So I almost felt obligated at this point to do a post about Google+ just because it really wasn’t what I was expecting from Google. What I was expecting from Google was another failed attempt at doing something social (they do have a good long history of trying social networking and missing big time), but this time I think they created something that just might work long term. Of course, it works, because basically they finally developed a format stream that is just like Facebook except without much of the garbage that is Facebook. When (not if) Google adds an iPhone AND an iPad app they will have surpassed Facebook, at least in functionality.
When Zuckerberg made the statement that the iPad was not a mobile device, and therefore Facebook would not be developing an app for the iPad, he pretty much told everyone using Facebook that Facebook is whatever Zuckerberg says it is. Google, even though they seem to have the biggest rival with Apple, can no doubt see beyond this and will very quickly release apps for the iPhone and iPad. Once Google+ hits the iPhone/iPad users they will grow at an alarming rate. It’s the “mobile” users that will feed Google+ and the easier Google makes it to use on ANY mobile device the faster they will grow Google+. The misses right now with Google+ remain the lack of an iPhone app and some other minor functionality issues like being able to hide comments in a stream, being able to view several circle streams at the same time, and at the moment people. The people thing is a plus and a minus at the same time. The millions and millions of masses on Facebook are what makes Facebook work. Google+ has a different genre of people right now and I don’t see that as a bad thing, but they do need more buy in.
Why is Google+ better than Facebook already?
- No Ads
- No Spam
- Design is Cleaner
- Messaging System
- Integrates with Google Everything
- People Who Don’t Like Social Networking Will Like Google+
- It isn’t Facebook
- It is Google
- It’s New and Has a Lot of Potential
- Facebook still Doesn’t Give you Ownership of Your Data
so far (who knows how long this will last) there are no ads, anywhere. This is top on my list, and key. This is why I like twitter, this is why the experience on Google+ is better right from the start. All that junk on Facebook’s sidebars is the worst. You never know what’s going to come up but you know you don’t want to look at it.
Facebook and spam go together like spam in a can, or something like that. Spam is not the telemarketer calling you at dinner anymore. Spam is ANYTHING sent to you unsolicited. Facebook is full of this stuff from Mafia Wars to stupid games and poll questions, event invites, and all the other stuff that clutters up your feed stream with stuff you don’t want to look at. The stuff you do want to read is so buried in the mess of Facebook I often just give up trying to find actual real high quality content.
everything is cleaner, but making a cleaner design makes it easier to read, has less clutter, call it whatever you want but Google+ is just flat out easier on the eyes. Google has long since prided itself on simplicity of design, and in this case it works so much better than Facebook
while Facebook has been vastly improving their messaging system, trying to overtake email, the message system on Facebook has always been one of their weakest points, and until recently, no one wanted to look at that inbox, it was just annoying. Google+ has made sending a message to a single person, or a select group, extremely easy. I would expect this since Google has built it’s non-search business around Gmail, but Google+ has the potential to be able to do away with email all together.
this is a no-brainer but it’s worth pointing out. There are some things I like better off Google, like their photo system Picasa (Flickr still has better functionality) but overall everything you do throughout the day is basically run on Google’s cloud anyway, you are already there, so adding Google+ isn’t too much of a burden.
there are still some people that are not attached to a social network at all (really, I know this for a fact). For those people, Google+ is a way into that social networking circle without being in Facebook or Twitter. For many (or most) of these people they are already on Google. They use Google, they use Gmail, they are familiar with Google and in some ways have a trust built with them as a company. If you aren’t on Facebook or Twitter or anything else, you are probably already on Google, and Google will make trying Google+ a breeze for the non-adopters.
there are many people who just hate Facebook, for them, this isn’t Facebook and that is good enough for them.
this is just like the Apple vs Android thing. Some people think Apple is straight from the devil himself and think Android is not. Facebook has a lot of “you are the devil” fans so being anything but Facebook is a plus.
everyone doesn’t necessarily like change but new is always a big seller. Since every company puts out products or services today that are a work in progress (beta) and not a final completed entity, Google will continue to develop and improve Google+. Yes I know Facebook does this too, but they seem to take 2 steps forward and one step back and make everyone mad in the process.
some will say Google doesn’t either, but they have made far more progress in this realm than Facebook has, and Facebook has no intention of ever letting go of your data. Every time you put content on Facebook instead of your own blog or somewhere that you have access to your own data you are building up the mother ship, not your own history. Google+ has a really cool download data set functionality that will probably improve over time. Facebook has nothing. Facebook owns everything you put on there and you own nothing.
