Some of my favorite people to speak with about the Web are, ironically enough, non-techies. They’re just normal users, friends, my parents, whomever. Sometimes I just sit and watch them use Facebook (I bet it’s creepy as hell). They give a real insight into the future of the Web; if these people don’t get it, no level of fist banging by “us” is going to make something successful.

We can all see what Google did with Google+: they mashed up the models of Facebook and Twitter and rolled in some Google services that already exist. Facebook with the overall concept and Twitter with the friending model (circles). Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a great effort and I applaud them for continuously trying to break into the social networking scene but the amount of time and effort they’re putting into the weakest part of their portfolio is mind-boggling. It’s an area that really doesn’t advance the Web at all. Not pushing any boundaries, just re-packaging something someone else had success in.

Google has some of the greatest services on the Web: Docs, Calendar, Gmail, Reader, Maps… the list goes on. Maybe focus on some of those?

I guess I’d like to see some advances in their strengths rather than a continuous focus in the social atmosphere. Breaking down Google +, we have:

• A profile
• Pictures (picassa)
• Circles
• Posts
• Games
• Huddles

I will say that I love being able to have group video conferences (huddle), it’s pretty awesome. I also like the idea behind circles (but dislike the implementation).

Most users don’t care or understand the circles concept, but other than that stuff, what’s the benefit to switching over from Facebook for most people? I don’t see it. It’s a lot of duplicated services: posting, pictures, friending, games, profiles no one reads, etc.

Whether the services over on Google+ are better or not is kind of a moot point because, at their core, both Facebook and Google+ (and Twitter) are broadcasting services. We use them to say “hey look what I did here”. And that’s totally fine. I’m not judging anyone who does that all, I do it myself every time I upload a photo to Facebook or Tweet something out. But the main crutch of a broadcasting service is it’s users and the users just flat-out do not exist in Google+ right now. I don’t see a clear user migration path from Facebook (or Twitter) over to Google+ especially for non-Gmail users.

Yahoo Fantasy Sports

On getting non-Gmail users over to Google+… I think Yahoo Fantasy Sports is a great model to look at for something like this.

I have a Yahoo account. The only thing I use it for is Fantasy Football (I really don’t use Flickr). Why? Because they produced the best (by a mile) service on the Web for that niche. Honestly, no one’s even close, its at a point where I won’t even play anywhere else. I’ve actually had the pleasure of sitting down with their team of developers. They ripped apart my JavaScript worse than anyone I’ve ever seen. It was impressive and humbling to scroll through hundreds of lines of code and have someone point out every missing semi-colon. They’re the best group of UI/Front-end people I’ve ever had the pleasure of speaking with and it really shows in the product(s).

If Google wants users to migrate to +, they need to do what Yahoo! sports did and not only be the best, but be the best by such a large margin that if doesn’t make sense for anyone to use anything else. It takes time, but it can be done. And they’ll need to take some more risks.

Taking on a giant: users

I’ve gone on the record a few times saying that I don’t think anyone is going to take down Twitter or Facebook with a similar application. I think we’ve evolved past that. Looking at all the “Twitter” killers that have come along, many of them were better services, I really liked Plurk; amazing interface. But no one used it. Why? Because no one was on it. Sounds circular, I know. But like I mentioned ^ up there, these are broadcasting services and when there isn’t anyone to broadcast to, what’s the point?

I do think both Facebook and Twitter will fall at some point, I don’t know to whom, but I do know that it won’t be Google+ in it’s current state. There’s nothing over there, the hype is gone and the users are bored (dazed) and confused.

Also, I think they should bring back Wave, it had a lot of potential, just a little too much noise. It could certainly be massaged into something awesome over time.

I’m really wondering what people think about this stuff, so let me know. Tell me I’m wrong.

jQuery Seek Attention Plugin

The jQuery seek plugin is very cool. It goes along with the css psuedo class "target". It’ll highlight an area on the page onClick and ca bring a great pop to a page. Give this one a try, I could see this being very useful for those long FAQ lists.

Google’s android vs the iPhone

With the release of Google’s android phone, there are already comparisons to the iPhone. This video lays it out real nice and tells you what you have to look forward to with Android.

Avoiding the Pownce Effect

There seems to be more and more twitter–killer sites out there and, for the most part, they all fail. This article takes a look at why Twitter is so powerful and some things to avoid.

3 CSS classes you should all have

Let me save you some time: .left, .right and .clear. This is something most are already including, but I always think it’s helpful to see what others are doing.

Because I’m a web dork (nice way to start a post, huh?), I was poking around YouTube last weekend and decided to crack it open in FireBug.

I was on YouTube’s MayerMusic channel fiddling around with the video info section and notice that some of the info was wrapped in a quasi familiar class “vfacets”. This appears to be some sort of Microformat; but none that I’ve ever seen.

After seeing that, I decided to do a little digging (digging = 5 mins of Googling), and eventually found a pretty undetailed page about group examples of Microformats.

Generally, I find that Google’s front end development is a disgrace to the Internet (no offense…), but it seems like they’re buying into the concept of Microformats. With that in mind I thought I’d talk about how Microformat groups could be used.

Usage

Many of us are familiar with the most common types of Microformats (hCalendar, hCard, hReview, and XFN). There are also many that are still in draft form like hResume, geo, and rel-directory. However, it seems that a new type could be emerging for grouping information.

The link above listed out 4 examples of major sites using Microformat groups: YouTube, Magnolia, Linkedin and Flickr. I really like how Google (youtube) is marking it up though, so I’m going to get in to that.

YouTube vEntry markup

<div class="v120vEntry">
<div class="vstill">
<a href="/user/spoiledmilk"><img src="2.jpg" class="vimg"></a>
</div>
<div class="vtitle">
<a href="/profile?user=spoiledmilk">spoiledmilk</a>
</div>
<div class="vfacets">
<span class="grayText">Joined:</span> August 02, 2006<br>
<span class="grayText">Videos:</span> <a href="/profile_videos?user=spoiledmilk">21</a>
</div>
</div>

In marking up user information they are using:

• ventry as a wrapper
• vstill for the user image link
• vimg for the image itself
• vtitle for the user’s name
• vfacets for, what seems to be, general information

I’m wondering why Google is going with this. In the past I think it’s safe to say that they don’t really do things like this unless they’re planning to use it in something they build. Not to take shots at Google, but they don’t really do things for the greater good of the web community (correct me if I’m wrong).

Consistent user tagging

The basis for using something like a vcard class is to let the browser, user, spambot, or software know that a page contains contact information (and your now beautifully marked up e–mail address). This same principle applies to Google’s vEntry.

Let’s consider that Google is building a large social networking platform; I know that the main complaint I have with all these new networking sites is that you have to constantly rebuild your contact list. Marking up a member’s information in a consistent way would aid in search and ease the pain of finding those Twitter followers (for example) we all love so much. Or even for building some sort of Internet phone book.

What are they scheming?

What’s Google planning? What else can be done with this new microformat? Did I completely miss a huge glaring detail here?

Maybe this isn’t even Google code, it could be left over from when they bought out YouTube. I guess we won’t know for sure until we can pick apart Google’s brain and find out what’s going on in there.

In the mean time, watch out for this new Microformat, I have a feeling they’ll be popping up in other Google sites as well.