Google staying the course in going social
Well, this is interesting! All Things D has a scoop that Google is hiring Digg founder Kevin Rose:
Digg founder Kevin Rose has been hired by Google, according to sources close to the situation. […]
Rose’s first day at Google is to be this Monday, the sources said.
Rose has an avid online following, stemming from his days as a host on TechTV and the long-running podcast “Diggnation.” Though Oink — which was a local recommendations app — may not have succeeded, it was able to hit 150,000 downloads in its first month.
That kind of ongoing fan engagement could be a boon to Google+, which has been criticized for low engagement and tricky user accounting.
As I’ve long maintained, Google+ is the black sheep of Google’s product family. Unlike other Google products, I feel absolutely no need to check into Google+ on a regular basis, I never engage with friends on it and I primarily use it to follow companies that I cover for work. I’m skeptical that anyone can make Google+ good enough to make it a staple social networking site, but Rose seems to be a pretty good hire anyway. I mean, that Digg site is pretty darn successful, after all.
This is supposed to be the part of the blog post where I make recommendations for what I’D do to fix Google+, but I can’t really think of anything along these lines. Yes, they need to change the name, which sounds more like a violence-inducing drug from A Clockwork Orange than a social networking site. To me, the biggest issue with Google+ is that it just doesn’t feel like a place where I’m comfortable hanging out. It’s like going on a date with someone where someone and they decided to bring their mother along with them. I know that’s not terribly articulate, but there’s just something off about Google+ that I can’t put my finger on.
So how about it, fellow Google Reed-ers? What would YOU do to make Google+ more hospitable to users?
