CircleCount le ayudara a entender mejor Google+

2013-06-17 23:03:42 (5 comments, 2 reshares, 19 +1s)

The joys of launching a business with a strong "Why"

It has been a little while since I've been around these parts, generally just loitering around the fringes offering a +1 here and there. Sorry.

The reason I've gone quiet is because life offline has gone crazy busy. In a good way. And since it relates to this community, I'm going to bend my own self-imposed rule and share what I'm up to with the community.

In short, I finished up my paid employment a few weeks ago after a LOOONG notice period (6 months), and started full time in my business Garbologie.

Garbologie is a business focused on creating a world without waste. That "why" is front and centre to what we do.

Once the "why" is settled and out of the way, it is actually very easy to find opportunities. There are many, many opportunities. Som... mas »

2013-06-17 17:19:25 (8 comments, 6 reshares, 33 +1s)

The "Pay What You Want" (PWYW) Payment Model

+Disconnect is a relatively new service to help you better manage your privacy. I just set it up myself this morning. It's too early to have an opinion on it. That's not the point of this post though. 

The point of this post is the attached screen captured image of Disconnect's "pay-what-you-want" (PWYW) payment approach. The disconnect.me website prominently features their PWYW approach, and when I went there I quickly noticed that I have the option of dedicating a portion of my payment as a charitable contribution. Which nonprofits the money goes to isn't clear, though a post on the Disconnect blog notes that the contributions go "to nonprofits that make the web better, too."

Wow, nice, I thought. Disconnect is a +B Corporation, so this approach naturally made sense to me.I... mas »

2013-06-16 22:36:03 (9 comments, 3 reshares, 36 +1s)

I think we need this new word. 

"Owkward"  - so awkward, it hurts.

E.g. Look at this guy, trying to create a meme, like that. Ow. That's owkward, man.

2013-06-15 22:01:18 (23 comments, 3 reshares, 59 +1s)

Seattle Halo

This is up in the sky right now. 

From Wikipedia: 
There are many types of ice halos. They are produced by the ice crystals in cirrostratus clouds high (5–10 km, or 3–6 miles) in the upper troposphere. The particular shape and orientation of the crystals is responsible for the type of halo observed. Light is reflected and refracted by the ice crystals and may split up into colors because of dispersion. The crystals behave like prisms and mirrors, refracting and reflecting sunlight between their faces, sending shafts of light in particular directions.

Atmospheric phenomena such as halos were used as part of weather lore as an empirical means of weather forecasting before meteorology was developed. They often do mean that rain is going to fall within the next 24 hours as the cirrostratus clouds that cause them can signify an approaching frontalsyste... mas »

2013-06-15 14:30:35 (6 comments, 1 reshares, 13 +1s)

I'm Alive

+Michael Franti has a new video out.  What you haven't heard it?  Watch it.  What you don't have Michael in your circles?  Follow him.

Uplifting music.

2013-06-15 13:54:23 (31 comments, 4 reshares, 42 +1s)

People Curation

One of the best things about Google+ is circles. It really does give you a great deal of control over managing where you invest your attention.

Twitter's "List" functionality is older (rolled out in 2009), but it doesn't seem to get anywhere near the respect it deserves on the service. Up until just a few weeks ago, you were limited to just 20 lists (each limited to 500 profiles). Twitter has now changed those rules. You can now have up to 1,000 lists on Twitter, each with up to 5,000 profiles in it.

Did Twitter up the list capacity in response to Google+ circles, or simply in response to user requests? I don't know, but the company seems to have gone back and forth on its relationship with lists, a few times burying the functionality pretty deep in its UI. It's now featured fairly prominently. That's good. Without... mas »

2013-06-14 14:42:31 (29 comments, 9 reshares, 29 +1s)

Curating relationships keeps our content visible in the social stream and creates a powerful feedback loop. Why that matters to us and to society.

My latest post from The Vital Edge. Here's an excerpt:
 
These countless bits of feedback shape our networks, making them better and better at getting the right information to and from the right people. It really is what makes our human networks so smart.