Posts Related to This Topic:
If you haven’t had time to get into Twitter yet you might want to jump over there and do a Twitter crash course before you read this post, but for others who are already knee deep in Twitter, how effectively are you using this great service? There are so many aspects to Twitter that can be utilized that the deeper I go in Twitter the more I find.
One thing I started really using lately is the “favorites” feature on Twitter. If you haven’t given this much thought, the favorites feature is a great way to start to bookmark those really great posts you see and don’t want to forget. Once you start to mark tweets as favorites (or star them) you need some good way to get back to the information at some point. I was marking the posts on Twitter I didn’t want to forget but never went back to look at them. So, this is how you can take the Twitter favorites and pull the RSS feed from Twitter into your favorite RSS feed reader.
First thing you want to do is start marking your favorite tweets. You can do this in TweetDeck or in the basic browser application by clicking on the star icon when you mouse over a tweet. Then, follow these steps below to start pulling your Twitter favorites feed (if you want the short version just read step 1 and that should do it).
1. Create the Twitter Favorite Feed in RSS Reader
This doesn’t seem to be published on any Twitter help pages or anywhere else, but you can grab your favorites feed (or anyone else’s for that matter) by using the address: http://twitter.com/favorites/[insert_your_ID_here].rss , so to pull an rss feed of my twitter favorites, you would place the url http://twitter.com/favorites/scottfillmer.rss. Just drop this url in your feed reader and it works just like any other feed.
For more information on actually pulling RSS feeds from Twitter that are posted by Twitter (that would be the friends timeline, profile page, @replies page, and the home page, you can visit How do I find my Twitter rss feed? from Twitter support. You can also read an older post of my called Add Value to Your Blog, Offer an RSS Feed in Reverse if you really want to look at some different rss feed stuff.
If you question after reading this is what in the world is an RSS feed Brad Ruggles has compiled some of the popular how-to YouTube videos on what is an rss feed, twitter, and blogs. You can see that here.
2. Make Your RSS Feed Public (optional step)
You can now use it in any way you would use a normal rss feed. So do some cool things with it like make it a public feed or as a blogroll on your site. You can see the results below, those are live and updated as I mark items as favorites.
You can do this (if you use Google Reader) by going to the “manage feeds” link in your reader, then choosing the tag where you placed the rss feed to be public, then either choose to “add a clip to your site” or “add a blogroll to your site” and it will give you a piece of code to use where ever you like. The list below is my last 5 favorites (when they are placed in your RSS Reader they won’t clip after a certain number of characters like they do below).
3. Use What You Have Created
One reason to use the favorites options is to mark the genius in Twitter. There is a lot of information to be gained from Twitter, but it isn’t really from Twitter, it is from the people who post to Twitter. Many people take the time to post very useful information and actually create value in their 140 characters. You can find new websites, new ideas, new ways of doing things that you may not have ever thought about before seeing them on Twitter.
Update March 2011
Obviously much have changed in the way twitter functions over the last few years, but I think you will find this information still relavant and useful. Another great post on the subject can be found over at ProfHacker called Managing Twitter Feeds as well.
Posts Related to This Topic:
What are your favorite faith based blogs you read? I have a few different categories in my mind of blogs I read. I have a total list, which includes some of my friends blogs and some of my favorite faith based blogs, and more I just flip through on a daily or weekly basis. I have a few blogs I read (this would be across all categories) that are really bad, but for some reason I have some fascination with what they will post next because the blog is so bad (poor design, format, sentence or grammar structure and so on). I call these train wreck blogs because I can’t help but read them for some reason.
