Sheila's Guide To The Good Stuff

People may think I’m nuts, but Google+ is going to be the lever that begins prying Google away from total domination of much of our online lives.

What follows is, of course, conjecture, but one thing I’ve learned over the years is that I don’t trust my instincts often enough, so here goes….

They’ve Shot Themselves Over Search, Of All Things

By using Google+ to manipulate their own search results, Google abandons the very core of their business culture – serving up unfiltered, “best” results as they attempt to organize the world’s information.

By telling Google employees who push back to get on the train or get out, they undo their organization’s credibility from the top down. A cushy work environment in Mountain View is just lipstick on a pig if your business doesn’t deliver on its promises.

I don’t know where it’s going to come from (Microsoft’s Bing search engine is not nimble enough, although I’d be happy to be proven wrong) but there will be a challenger to Google that will come out of nowhere and capture those who want to go back to basics.

FocusOnTheUser.org is one example of how that movement has already begun, with their “Don’t Be Evil” alternative search button tool. Tellingly, it was created by some engineers from Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

Privacy – Google Is All UP In Your Business

The privacy issues with Google are even more significant than Facebook’s.

At least with Facebook, you can just get the heck off of it, or at a minimum take draconian measures with your settings.

Google is everywhere – our email, our videos, our maps, our photos, our search habits and our Android phones – and you cannot opt out of their creepy data mining.

I’ve been told that many people don’t understand the implications of this, and/or don’t care about privacy issues. Fine, but Congress and the FTC do care.  Someone’s going to move on Google; either the consumer public or regulators or both.

Not Another Social Network!

Google+ is essentially another Facebook with some cool bells & whistles (I do like the G+ video Hangouts) but despite apparently roaring user numbers that don’t add up, I sense that in terms of true mass adoption, the regular Joe Bag o’ Donuts guy/gal is not jumping on Google+ like they are getting onto Facebook.

People go where the people are who they want to connect with;  I saw this in microcosm in 2008/2009 when Plurk failed as an alternative to Twitter.  The Geekerati said that Plurk was so much better organized, easier to use, etc. etc. but the fact is, everyone already HAD networks on Twitter and when they didn’t move over en masse to Plurk, people went back to where the people were.

Does anyone out there really want one more blasted digital thing to manage?  Even a lot of techie types are feeling rather overwhelmed, and many others in the mass market are still figuring out Facebook, are puzzled by blogs and find email challenging.

Not Another Social Network! Except Maybe Pinterest

In contrast to the “no THERE there” that is Google+, I’ve been watching the recent explosion over digital bulletin boards on Pinterest. No one wants another thing to manage, unless they really like the thing, and they like this one.

Fans of Pinterest are truly crazy about it. My own line of work, tourism and hospitality, is diving into Pinterest. I can’t remember when I’ve seen such rapid adoption and wild enthusiasm, albeit still mostly among a more tech-savvy crowd than the mass market.

May I remind you of the popularity of scrapbooking?  The hordes of people who’ve jumped onto Facebook worldwide (it just knocked Google’s Orkut off as the number one social network for Brazil) are perfectly capable of figuring out how to transfer their scrapbooking skills and enjoyment to something like Pinterest.

On the other hand, I can’t see any of them lining up to laboriously sort their friends into Circles on Google+.  Actually, it wouldn’t be that laborious, because no one’s really ON Google+!

Tech journalist Omar Gallaga compared Pinterest and Google+ on his Digital Savant blog, saying:

“Despite the growth of Google+, I have yet to hear a single person say she loves it. The people I see posting more often there are marketers, photographers, social media experts and a handful of media people like me sharing the same kinds of links and jokes they also post to Twitter and Facebook. Google+ otherwise feels like a weirdly active ghost town….”

My geek crowd is saying that they love the visual organizing, inspiration and connections on Pinterest, but most see Google+ as a somewhat bothersome “I have to do it because it’s Google” chore.

A privacy-invading chore is not a recipe for mass adoption.

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

We’ve been here before with AOL and Yahoo! and other behemoths who are now pygmies. No one stays on top forever.

Google has self-immolated their corporate values by embracing search manipulation and calling it “social.”  Update: Farhad Manjoo on Slate – “Google just broke its search engine.”

They’ve created something that is mostly a marketing obligation for many, a chance to write a quick how-to book for others and a genuine place of enjoyment for specific niches like photographers, who do seem to like G+.

That’s not much of an endorsement for what will be yet another Google failure at building a social network, and will also lead to the beginning of the end because it is not part of the business culture or values that made their company great.

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This is the Chikasha Inchokka’ (“Chickasaw house”) traditional village compound, authentically re-created at the Chickasaw Cultural Center in Sulphur, Oklahoma.

There’s a big council house, two summer houses, two winter houses, a corn crib and a ceremonial mound, all enclosed by a stockade fence.

Here’s the interior of one of the winter houses, with an opening for the smoke from the warming/cooking fire inside….

The Cultural Center is really well-designed and it gave me a new appreciation of the Chickasaw. I highly recommend jumping off of Interstate 35 and paying them a visit; here’s more info on Native American tourism in Oklahoma.

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A giant paper map of the world, with push pins.

Yeah, pretty analog, right?

This map of Europe with the pins represents how Dell is becoming a “socialprise“….an enterprise that is adopting social communications across the entire organization and for all employees.

The pushpins represent Dell social media training sessions and other events across the globe that are making that happen (5,000+ people trained already.)  From discussions with senior Dell folks, their plan is to….

“Embed social media and community across the fabric of the company”

This is a huge cultural shift for any corporation, the implications of which are sometimes not really even recognized by the very people that are implementing such a vision.  I’ll watch it with great interest.

In the December Tourism Currents newsletter,  we had some thoughts about what tourism and hospitality professionals can take away from Dell’s listening/engagement efforts. Here’s what we said:

**  New media is not so “new” any more. Yes, it might still be new to many, but it is most definitely a mainstream communications channel and feedback mechanism, like phones and email.  To be blunt, if you are a professional communicator in any capacity, some knowledge of social media is now a core competency.

**  Social media has value, and deserves resources and attention. You don’t necessarily have to shell out for the sophisticated (and expensive) Radian 6 suite that Dell is using. Regularly monitor a free combination of targeted Google Alerts, keywords on Facebook and Twitter plus the basics like knowing when someone links to you in a blog post, and you’ll probably be just fine. Our online course Lesson One is all about how to listen.

**  Train your entire organization. Sure, Dell has a core social media listening team that interacts with their internal customer support and technical people, but they have also held worldwide social media training for over 5,000 employees, with a lot more to come. You can do the same; bust the knowledge silos and give people the information they need to be advocates for your destination. Ensuring a “Wow!” visitor experience is everyone’s job in tourism and hospitality.

**  Not paying attention to what your visitors are saying is a major missed opportunity. Competitors are happy to take advantage of their peers who are not listening and engaging.  I can’t go into details, but you can bet that Dell is listening to what people are saying in social media about Dell’s competitors. Is the next town, city, state or province over from you connecting with visitors online and you are not?

I learned a lot from looking at a paper map yesterday.

Here is Dell’s video from the event (I have a small blurb in it) with more about what this means. Here’s the direct link on YouTube if the embed box doesn’t work.

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