Sarah Ahmed
January 16, 2012
This week we decided to let you know mainly about social media, particularly a top-level glance at Google’s controversial ‘Search Plus Your World’ feature. With the FTC on alert, the online world in uproar and Google possibly looking like it will have to revisit the subject, we think this will be a topic we shall definitely be talking about more than just this once! Luckily we also managed to sneak in a quick fun look at the reception to online web design magazine Smashing Mag’s redesign, plus examining what all the fuss is about with pinboard social network Pinterest.
Google ‘social search’ – “Search, plus your world”
News at the very end of last week declared that more fully personalised results – using info from Google+ – will appear alongside your search results – eg with articles shared by you, your friends or your circles. Google+ profiles and pages will also appear when people search related subjects or interests, encouraging searchers to use Google+ a lot more than regular Google does.
The general problem is that this means Google is going to be taking advantage of its search-monopoly position a lot more- prioritising Google+ over everything else. We’ve been aware of this intention for a while, alongside other ways that Google is making SEO difficult – for example, the frustrating encryption of logged in Google user data (See this excellent E-consultancy article about this problem and why it matters) but now we are really starting to see it kick in.
This is partly why Twitter kicked up a fuss this week – calling it a ‘bad day for the internet.’ Twitter’s lawyer Alex Macgillivray said quite effectively in an official statement: ‘For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results any time they wanted to find something on the internet… We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone.’
Twitter’s problem is that essentially, this is particularly bad news for Twitter – it will both push more users onto Google+ and send less people to Twitter. But they do have a point, and although Facebook has such a tidy relationship with Bing that it matters less to them, Google search results won’t be representing all the social network results – particularly Facebook and Twitter – and ultimately will only be representing the most relevant social results, when/if you’re fully buying into Google+ the way that Google wants you to be.
If only all these giant social networks could play together fairly, eh.
If you’re a brand, and you haven’t been using Google+ (as we have to admit, we haven’t either) then this may be the turning point that forces you to begin. Google choosing to bring up most shared in circles articles, pages and profiles over Twitter or Facebook results, will mean that brands thinking it unnecessary to have a Google+ presence will have to think again. After all, to many users, Google is the internet and brands just can’t afford to be left out of the loop (or circle if you will…).
Smashing Mag Redesign – How it went down
There has been a very positive reaction to the redesign of this online magazine for web designers and devs, with lots of people loving the new look.
We think it has a pretty clean design and type styling, plus agree with a lot of the comments about its super responsive layout.
However, we get the feeling that they must have rushed it out because on launch, it seems that they experienced quite a few bugs.
For example, there were reports of fonts not loading, error messages in certain browsers and the search box was disappearing if you had ad-blocker enabled – a fairly giant problem for an article-based site. Also, as Smashing Mag is blessed with a lot of site adverts, one could say it was pretty likely that you would have ad blocker enabled!
There has been some criticism of the hover colour choice, which is a particularly vibrant shade of yellow. (Make up your own mind)
and the layout as the site have chosen to place particular emphasis on the introductory paragraph – taking the somewhat strange decision to have a different font for it.
Pinterest – The virtual pinboard social network
This week and last, it seems like the world went mad for Pinterest. Pinterest has been around since 2010 but in December, the site entered the top 10 social networks list with 11 million visits a week. We think this is largely in part due to the fact it remains to be invite-only, something that is bound to draw the excited social media crowds.
Pinterest is a way to preserve and share your favourite images on virtual pinboards. You create your own boards (limited to certain categories eg design, food & drink, film/music/books but named however you’d like) and use them to save image scraps of internet.
You can create wish lists, favourite photos, inspiration, countries visited, films seen, gift ideas – whatever you want and are encouraged to share.
We have to admit that it does have some neat integral features as a social network.
• Its particularly visual nature really makes it feel appealing
• The ability to see other people who have shared images from the same sites
• Freedom of following choice – In contrast to a social network such as Instagram, you can choose to only follow certain boards, not just users. This facility is quite StumbleUpon in terms of allowing you to narrow the boards shared to those that will interest you.
• Collaborative pinboards. We think this is an excellent feature – the idea of teams using Pinterest as a way to gather together inspiration for certain projects, ideas for a group gift or just share cool things
• The Pin It button. Pinterest make it very easy to integrate it into your life, providing a Pin It button to add to your browser bookmarks bar to really make creating your Pinboard as easy as one click (Quite like Instapaper’s “Read It Later” feature)
That’s it for today, folks! Hope you enjoyed it. We’d love to hear what your thoughts are on Google’s controversial new changes, why exactly you think the world’s gone mad for Pinterest or the Smashing Mag redesign – do you love it or hate it?