I won’t mention any of my personal favorite train wreck blogs but there is one blog I have been reading quite a bit called TonyMorganLive.com which has a lot of fresh, well written content, plus his job listings are interestingg reading to me. I have to give my blogroll award to Brody Harper who has one of the best blogrolls on the side of his blog and he always has something interesting going on over there (see his latest Positive Post Tuesday-Outdoor Encounter). Below you will find my current faith based blogroll for today, Tuesday, September 2, 2008. This list below is static, but my list changes daily. For the most current and up to date list, see Faith Blogroll. Is your blog on this list? No? Well post it in the comments so we can all take a look and add it to our feed readers.
- …and protest
- 12 Steps Closer
- 97secondswithgod
- :: Cre8vE [creative] chaos ::
- =) Bnpositive’s Blog
- Anne’s Spot
- (A’s)Musings
- BEDOUINS INTERNATIONAL | Blog
- betterthanblank
- Between Two Worlds
- Big Skye’s Country
- Billy Chia
- biscuet.com
- Blogerton
- brian fox
- Brody Harper
- CatalystSpace | Catablog
- Cello Girl Talks
- Christian Music Fan
- Church Marketing Sucks
- churchrelevance.com
- Comments on your photostream and/or sets
- Consuming Worship
- Cornerstone Finance
- Creative Worship
- CULTURE TYPES.com
- daveferguson.org
- Desiring God Blog – No Comments
- Dialogue Church Blog
- djchuang.com
- Doxologist
- EdYoungBlog
- Eric Taylor
- Ethos-A Cultural Watercooler by Randy Elrod
- Faith, Love, and Rock and Roll as Told by The Brown…
- feed/http://www.givegrace.net/feed/
- First Impressions Team at Cornerstone
- Flickr CPF Blog
- fluidity
- From Wilmore, with Love
- gotroot.hsdemos.com
- History in the Making
- inWorship
- Jack Fisher
- Jesus Creed
- Just Another Minute
- Kem Meyer on Less Clutter & Noise
- Latest Jobs – Church Staffing
- Leading With A Limp
- LeadingSmart
- learning the rhythm
- Letters from Kamp Krusty
- LifeChurch.tv : swerve
- Lincoln Brewster Newsfeed
- Live to Worship
- Makarios
- Malachi’s Very Unscientific Hypothesis
- Mark Driscoll’s blog
- MercyMe
- MinistryCOM
- MMerge
- MoreThanDodgeball.com
- movement, movement
- natedavidscott.com|ifiweredebtfree.com
- Nelson Searcy – Renegade Pastor – Church Leader Insights…
- nikao | a collective
- Of First Importance
- Our Rising Sound
- Out of Ur
- Pastor Steven Furtick
- Paul D. Watson
- Perry Noble dot com
- Phil Wickham
- Ragamuffin Soul
- Read Scott
- readdB
- RELEVANT Magazine
- REVEAL Blog
- Rich Kirkpatrick’s Weblog
- Run’n Like A Vagabond
- Spence Smith – Connecting People To The World Of Travel,…
- Stephen R. Covey
- stevenbush.org
- Steve’s Devotions
- Stevo 28 and Growing
- Stuff Christians Like
- supersimbo……….
- The Journey Blog
- the normal christian blog
- The Prodigal Jon
- TheNorEaster
- Thinking Christian
- Third Day Pix
- This Guy Falls Down
- TonyMorganLive.com
- transitionpete
- Unspeakable Love
- Uploads from cornerstonebuzz
- Vertizontal
- Weekly Checkup
- WhyLifeChurch?
- Without Wax
- Worship Journey
- www.askanne.com
The list above is obviously in alphabetical order, but it is a list of blogs I frequent. There are so many that I have not come across yet, but to those above, thanks so much for putting so much effort into your blogs, I really enjoy reading them. Keep in mind, even if you never receive a single comment, there are people who read your blog, so write your posts with that in mind.