Most of us use social networks for social purposes. But increasingly, we’re also using them for work. There is a growing base of people who are quite skilled at using these systems to professional end. When you look at what these individuals actually do with their time on these networks, you see that they’re spending as much time curating their connections with people as curating their content. Investing in their relationships helps keep their content up high in oursoci... mas »

2013-06-14 13:02:51 (32 comments, 2 reshares, 14 +1s)

Don't Miss Out 

Google Semantic Seacrh is out in less than three weeks. It is on the category best-sellers at Amazon in the US, UK and Canada and it has been selling fast so if you need a copy to help you with your online work, it's best you reserve one now otherwise a fresh print run will take time which means more waiting. 

Beyond the traditional #SEO  stuff it covers, in a very practical way, how to shape your reputation and work to create a true online identity for yourself, on the web. 

Any questions, as always, just let me know. :) 

2013-06-13 22:42:24 (34 comments, 16 reshares, 70 +1s)

Trolling from the 18th Century!

2013-06-13 00:13:11 (9 comments, 2 reshares, 13 +1s)

Facebook Launches Clickable Hashtags #Finally

Facebook's launch of hashtags is so sublime, it has all of us thinking, "It's about time."

2013-06-11 23:55:20 (16 comments, 2 reshares, 19 +1s)

Delaware is the 15th state to seek an overrule of Citizens United.

http://bit.ly/17FxJEt

Eight in ten Americans oppose the Supreme Court ruling, which allows unlimited corporate spending on U.S. elections. Delaware is the latest state to demand that Congress step in and overturn it.

Please share with your networks!

2013-06-11 20:53:39 (66 comments, 23 reshares, 65 +1s)

Gideon Rosenblatt's Top 100

These are the folks Google tells me are my most relevant people (slightly modified to remove people who are relevant, but not active here on Google+).

Looking through this list, I can tell you that these are great people full of interesting ideas and engagement. 

I'm not in the circle here, so I can objectively say that this group is a worthy addition to your circles. 

Enjoy this group of people - I know I do. They enrich my experience here. Without them, I probably wouldn't still be here today. 

P.S. - If you got a notification, that means you're in the circle. 

2013-06-10 23:11:27 (26 comments, 5 reshares, 34 +1s)

E.O. Wilson has some good thoughts here on the inherent struggle between our instinctual drive to compete as individuals and our drive to collaborate as a group. 

The drive to join is deeply ingrained, a result of a complicated evolution that has led our species to a condition that biologists call eusociality. “Eu-,” of course, is a prefix meaning pleasant or good: euphony is something that sounds wonderful; eugenics is the attempt to improve the gene pool. And the eusocial group contains multiple generations whose members perform altruistic acts, sometimes against their own personal interests, to benefit their group. Eusociality is an outgrowth of a new way of understanding evolution, which blends traditionally popular individual selection (based on individuals competing against each other) with group selection (based on competition among groups). Individual selection tends tofavo... mas »

2013-06-10 22:49:49 (6 comments, 2 reshares, 10 +1s)

Google+ Dashboard - making it easier to manage your online presence

Today millions of businesses use Google+ to connect with their customers in meaningful ways. Many of these businesses also use AdWords to promote their products; Maps to update store info; and YouTube to publish high-quality video content (to name a few). We want to make it easier to manage your online presence - all across Google - so today we're getting started with Google+ Dashboard. After signing in to your Google+ page, you'll now have access to the following Dashboard features:

1) The ability to update your info (like website URLs, store hours and phone numbers) across Maps, Search and Google+ - all from the Overview tab.

2) One place to monitor your Google+ notifications, assign page managers, share photos and videos - even start a Hangout with followers.

Local businesses... mas »

2013-06-10 22:38:46 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Just testing the Snippet customization for my site.

Here it is, in case you're interested for yours: 
https://developers.google.com/+/web/snippet/

The Description field is not displaying, but I think that may be part of the latest UI changes for sharing posts, in general now. 

