This morning when I started up my machine and the Internet, I found out that the Google search engine look and feel changed. It’s only a small change on the Google.com main page. Only the search button seems  to be changed to a blue one and the I’m feeling lucky button is gone. Not sure anyone used that button anyway.

The results page is a bit more different however, than the old one. The new one  features a grey bar which includes the search field. More over, the links on the left are given a grey tint and it becomes red when clicked. Only the images search is still the same here.  As you can see I’m on the Dutch version of Google. Therefore I think this new look is rolled out globally already. (more…)

Yup, another one of those topics that explains how Google Social could succeed. This time I’ll explain my own view on this subject. Google apparently failed with the last social experiments according to the tunnel visioned media. Why? Because of the bigger IT guys and websites didn’t see value in it and didn’t get the traffic from it that they wanted…..But is social about generating traffic? Or is it about communication, discussion, talking and sharing with friends (real-life or not)? I think it’s the latter.

So having said that, did Google fail with social? Not really in my opinion. I think they’ve accomplished some great platforms to share and talk with friends. But on the other hand, Google should’ve done a bit more to market their products. But the Goog isn’t that good at marketing their products, they really aren’t!

For example, they created Buzz within Gmail. This works great, but to reach the bigger part of users it should also be available outside of Gmail. That way the users who don’t like Gmail can use the coolness of Buzz anyway!

My idea about Google Social

I think Google Social will succeed if Buzz gets a stand alone version too. The location buzz.google.com is a good fit for the stand alone version.

Buzz also needs more integration into the Google Profiles. It’s already integrated, but only the buzzes of yourself are shown on your profile, which is kind of logical too, but it can be better. Just transform the Google Profiles to a more social kinda website. (more…)

There are a lot of collaboration tools out there. Google Docs for example offers a very nice option to collaborate on documents. You can instant chat while working, see each other type and start a discussion.

But when it comes to design, collaboration becomes a bit harder. It’s not that easy to share design documents within Google Docs for example. There are programs out there, but in my opinion they’re too costly or over-developed which causes a user to drown in all of the functionality. There is another way to collaborate on a design project. Just use Social Media!

Why Social Media?

Well, social media is available anywhere you have a connection to the internet. It’s also easy to use and stable. There are some glitches and downtime, but that percentage is really low. (more…)

A few days ago Google announced their Google +1 button on their blog. The Google +1 button rolled out in last March into Google’s search result pages. With +1 a user can recommend content to their friends or the rest of the world.

Last Tuesday Google launched the +1 button for websites also, a standalone version. From now on it’s possible to recommend that blog post, news article or whatever you want, from the website you’re on! Just like the Twitter Tweet button and Facebook Like button.

Read the whole article here.

You should get the code

You want that cool button on your website, don’t you? Of course you want it! It shouldn’t even the trouble considering in my (noble) opinion. You can find information on how to implement the Google +1 button on your website below.

• Google +1 your website: http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/index.html
• Implement it through AddThis: http://www.addthis.com/
• or use the WordPress plugin from AddThis: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/addthis/

Every social media user will know what I mean – The vast amount of information you get from it! The more people you follow, the more information you’ll get. Especially Twitter serves as a good example, I only follow around 200 people and I can’t manage to read all of the tweets that enter my feed.

You’d have to be pretty diligent to read all tweets. The average person however, will comprehend around 450 words a minute I was told. That means around 3.2 tweets per minute. I usually receive 15 to 20 tweets per minute, just to give a comparison. That’s overwhelming isn’t it?

Scanning is the key to success!

Yes, scanning your timeline is the key to successfully using social media. A lot of people seem to get lost in the vast amount of information they receive every minute, hour or day. They’re making the mistake of reading to much!

It’s better to scan your timeline, just like a newspaper, and only read the interesting things you see. That way you’ll get the information you want, when you want it! This means (of course) that you’re still missing out on a lot of information, but that’s not likely to be overly interesting information because it would have caught your eye during the scanning process.

So, by scanning your timeline you’re able to find cool and interesting stuff! The parts you miss aren’t relevant enough and you don’t know you’re missing them anyway. I hope this will help you to get used to social media because it’s here to stay