One month into its already storied existence, Google+ is getting both advice and feature requests at a healthy clip.
One of the most liberal advice dollopers has been Tom Anderson, also known as MySpace Tom, for better or worse.
As the founder of the social media comet that flamed out perhaps far too soon, Anderson is in my opinion one of the best gurus to read regarding Google+.
Why? Because any successful entrepreneur will tell you that they learned more from failure than success.
The thing is, when you succeed, you tend not to dwell on what it is that makes you so successful. But when you fail, you pore over every little decision or action made or unmade. Or so I’ve read from guys like Anderson; I’m just a blogger here.
To wit, Anderson, who has already lobbied for semantic filtering, offered five pieces of advice for Google+ that he learned while running MySpace. They come via TechCrunch and are as follows:
- Start seriously courting the journalists, taste-makers, and celebrities that are using and/or pontificating about G+. The gist is that it will help Google correctly control or guide the messaging around +.
- Exhaustively think through the privacy issues and tie up any loose ends that G+ has on this front. If I hadn’t already seen the real name snafu and the reshare privacy hole on Google+, I would have assumed Google would have learned from its Google Buzz gaffes. Maybe they learned some, but it’s obviously impossible to account for all of the things that are going to draw users’ ire.
- Move Google’s top analysts (probably focused on monetization right now) onto the Google+ project to form a skunk works team. The idea is to harvest the data people are generating for future monetization purposes. Hell, yes! Google will need this to neutralize or eclipse Facebook’s growing ad sales. Interestingly though, Anderson doesn’t expect AdWord, AdSense or any such platform will be leveraged on Google+… even though Christian Oestlein is the self-described “ads guy” for Google+. And when Anderson said “G+ needs to understand “all three types of users and develop a plan for each of them,” I wonder what for? Surely the point is to target them with something. What, if not ads?
- Hire the best product executors & visionaries in the world, something that clearly has not been Google’s forte in the past. If not current Google+ overseers Vic Gundotra and Bradley Horowitz, then who? I’ve no idea.
- There must be one ring to rule them all. As in, “one leader making decisions.” I agree, but sometimes that isn’t always possible. And isn’t Gundotra that guy, with user interface and business practice managers reporting in to him
Finally, Launch has published this list of 21 things it wants to see on Google+. Most, such as brand pages, a search box and a developer API, have been requested since Day One of the launch.
Others, such as paused streams and Circle messaging “intersects” are more nuanced and certainly welcome. I’ve compiled my own list of Google Web application integrations I want to see on Google+ here.
Can you think of any others not represented here?