Having not visited my Google+ page for three months, I put up a quick post last week to say hello and see if any friends and acquaintances were still hanging out there.
One person replied, “Welcome back (to silent town).”
That pretty much says it all about my experience of Google’s social networking Web site, which launched nine months ago to much fanfare. The excitement and buzz wore off quickly — as much as I liked Google’s fresh approach to organizing my online friends and acquaintances, it wasn’t enough to lure me and my social circles away from Facebook.
Screen shots by David Chen, Taipei Times
My friends and I aren’t alone. Facebook users clearly outnumber Google plusers, with 845 million “monthly active” users (as of December 2011), compared to the 170 million people that Google says have “upgraded” to use Google+.
And a recent report by Web research company comScore says Google+ users spend just a small amount time on the site compared to their Facebook counterparts. According to the report, in January, users spent an average of three minutes on Google+ compared to over seven hours on Facebook. (In Taiwan, Facebook is ahead of Google as the second most visited Web site, after Yahoo.com, according to Alexa.com).
But to be fair, Google+ is still young and it would be premature to say that the service is forever doomed to be a virtual ghost town. Google claims a steadily growing number of users and the company continues to tweak its new social service.
Screen shots by David Chen, Taipei Times
Several weeks ago, Google+ received a major facelift and now sports an improved visual design for its Web site. Everything is more clearly marked and easier to find, with all navigational elements now placed in a vertical column on the left. This “ribbon,” as Google calls it, has clearly labeled icons for your home page, profile or photos, which are now called apps. “Hangouts,” the video conferencing feature in which you can chat with up to 9 people, is now featured prominently with its own app, as are photos and online games.
And like Facebook, your online contacts are listed in a long vertical column on the right, dotted with the green, yellow and red dots familiar to users of gmail chat.
Google+’s main feature, the stream (posts from friends or people that you follow), has been edged closer to the left. This is strange at first as everything is off-center, with a large empty column of white space on the right half of the page. Despite this design flaw, photos and videos in posts appear much larger, which makes for a better viewing experience.
Although these cosmetic changes make a notable difference on Google+ — I wish Facebook were this clutter-free — it’s going to take more from Google to pry folks away from the world’s number one social network.
Yet, there is still activity to be found on Google+. If you’re going to give it another go, try the Explore app, which shows a stream of popular posts (this used to be called What’s Hot) and is a good place to catch the latest and greatest viral photos and videos. Google has also added a small Trending column, a la Twitter, that lets you know what everyone is buzzing about. Unfortunately, that feature isn’t yet available in Mandarin.
Explore reminded me what I liked about Google+: the serendipity factor. A few random searches quickly led to some people with interesting posts, which in turn led to a few novelties. I ran into a set of fascinating photos of Taiwan in 1972 taken by the journalist Kevin Kelly, the co-founder of Wired Magazine, as well as beautiful shots of the East Coast by Tom Anderson, one of the co-founders of MySpace (remember your first MySpace friend?), who happened to be visiting Taiwan.
And of course, you can catch up with celebrities like Lady Gaga or Hugh Jackman, who are both currently popular on the site. Mando-pop singer Valen Hsu (許茹芸) is still one of the most followed Google plusers among Taiwanese users.
PINTERESTING
So where’s everybody at, other than Facebook? The latest craze in the social networking world is Pinterest (pinterest.com), an online bulletin board for images and photos.
The Web site has created a huge buzz in the US, ranking as the third most popular social networking site in that country, falling just behind Facebook and Twitter. The site is officially still in beta and only in English, but there is activity to be found by Mandarin-speaking netizens. Incidentally, Pinterest has already spawned a blatant copycat Web site in China, “wantu” (頑兔, wantu.taobao.com).
Pinterest, which describes itself as a “virtual pinboard,” allows you to create personalized visual scrapbooks on the Web.
If Facebook is all about telling people what you’re doing, Pinterest is all about showing them what you’re looking at.
One reason Pinterest has become wildly popular is because of its visual smorgasbord presentation. The site arranges photos collected by users in organized collages that look like a quirky collection of stock photography, with all images framed neatly in white borders of varying sizes).
So far, the site has been touted as a tool for collecting ideas for weddings or home decor. Cute pet pictures and food are common items — I spotted lots of photos of cupcakes, cookies and sweets on the popular posts page. Pinterest also lends itself well to feeding the visual obsessions of design fanatics and fashionistas.
The way it works: post images on your Pinterest page, either by uploading photos that you’ve taken yourself from a computer or smartphone. Another way to collect images is to install a Pin It button in your Web browser and then “pin” any image or video you see on a Web site to one of your “boards.” Boards let you divide your interests by topic, which can be about anything you like — by default, the Web site starts you off with boards such as My Favorite Places and Spaces, and Recipes.
But the other half of what makes Pinterest tick is its social component: You follow other people as you would on Twitter, and comment on each others’ pins. You can also “re-pin” the image to a board on your own page and even create and maintain boards with other subscribers.
At the moment, women comprise the Web site’s core users — the site feels like a zany offshoot of Etsy.com. But marketers and online shops are also seeing promotional possibilities, as are media outlets such as Time Magazine (pinterest.com/time_magazine) and Newsweek (pinterest.com/newsweek).
Then there are the politicians and celebrities. US President Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign has a page (pinterest.com/barackobama/), but Taiwanese politicians aren’t quite in the game yet. Former Democratic Presidential party candidate and DPP chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) appears to have started her own Pinterest account, though there’s not much on her page. President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) isn’t doing any pinning, though that could change if Pinterest’s addictive allure catches on in Taiwan as it has in the US.
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