2013-06-10 03:56:16 (1 comments, 11 reshares, 31 +1s)

Complete User Guide to Google Plus (90 minutes, six videos)
This blog post covers just about everything you will need to learn on Google+. Enjoy!
#commoogling   #googleplus  

2013-06-10 01:58:23 (29 comments, 9 reshares, 40 +1s)

The Personal Data Crisis

The PRISM firestorm is heating up, and let us hope that it is a wake up call for all of us regarding the perils of the cloud. 

Don't get me wrong. I understand the enormous benefits of the cloud, but we are also now seeing some of its costs - and most of them are less about the technology and more about the supporting business models. 

+Devin Coldewey has written a thoughtful piece, Waiting For Prometheus over on +TechCrunch:  
➼ http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/09/waiting-for-prometheus/

It's worth reading. In it he asks how we got here and what some of the solutions are to this mess we now find ourselves in.

Fortunately, there are some really smart people who have been thinking about alternatives to our current system - a world of personal data stores. 

A couple years ago, I dove briefly intothis s... mas »

2013-06-09 18:57:46 (11 comments, 60 reshares, 81 +1s)

First, let me say that this is brilliant marketing by +Adobe. 

Second, this is fun. Talk about the life-imitating-art feedback loop. I love the reactions from people. 

#fun   #lifeimitatesart  

2013-06-09 14:13:31 (50 comments, 48 reshares, 84 +1s)

The "Seek, Sense, Share" Model of Content Curation

Content curation is a big part of what happens here on Google+. People here do it with varying levels of success. To assess one's own success on this front, you need to first determine what success actually looks like.

For each of us, the anser to that question will vary. Successful content curation may simply translate into "more followers." Or maybe you dig a little deeper, and see that it's really about more attention. But dig a little deeper still, and you will eventually find yourself having to ask why.

Why do I want more followers? Why do I want more attention?

We here on social networks like Google+, Twitter and Facebook are investing lots and lots of focus and time on content curation (yes, even if you don't like calling it that) - but really, what is the purpose?... mas »

2013-06-08 17:50:42 (10 comments, 7 reshares, 15 +1s)

People, reach out to people

For those of us who are fervent rebels in the fight to humanize the workplace we confront more reasons to despair than to draw hope.

As +John Stepper says of corporations which fail at transforming their cultures, It’s not because they’ve misread the potential for change or because the technology isn’t good enough or anything like that. It’s because it’s still early. Because, collectively, we still don’t know enough about how to change these complex organizations, their people, and their deep-rutted ways of working. Because the corporate antibodies come out in force to attack anything that threatens the status quo.

John reminds us that people are the solution and the means to achieving the social workplace revolution. Return to the source and hold on to it ... them. 

#socialbusiness  

2013-06-08 14:15:45 (16 comments, 9 reshares, 25 +1s)

Print your food. 

A company called Choc Edge is offering a chocolate printer for a measly €3000. A cookie printer will be next, according to Dutch TNO food scientist Kjeld van Bommel, costing only around €300-400 in a few years’ time.

Me? I'd print an Ever Lasting Gobstopper.

More: ➼ http://www.nextnature.net/2013/06/3d-printed-food-meet-willy-wonka/

#3dprinting  

2013-06-07 23:49:42 (16 comments, 3 reshares, 19 +1s)

What is Network Density - and How Do You Calculate It?

Network density is a measure for how many relationships there are between people in a given network, like say Google+.

In this article, I teach you how to do a quick-and-dirty calculation of network density - not because you'll suddenly need to start doing that, but as a way to explain this important concept.

Network density has a huge impact on the flow of information, goods and materials within networks. The denser the network, the more effective the flow is within the network.

This relatively quick read will give you a good grounding in network density. Understand network density, and you'll understand why it's so important for Google to connect people around shared interests on Google+. Understand network density and you'll understand a lot about networks. 

... mas »

2013-06-07 22:58:35 (11 comments, 2 reshares, 18 +1s)

Conan O'Brien's parting words from his gig on the Tonight Show, rendered beautifully, by Jacob Gilbreath. Watch until the end for the part about cynicism. It's spot on. Spot on. 

Thanks to +Jeris JC Miller for calling this one out. 
#inspiration  

2013-06-07 17:16:37 (30 comments, 5 reshares, 24 +1s)

New approach to displaying text on Google+?

