. Our business education, in my opinion, lets us down by not exposing us to the technological side of management, marketing, accounting/finance, etc. Just like my book said, technology has/will continue to play an influential role in how big corporations will run. I don’t know about you (the student), but I sure want to stay ahead of the masses and know how to use technology as a competitive advantage.

And don’t think that I’m simply bitching for the sake of bitching. Instead, I’m trying to push my peers to use technology towards their advantage. In a few days, I’m leading a workshop on how to create online identities (simple stuff like setting up a custom URL, Twitter account, LinkedIn profile) for students who have simply not been exposed, via education, to these technologies.

So, what to do next?

If I had a magical answer about implementing collaborative models and technology into every classroom on campus, I’m sure that someone else would have already thought of the answer as well.

I think that we, as students, faculty members and staff need to change our mindset of technology/collaboration. Instead of seeing education as a you vs. the masses setting, we need to re-establish what education and learning means to us.

Why Do I Have 3 Jobs at the Moment?

20. October 2010 · Write a comment · Categories: Business, Journalism, Just Zack, Social Media, Strategic Communications

Oy vey.

If I hear one more person tell me that journalism is dying, I might flip out. Yes, newspapers are flopping at a painstakingly high rate. The Chicago Tribune is essentially falling into a downward spiral. Minnesota’s own Star Tribune filled for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in early 2009 . I get it; newspapers and “traditional” journalism are on their way out.

Right now, I’m in a journalism course at the UW-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, J676: Future of News, that analyzes the shift towards news in the digital sphere. Also, I’m in a class devoted to digital media buying and media planning. Although one class revolves around reporting while the other focuses solely on advertising, they both present me with the same core concept: anything and everything media related is changing at warp speed.

So as a student in a journalism program, you’d probably think that I’m crazy; that I won’t have a chance getting a job in the future because advertising and journalism are on their death bed. My life is ironic, however, and I actually have the polar opposite in terms of employment.

I have three jobs on top of an 18 credit schedule.

Yes, you heard it, 3.

All three of these jobs are comprised of the skills that I learned and have continually polished at through the UW journalism school. I write social media posts for a local yoga center, have a marketing internship through a non-profit student organization, and am now helping out as a social media coordinator for Madison Commons, which is a neighborhood news site run by faculty, graduated students and undergrads within the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Although I am technically pursing a professional career path in advertising and not reporting, I still feel that strong, ethical reporting  is a key component for sustainable democracy.

Without my j -school education, I would be a horrible writer (sidenote: if there is a typo in this blog, it’s because I’m writing late at night with no sleep whatsoever and have no desire to copy edit right now). I wouldn’t understand how to write in HTML and CSS. And I certainly would be blind to the ethics behind writing. Believe it or not, I’m certain that the writing , editing and storytelling skills I learned (and still learn) from my reporting classes have made me a better strategic communicator. I’ve seen work from students at other schools who either go through a marketing program or an advertising program without any training in reporting – their work isn’t as strong or cohesive as portfolios and campaign strategies from my peers within the UW J School.

I, like most journalism students and faculty members, have butterflies churning in my stomach when I think about the future of journalism. As electronic innovation increases in speed (didn’t Steve Jobs host his third Keynote presentation within the last few months, right?), so does the way that we communicate. The Internet is still a barren land without established best practices for reporting. The way we report online changes consistently, and as information gathering systems like Google fold over into bigger webs of information, journalists need to reinvent their methods of presenting information. I think of the Internet as a large plot of undeveloped land; the boonies if you may. When we think that we’ve grounded ourselves , we discover a whole new area to develop and build.


The Internet is quite undeveloped.

So, what do I want to see in an journalism education? Well, here’s a short list for starters:

  • Challenge students to use digital media. Don’t suggest using a blog to present information- instead, require them to create one. Make them understand the business behind reporting. Inform them of advertising practices that will help sustain journalism powerhouses from flopping.
  • Make students speak and report in a language that’s uncomfortable to write about. No, I’m not referencing a foreign language like Spanish or French. Develop courses that help students speak with specific communities, ranging from high-power business circles on Wall Street to the nerds of innovation in California… and everyone else in-between.  From my experiences as a student, I’ve found that combining my journalism education with a language that others speak (ie: the language of accounting acronyms from my friends in the Wisconsin School of Business) brings success because I know how to communicate with precision and get my point across.
  • Give real world experience. Learning comes from failure, not from scratching lead onto a scantron multiple choice test sheet.
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