Recently, Robert Scoble identified a few of the things that were missing in Google Plus. The short story is that Robert knows a bunch of venture capitalists. He put them all in a circle called “VC’s” and then expected to be able to go to that circle and see a whole bunch of VC specific stuff. It didn’t happen that way. Instead, he saw the VC’s sharing the same stuff everyone else is sharing, like vacation photos.
1. Search. The ability to say “show me all cool new items that talk about venture capital.”
2. Sifting. This is similar to search, but goes beyond. “Show me all future items that talk about venture capital.”
It got me to thinking… Here’s what I want from a new network.
SEARCH:
Much like Robert, I want the ability to search for a particular topic of discussion. This is what Google does best right? So why does the search bar only allow me to search for people? Right now I want to search the public and my circles for why Tumblr is down. Can’t do that in G+.
SORT:
I have plenty of real estate friends, some of which are also Hockey fans. Google Plus is driven by your Google Profile. Why can’t I do a sort and find all those in a particular circle who are both? How about just being able to sort all those that are in a particular state? I can think of hundreds of other things I would like to sort for but the ability to do so isn’t there. I can’t do that in G+.
SIFT:
To me sifting is akin to panning for gold. Like Search and Sort, I want to be able to go to my circles and narrow the field. I can then set up Sifting to then search that parameter for little nuggets of gold. Example. Let’s say I want to search G+ for all motorcyclists. There’s a wide array of bikers, from the Harley types to the crotch rockets, right? Now I want to sort them into only those that are MotoGP Fans. I’d like to now be able to Sift that circle and pull out only the “new” photos from them. Better yet, I’d like to be able to sift for only photos from the latest Laguna Seca Race. That’s the gold I’d be looking for. Now that I’ve done the sift – why not allow me to save it like a Google Alert? I can’t do either of those in G+.
FILTER:
This might be one of the biggest for me. If you know me you know I have a huge aversion to noise. Everything from the Noise from the gardeners who no longer own rakes to Noise from the marketing machines on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin. Filters are what make social networks work for me. On Twitter, I follow everyone who follows me (roughly around 12,000) but pay attention to around 100 or so with the use of lists. That said, I use a Twitter client, Seesmic Desktop to access twitter. That allows me to Search, Sort, Sift and you guessed it… to Filter. If those 100 people suddenly start tweeting about the next american idol I can easily filter out all those tweets.
What would I filter out in G+? Tons! Let’s start with all the shared posts of shared posts. You know that really cool cartoon you saw and shared today – I saw that 15 different times yesterday. Or how about the posts by all the new self proclaimed G+uru’s? Yeah, everybody and their mother shared that post. Do I really need to read it again? Heck, I’m not sure I’m going to even share this post on G+.
Some of us are just starting to find out we need Filters.
Filters in G+? I can’t Filter anything in G+.
So while Google Plus is the new shiny object for the social media fanatics, it’s still missing a few things for me.
How about you?
photo credit: razputinz
Mike Mueller
He's an avid hockey fan, rides a mountain bike, sometimes rides a road bike, has a few motorcycles (he had a really fast one, bought a cool orange one, rode a really slow one, and wants a really small one). If that isn't enough, he makes cheese and sourdough bread, loves strong beer and good red wine, and poorly plays the Mandolin.
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