There have been many complaints about how the latest redesign of G+ has sacrificed text for images (see: #waronwords ). Take a look at the below screen capture of something I saw in my stream just now. I'm not sure if it's new or not, but do you see how the last sentence is cut off, showing visually that there's more text below? It's actually a pretty good approach, I think. 

Edit: It's also worth noting that this post showed up in my stream with many lines of text - not just the 2-3 that has been the case with the recent design changes. 

+Tessie L'Amour posted a pretty clever rebuke to the current image-heavy design yesterday (https://plus.google.com/u/0/109139639454066616071/posts/ZLvJbxAwqBx), and in one of the comments +Vic Gundotra noted "we are working on some improvements sostay... mas »

2013-06-06 21:37:20 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 12 +1s)

#DDay

2013-06-06 19:50:28 (5 comments, 1 reshares, 11 +1s)

A frozen bottle introduces an interesting dilemma. It pretty much eliminates waste, but I wonder how the energy utilization compares to traditional bottling...

via +Mashable 

2013-06-06 00:58:00 (3 comments, 2 reshares, 32 +1s)

Manage a hierarchy...but organize a network.

Yup. Pretty much. 

#networks  

2013-06-05 14:44:55 (17 comments, 9 reshares, 28 +1s)

Feedly Steps Up, Fills Google Reader Hole

With Google Reader set to shut down in a month, people have been scrambling for alternatives. Many of those people, including me, have settled on Feedly: 

Several weeks ago, Feedly announced that 3 million users had joined since the Reader shutdown announcement from Google. It says now that 68 percent of users who try the service now convert to weekly actives.
 http://ow.ly/lJvXR 

What's even more interesting is that Feedly is developing an API so that other developers that need to make use of RSS feeds now have an alternative to the Reader API that will soon be disappearing. 

This is great news. My personal hope is that having someone like Feedly that's really focused on supporting a vibrant RSS API will help ensure that the RSS ecosystem doesn't continue to slide into oblivion. RSS isimp... mas »

2013-06-05 03:38:29 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 14 +1s)

YES! Magazine Wins Top Award in Independent Media

This is a huge recognition for the excellent work of +YES! Magazine. Very exciting and well-deserved. 

2013-06-03 21:26:03 (19 comments, 5 reshares, 19 +1s)

Exactly how long is long-term?

We, I, love Amazon. I not only buy products from them, I also store data there, I have a merchant account, have a Kindle Fire (don't love it), so much more. Love them.

Jeff Bezos has an incredible focus on long-term success, rightly so. And he is brave to do so because as you look around, even companies in strong cash positions like Facebook, people bow to quarterly wall street expectations.

But looking at this graph made me wonder, what does Jeff, or anyone, mean by long-term. The yellow line shows that Amazon has never made money (or pathetic amounts). Yet Revenue keeps growing because of Mr. Bezos' aggressive growth/new biz strategy.

Sixteen years later, there is still no money. So if you were sitting in 1997 would 16 years have been long-term? Or 25 years? Or 100? And should current shareholders have to wait 100... mas »

2013-06-03 18:47:34 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

This can only happen on Google+:  Wow, and Thank You!

I am not a celebrity, not a prolific photographer, nor a social media “guru”. And yet suddenly, I find myself in the circles of more than 50 Thousand people. Wow, and thank each and every one of you for your vote of confidence!

Many of you who have added me to your circles in the last few weeks are fairly new to Google+.  To help you find great content, and as a way of saying Thank you to some of my “oldest friends” here on Google+, I’m going to indulge myself and share my “Must Read” circle. This circle contains people whose posts I don’t want to miss and it’s open in one of my tabs on Chrome whenever I’m online. 

To help you decide if and whom you would like to include in your own stream, I’m adding some comments about these great people Warning: this contains information abouteach individual in the h... mas »

2013-05-31 00:38:28 (12 comments, 5 reshares, 13 +1s)

How to Get the New Gmail If You Don't Already

I found this trick thanks to +Daniel Milner - Click on the little gear in the top right corner of gmail and hit the Configure Inbox option. 