Posts Related to This Topic:
Do you like stats like I do? Who doesn’t, right. We keep stats on our blogs, individual posts, just about everything that is run on the Internet is backed by some kind of stat. Because of the way the Internet works, stats and trends have become huge on the Internet. Once something that was important for businesses alone can now be utilized by individuals and churches too.
From Google Trends to Jesus and the Church
Google’s innovations over the past several years has been incredible, but they make everything publicly available, and for the most part free. One of the tools I really like from Google is Google Analytics. This is basically a supped up version of your basic stat counter, but if for your own site.
If your looking for something more Internet wide, you need Google Trends. So as I am looking around today, I wonder, where does Jesus rank among churches. I did this in two different formats, one utilizing Twitter’s api of words, and once with Google trends, and they both showed just about the same thing.
Are Christians Different Than Anyone Else?
I was listening to a story from our pastor yesterday, who just got back from Uganda (see Adjusting Back), about someone he was trying to share the gospel message with on the trip. Their response to Josh was “I know people who say they are Christians, and they are no different from anyone else”.
It was sad to hear because it was the truth from his eyes. But that was in Africa, surely it is different here in developed worlds, with the Internet. So I dug around a little. This chart is from a site called Flaptor, and the full data for the chart below is here. (All of these charts click through to the original data points.)
I had to shrink this first chart down so you may have to click on the enlarged size to see the detail. Basically, this is from Twitter conversations. The blue graph is for the term church, red is Jesus, and yellow is faith. Of course, those blue points, those are Sunday’s.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the church body, but I don’t think our actions should be any different on Sunday than any other day of the week, but obviously it is on the conversational minds of Twitter on one day, Sunday. So, according to this graph, are Christians different than anyone else?
Jesus and the Church According to Google Trends
The Interesting thing about Google is how broad reaching their data is and what is covers. These next two charts were just two I pulled out from the Google Trends data. This first chart shows basically the same search terms the one above showed, but for all of the Internet.
Here the blue line represents church, yellow is Jesus, and red is Faith. You can see the full data here. The peaks are mostly on Sunday here, but if you expand the date range for a year, or all time the data get very interesting. So what are the top ten cities that rank highest on the search term for church? Nashville gets top billing, Atlanta, and Dallas area has two cities that rank all by themselves.
What is interesting about the city chart to me is how high the church term ranks and how low the other three rank. I would have thought the name of Jesus being what it is would rank much higher when compared to the word church. I guess my question would be, inside those walls of the church, where does Jesus rank? I hope it is higher than the yellow mark on the cities chart above?
The Big One, the Church and Your Money
I thought I would just throw in another chart just for fun. This chart adds the search term money into the mix. Now this isn’t all the different variations of what we call money, it is just the single term of money.
No on this chart, Money is green (I didn’t plan it that way, Google just did it), blue is church, yellow is Jesus, and red is Faith. You can see the entire data chart here. Well this chart isn’t really one of a big shocker, but it still shows where we think as a whole people.
What Do We Conclude From All This?
So, what is the point and what do we conclude from all this chart and stat posting. I don’t know, I am not a statistician and I didn’t stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. What do you think it shows? I have been to churches where Jesus has rarely been mentioned at all, and I have been in some Jesus loving churches as well. I think without Jesus the church part is pretty much irrelevant?
To me, if Jesus is not present in the Church, it is just a place for people to go on Sunday mornings to feel better about themselves Once it gets checks off the list they are good until next Sunday. Jesus can exist in true form without the actual church building itself, but the church (as intended in scripture) can not exist without Jesus being present.
So, leave a comment and let me know what you think.
Posts Related to This Topic:
I came across this post today, called Kevin Fox of Gmail & FriendFeed on User Experience Design
and, although it was a lot of really good information, along with the title, it was A LOT of information. There are so many blogs out there with good info that I have probably 400 feeds in my rss reader.
