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I like Google+. I’m surprised. I’m also surprised that a lot of other frequently sceptical (but often rightfully so) people also like Google+.
It works on a lot of levels that have been lacking in other networks. One in particular that I find interesting is the personalisation of labels. It understands that people you wanted to be connected with don’t all sit in one homogeneous blob of ‘friends’. Consequently it doesn’t make the assumption that people you want to be connected with also share the same perception of you as a ‘friend’ let alone hold the same interpretation of the label ‘friend’. Instead you define what a relationship is to you, and I define what it is to me, and we both share what we feel is relevant with each other based on those definitions.
But Google + doesn’t just stop at removing the labels on relationships with people, it does it with any content shared through it. You don’t like or favourite posts or comments, you simply ‘+1′. +1 is an ambiguous relationship that I can take to mean whatever I take it to mean, whether its an endorsement, a like or a bookmark.
It reminds me of something I heard Eli Pariser talking about the other week whilst promoting The Filter Bubble. How Facebook’s ‘like’ by its very nature inhibits and affects the content carried by it. If I post a picture of a kitten, you can like it, but if I post a link to an article on war breaking out you’re probably less inclined to ‘like’ it. Subsequently the news which gets carried across the network fastest by the weight of ‘likes’ is affected. (I’m also super keen to hear Eli’s thoughts on the network and its potential impact)
I realised the effect of predefined labels had also impacted the way I reacted to bookmareting on Last.fm & Spotify. I reacted differently to the ‘heart’ functionality on Last.fm as opposed to the ‘star’ on Spotify. For me to heart a track I understood I was telling myself and others that I didn’t just like the track, I loved it. With a star, I just had to like it. It carried less weight and subsequently I used it as a bookmarking tool more.
I guess to make a rash unresearched statement this is something what has helped reddit be such a good aggregator, a simple ambiguous up or down of posts. Just remove the labels, stop dictating what a relationship needs to be and allow people to do this. Twitter has used ambiguous labelling for years, which is why I will always ‘follow’ more people there than I will ever ‘friend’ on Facebook. But unlike Google+ Twitter has not offered anyone the capacity to then personalise and define a relationship and consequently control the nature of the information shared in relation to this.
There’s a really interesting slideshare presentation from one of Google’s UX researchers that was passed around on Google +, which despite not being directly about Google + discusses the gap between how ‘real world’ social relationships and their uniquely personalised labelling are simply not reflected within most social networks including facebook. Its interesting so you should spare a few minutes to read it.
In the meantime, like I said, I like Google+. I just hope I don’t end up laughing hysterically back at that statement a year from now, or fearing it.
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Im loving it too, the only quibble i have so far is, like any social network site, its not much fun without a few people as friends, but everything else is very very promising