From there you can switch over to the #newgmail ! 

Sweet huh? How do you like it so far?

2013-05-30 18:01:36 (5 comments, 2 reshares, 13 +1s)

Because of the trend toward home-based and other remote work, people have become accustomed to talking without making eye contact, says Dana Brownlee, founder of Professionalism Matters, a corporate-training company in Atlanta. She cites a manager at a South Carolina financial-services company who started offering prizes to get employees to meet face to face. "People were dialing into meetings from offices that were literally just a few cubicles down the hall," Ms. Brownlee says.

Good article about the importance of making eye contact. I see this as a huge problem that's only getting worse. More than half the people I see "together" these days seem to be physically present, but both off in their own world on their phones, tablets or laptops. I love being connected online with people, but there's nothing that beats a real-life, in person relationship!

2013-05-30 15:56:30 (1 comments, 2 reshares, 14 +1s)

Semantic tools for your website

Google just announced that it is expanding the number of topics for which it will support schema tagging with two new tools.  Late last year Google made it easy to markup events on your website so that they can easily be found and surfaced via other websites and apps. They've now expanded the supported schema (backed by their collaboration with other industry leaders at schema.org) to include: products, local businesses, articles, software applications, movies, restaurants, and TV episodes.

This year is a breakthrough year for the semantic web and it's really going to change the way we use the web. Very exciting. 

cc: +David Amerland (in the very unlikely event you didn't already see this).

2013-05-29 23:33:48 (5 comments, 1 reshares, 19 +1s)

Well, it's "no-cial" media kinda day. Cable to our neighborhood has been cut. I feel like I'm back in the eighties.

What are these things made of paper on the shelves of our home? They have text printed throughout on thin sheets of what appears to be some processed derivative of wood. Investigating now...

2013-05-29 14:21:22 (1 comments, 2 reshares, 16 +1s)

Ultimate Guide to Google Circles. (NEW)
Just about everything you need to know to get your circles in great shape and your stream flowing as you want it!
Also check out...
New Guide to Google Hangouts:
http://www.martinshervington.com/google-hangouts-the-ultimate-guide/
New Guide to Google Plus Posts (with a lot more than you may expect, inc. SEO)
http://www.martinshervington.com/google-plus-posts-the-ultimate-guide/
#googleplushintsandtips  

2013-05-28 15:11:42 (11 comments, 2 reshares, 12 +1s)

Will Facebook up its game in giving its users a better option for publishing long-form content - i.e. will it turn its Notes feature into a Tumblr competitor? 

And though it's not raised in this article, perhaps more to the point for most of us here, would Google ever consider a tighter integration between Blogger and Google+ to address the emerging tension for writers in choosing between writing for their blog or writing for Google+? 

Personally, I'm doubtful that Facebook would succeed with a blogging entry. As this article points out, Facebook has more of a liking culture and less of a sharing culture. More importantly though, it's still got a culture that is heavily oriented towards interacting with already existing friends. That doesn't work too well for blogging, which tends to be more oriented towards the shared interest graph. 

2013-05-27 23:35:55 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 9 +1s)

Breaking News! Governor Sandoval of Nevada has signed Benefit Corporation Legislation into law for Nevada!!

2013-05-27 19:11:46 (5 comments, 3 reshares, 22 +1s)

Google's new "head of design" speaks out.

2013-05-27 18:05:59 (16 comments, 8 reshares, 31 +1s)

Stakeholder Theory

Over the next several months, I'll be doing a deep dive into "stakeholder management" and will be sharing some of what I learn on my website and here on Google+ as well. 

Stakeholder theory centers on the idea that companies exist to serve their stakeholders. There are many interpretations of who qualifies as a stakeholder. One of the most widely cited definitions is from 1963 when Standford Research Institute referred to stakeholders as “those groups without whose support the organization would cease to exist.”