I don’t read all on a daily basis, but this one is one of the blogs I try to skim over.
This particular post could be the longer post ever made on a blog as a single post. I punched it into Word and I got a total of 23 pages, with 8,151 words, and a whopping 45,878 characters.
Wow, I am long winded myself. Anyone that has ever received an email from me knows this, but I don’t think I can top this one. It was good information but wow. As far as a general rule of thumb about blogging is you try to keep it to a few small paragraphs, a page or two, anything more won’t hold the readers attention.
Of course this is a blog by Googleites, so they probably have the leaway of doing whatever they feel like doing and it probably won’t matter. Good post guys, lots of good info, but then it would have to be at 23 pages.
Other Tips of Note
I looked at a few other blog feeds in this category I normally read and I have listed them below just as general information if you are interested. Most of these are blogging blogs on how to blog. So, what is the longest blog post you have ever written?
Leave a comment with the link below so we can all take a look (can’t say I will read it though).
Some things I keep in mind when doing a blog post.
- Break up paragraphs into one or two sentences
- Try to keep the post under 5 minutes reading time
- Use headings (h2 or h3 tags) for bullet points
- Include links to other blogs if mentioned
- Go read and comment on someone else’s blog instead of writing
How Long is Your Last Post
So, how long was your longest post. Did it bring in a lot of traffic to your blog or did you think about if someone was actually going to read something that long or not? I forget all the time. Even this post should have been shorter but I never know when to stop.
Posts Related to This Topic:
I just noticed some color in my inbox? Have you yet? It looks like Google has added color labels to the “labels”. It shows on one computer but not on another so it is probably an update to Gmail that will work its way through their system.
Funny how just a little bit of color can add some excitement to your email. In the screen shot you can see a square box next to each label. You click the arrow and it gives you the color options you see in the image. At that point it shows everything in that label in the color you chose. Looks GREAT Google, thanks.
For those of us who use Gmail, and a lot of it, this is a welcome addition to the labels. I will finally be able to see just at a quick glance a highlight color for specific tags. I know everyone uses Gmail differently, but I use the “all mail” label most of the time and to see some color will be great.
Posts Related to This Topic:
Snap Shot announced that they are entering the monetize your site advertising program with Snap Shares. Much like other affiliate programs Snap Shot now has the option to include four different types of ads, and of course Google Adsense is one of those methods.
Snap Shares adds a new money-making dimension to Snap Shots by allowing Web site owners and bloggers to increase their inventory with context-based ads at the bottom of each Snap Shot.
New Way To Monetize Your Blog
For those monetize your blog folks out there, this might be something to look into if you haven’t used their service before. It works similar to those textual links where an ad pops up from some keyword from within your post. What made Snap Shot a little different is they take existing links and the pop up window is a “snap shot” of the link. I use / used it on a few different blogs (I even used it on this blog) for a while, but the pop up on each window became tiresome to me, especially when it had no advertising value to the program.
I don’t know if I will try it again on this site, probably not, but I do have one blog that still uses their service and I will be sure to change over to my ad numbers. If you are already using the service, by default, the ads will be displayed when you mouse over the link. You will need to create an account on Snap Shot and make sure you update your account with your Google Adsense or other ad information. Without the update you are just giving away ads clicks.
Will the High Traffic Blogs Try It?
It will be interesting to see if some of the larger blogs pick up the service. Most of the a-lister blogs I come across do not use their service. I would guess one of the main reasons is that it distracts from their site a little bit and I am not sure how profitable the ad program will become.
What is interesting to note is that some of their subscribers seem less than happy about the change, and many have gone to remove the plugin altogether because they moved to an ad based system. When I initially signed up for their service I was rather surprised at the time that they were not using an ad based system, but perhaps that was the big appeal for a good part of their clientèle. If a majority of the Snap Shot users were not interested in the monitize your site application they may loose quite a few users, but I would guess they had researched this before hand and know what to expect.
What about your site? Have you used their service in the past or do you plan on trying it out now that they are offering a way to make money with the service?
