Are you one of the last desperate Google Reader users like me?
Don’t worry, you can still read your feeds using other readers and then, Google Reader wasn’t that great service that we think.
I work in digital communication and I’ve three different accounts that I use for my personal branding, for the Transport Company of Milan online buzz, and for the Shopping in Italynews hunting and social monitoring.
Is Google reader enough for me? No it isn’t!
For my job I need an application that browse, save, organize, discover, edit and share contents on my social media and with my social media team.
Does Google reader have all these feature? No it doesn’t, so stop crying and being romantic!
The Google Reader closure gave me the opportunity to think about my feed reader perfect tool. I thought to all my needs as a social media manager, as a project leader and as entrepreneur. Ironically I understood that I don’t need a simple reader, but a Corporate Content Aggregation and Management Application.
Searching for the word play on the Oxford Dictionary I found:
– verb [no object] engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose: – noun [mass noun]
1activity engaged in for enjoyment and recreation, especially by children:
Yesterday march 6 , Google announced that Android Market is replaced by Google Play.
New logo and new name for more or less the same services. In their official blog post they say:
[…]Google Play, a digital entertainment destination where you can find, enjoy and share your favorite music, movies, books and apps on the web and on your Android phone or tablet. Google Play is entirely cloud-based so all your music, movies, books and apps are stored online, always available to you, and you never have to worry about losing them or moving them again.
In my opinion Google is going to have branding problems because it’s focusing its activity on the mobile with the only one product that doesn’t have the big G brand: Android!
When they launched Android probably they didn’t expect a success like this. Today, with thousands day activations, Android is the unique OS available natively for smartphones and tablets of any price, TVs, set top boxes, car entertainment systems and probably other devices that I’m forgetting.
When Google will mash Chrome/Chromium and Android will be the world’s OS leader, surpassing Microsoft and Apple. In a near future Google will control the fruition platform of a lot of the internet devices in our daily life, except the gaming devices (for now). The best way to earn from this leader position is selling contents/services to consumer and business markets.
In these years Google built the perfect market.
It started from the www content indexing paid from AdWord. Then it offered for free services like Gmail, Gmap, Greader, Ganalytics, Gdocs, Gbooks, Blogger [etc] retaining users with their personal data, and contemporaneously selling business services versions to the small/medium companies. He bought the most important content site ever, YouTube, improving the video distribution on the web. Then Google integrated all these services in a unique social Google (+) Account and in a mobile OS: Android.
Android today can aggregate all the Google services and contents in a big variety of devices, but where’s the problem of this perfect market?
The problem is that the Google’s biggest selling channel is branded Android, not Google!
In this way BigG is wasting all his brand power exactly when it should be trusted from his consumers to sell products that others are already selling from iTunes, Xbox/Zune/Windosw8, Amazon Store or PlayStation Network.
The little Android mascote is so cute. Google can’t kill him, but can delete him from the money cloud cave of the future, the ex Android Market.
All together say hello to the rainbow triangle of Google Play.
Zuckemberg and his staff are implementing the platform improving functions, mobile, and interactions among users and the rest of the web (like, fan, follow etc).
Looking at my friends, my relatives and my collagues, I think that Facebook is not only a social network, but it is going to be the official web personal page. The functions and the importance that Facebook is going to have can’t be based only on the social interaction. The normal/low profile users, the majority, are using Internet starting from Facebook. For them is normal thinking about their personal page as the official personal medium like a blog or a web site. I think that most of them ignore WordPress, Flickr or Tumblr, and probably they might not have any reason to open a YouTube Channel or a Twitter account.
In a near future a lot of people could decide to manage their digital life just using Facebook like a platform provider for self promotion, business and social interactions.
Why?
Because on Facebook you can build a personalized page (the coming Timeline) with an exclusive url (vanity url). You can upload unlimited pictures and videos that you can embed and share inside and outisde FB. You can share contents, events, birthdays and check-ins. You can write short or long statuses (up to 63.000 characters). You can video chat and mail. You can tag people (do you remember the Blogrolls or the pingbacks?). You can follow the streams of other people even if they are not your friends (something like Feed Reader). You can create a page, a sort of web site, or a group, a sort of personal community. You can advertise and analize visits (FB Ads & Insights). You can install thousands of social application and games. You can buy and sell (check Blomming, a great Italian start up) and last but not least, you can sync and manage a lot of these contents on your mobile device.
Simplify WordPress, Flickr, YouTube, Delicious, MySpace, Foursquare and Twitter and you’ll obtain Facebook on dec’11. Ok, you’ll never have the functions of all these platforms, but do you think that the mass need them? Do you think that your mom will open a YouTube Channel for sharing her nephews videos or posting a comment to the new Italian Government?
No, forget it!
The strongest “function” of Facebook remains the social one. Everyone is on Facebook and all the companies are opening official pages that one day could replace the official web sites. Even Facebook for Developers is supporting the Facebook content management systemification. If you integrate FB on your web site you have a rapid subscribe process and easy share/comments functions, but remember that you are moving the attention of your users from your site to Facebook. The FB’s API are a great commodity, but they are a threat because one day your users could prefer remaining on the blue site avoiding your site.
In conclusion, I think that Facebook is going to be:
the biggest DB of people, interests and connections for the active users and the real connection between them
the biggest DB for marketeers for the sociographic information and the detailed maps of the user’s interests and connections
the biggest DB of contents and contents link because the mass produce, import and link everything on FB
the strongest conversation platformbecause we have more friends inside FB than outside it
the strongest potential paid social networkbecause anyone could live without FB
the biggest publishing application platform because installing an app is easier and viralest on FB than anywhere else
the most integrated social network on the web because to reach visitors, a web site should be easily sharable and accessible from/to FB
the most powerful analytics platform because they collect visits, impressions and shares of real indentities building a precise social tree everywhere FB is integrated
I love my job and I love especially new challenges. In these months I did a lot of interviews and every time I prepared a little digital communication project to demonstrate that I studied the company and that I’m proactive.
I didn’t found any new job so I think that I’ll not repeat this approach, but I’ll share with you the presentations that I did for them.
The first one is for a big company that produces a unique kitchen appliance with already a really big audience on the web.
First to write this little project I studied the product and the impressive population of the “cooking web”. Then I analyzed the user’s web pages, the blogs and the unofficial Facebook pages, trying contemporary to reconstruct the digital strategy of the company.
At last I did even some onf line evolution of the strategy (what is onf line?) that could use the consumer’s contents to produce a new editorial product targeted for all the users.