Flipping that definition a bit, you could also say that stakeholders are those people with a legitimate interest in the firm, which is to say, people who stand to gain from the successful operation of the business. In other words, they have a stake in its success. Using this criterion, it’s easy to see how mostinterp... mas »

2013-05-27 16:48:51 (6 comments, 15 reshares, 15 +1s)

+Dave Pollard asks what the world would be like if our companies, government agencies and other organizations ran more like the Internet. Less hierarchy and more "wirearchy" (to borrow +Jon Husband's term). 

This is a longer piece, so grab a cup of joe and dive in. And here's something to ponder as you do: do you think there is a connection between what Dave is saying here and the research that Geoffrey West has done on the longevity of cities relative to organizations? 

➼ http://longnow.org/seminars/02011/jul/25/why-cities-keep-growing-corporations-always-die-and-life-gets-faster/

+Gregory Esau and +John Kellden I think this piece will get you going...

2013-05-26 17:45:15 (5 comments, 3 reshares, 17 +1s)

I actually like the andorpersand.

2013-05-26 14:56:22 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

The Tumblr Purchase was about the Interest Graph

Some highlights below, but lots more meat in the article.

Knowing that someone follows the NBA Twitter feed is nice, but knowing that they hearted an animated gif of Steph Curry hitting a three or saved a recipe for beehive cupcakes is specificity gold.

Writers have time but no money.
Readers have money but no time.

It’s easy to forget this hard readers/writers dichotomy, especially in the era of “scaling via social networking” a.k.a. “spamming your Facebook friends for fun and profit.” It totally seems to make sense that you’d want every reader to become a writer, and to recruit their friends to become readers in turn. Thus you see Twitter, Pinterest and Quora going through phases where they more or less force all readers to register for accounts just to look at a few pages of content.
How... mas »

2013-05-26 14:20:41 (9 comments, 4 reshares, 25 +1s)

Blue Heron, Green Lake

We're seeing a few more of these guys in recent years as +CJ Liu and I take our favorite walk around Green Lake in Seattle. 

Taken with my Nexus 4

2013-05-25 16:31:36 (18 comments, 4 reshares, 32 +1s)

Good Business Community Supporters

This circle is made up of people who have been critical to the continued success of the Good Business community here on Google+. They've shared good content that matches the community's focus on "business as a force for good in the world" and, perhaps more importantly, they've engaged nicely and been supportive of other people's posts in the community. Here's to all of you. Thanks for your great work - and here's also a shoutout to fellow moderator +Adam Johnson!

Here's the community - come join us if this sounds like your thing:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/110654793651248504039

2013-05-25 15:11:06 (3 comments, 2 reshares, 28 +1s)

2013-05-25 13:17:45 (7 comments, 4 reshares, 25 +1s)

WordPress maker, Automattic just announced a $50-million dollar investment that's structured to provide short-term cash to employees and early investors while still enabling it to remain focused on the "long road ahead." 

Automattic is a very interesting company, with a strong mission-focus. That focus has been critical to their success - today WordPress software powers 1-in-5 websites. 

In this article I look at why today's deal is important to keeping Automattic focused on its mission and its stakeholders. In other words, how this deal keeps Automattic, a "regenerative business."

#WordPress   #TigerGlobal   #Mission   #Regenerative  

2013-05-24 15:16:36 (18 comments, 0 reshares, 25 +1s)

I'm never shopping at Restoration Hardware.

Restoration Hardware continues to think we're back in the late 1800's, shipping massive paper catalogs to people who don't want them. This is the second year they've done this. Last year's mailing was over 3 pounds. This year's weighs in at 6.4 pounds (2.9 kilograms) of paper. My sister got this the other day too, and I'm really wondering just how massive a waste of resources this is. 

Now the weight of the mailing has more than doubled in size. This sucks. These guys need to stop this business practice. I refuse to shop at a retailer who thinks and acts this way. 

I complained about this last year, and could have sworn I unsubscribed from their mailing list: 
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105103058358743760661/posts/eUZ3R6FwTdC

So, if you're getting this mailing, anddon... mas »

2013-05-24 04:03:19 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 19 +1s)

2013-05-24 01:55:31 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 9 +1s)

More than 50,000 users have added +B Corporation to their circles here on +Google+! Thank you for supporting this global movement of people using the power of business as a force for good!