April 10, 2012 By Simon Salt

Why It’s Ok That You Don’t Like Google Plus

Its been about 9 months since I joined Google Plus – I got early entry the week it launched, before the initial rush of excitement was over. I really thought it had potential. There was this great thing called Hangouts and a group texting service called Huddles (later renamed as Messenger) and the threaded conversations were easy to manage and the quality of content seemed higher than Twitter or Facebook – it was almost as though people were trying harder.

Google Plus: Lack of Quality

Unfortunately it didn’t last. The quality of content has declined, the newness has worn off and to be honest the innovations promised by Google have failed to appear. Hangouts on Air, the ability to record and then save a Hangout to Youtube was rolled out to a select few users and it has been indicated that this feature will be eventually rolled out to all users but that hasn’t happened yet – instead Google added animal masks – as a sop to those who wanted something new to happen in the video hangouts.

Google Plus: The Mobile Version that isn’t

The mobile version of Google Plus is at best a hindrance, forcing users back to the web based version because of its lack of features.

While I accept that the common rule is that you are in control of your own stream and therefore if you find your stream boring you must be circling the wrong people – with approx 5,000 people in my circles you would expect to find a higher signal to noise ratio but that isn’t the case. The quality has dropped off, a lot of the content is cross-posted from other sites and to be honest, while I might have originally circled someone because of their content, when that degrades I can’t be bothered to move them to another circle.

I stopped using Google Plus a week ago and I have to say I haven’t missed it. It never did that much for me to be honest in terms of traffic generation, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest send more visitors to my blog than Google Plus ever did and while I did find some interesting people there, they are also on other networks I use.

I’m now using Chime.in, which I wrote about months ago as my alternative to Facebook and Twitter though my use of both of those platforms has increased and subsequently my engagement on them has increased.

Google Plus:Meh

So it’s ok if you say “meh” when people mention Google Plus, you aren’t missing the point, you aren’t missing out on some wonderful collaboration network that will change how you think about social media, in fact I would have preferred to see Google develop Youtube Plus and bring the benefits of Hangouts etc to Youtube directly and just get rid of the rest of their attempt at Social Networks. Honestly the guys at Mountain View need to understand that Mathlethes aren’t best placed to run the prom. While it is cool to currently believe that the Nerds are taking over the world, at the end of the day they are still nerds and the only world they are taking over is Silicon Valley – to which they are most definitely welcome.

As for me I’m going back to my old haunts of Facebook, Twitter, Chime.In and Pinterest as well as looking for newer, smaller, interest based networks that provide me the ability to really fine tune my information stream.

What about you – do you Like G+?

image from Spreadshirt

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Filed Under: Facebook, Google+, Marketing, Observations, Social Media, Technology, twitter Tagged With: Chime.In, Facebook, G+, Google, Google Plus, twitter

March 20, 2012 By Simon Salt

Being More Creative

Being a “creative” isn’t an easy thing to describe. When asked what I do for a living I often find myself stumbling over words to describe it. Often I will take the easy way out and instead describe IncSlingers as an entity – a digital marketing agency. But that isn’t really what I do for a living, that is where I work. Sure it’s my agency but where you work doesn’t define what you do necessarily.

Being Creative

My friend, mentor and inspiration Chris Brogan describes himself as a “typist” – which I have always thought as a wonderfully humorous way of describing what he does. I can only imagine the looks he has received over the years from people who aren’t familiar with his work. I have referred to myself as a speaker who types fast, a digital strategist, a writer, an author, and various combinations of them all. What it really comes down to is that I am a creative.

Recently I started two new projects that are not connected with what I do on a daily basis. I’m writing my first novel called Past Life and created a Kickstarter project to help get it off the ground as I intend to self-publish it. I’ve also opened an Etsy store with my girlfriend to showcase clothing accessories that we are making. So why would I do this? Why take on things that apparently divert my attention and energy from the daily tasks of running an agency, writing business books and pitching for new speaking gigs?

Creativity Needs Release

Being creative isn’t something you can turn on and off like a light switch and like any other ability it is something that needs training and use. If you were to do the same exercise every day you would maintain a level of fitness but you would most likely hit a plateau, you would stop seeing improvements. Doing the same things, even in a creative way you are likely to maintain your creativity but you won’t see improvements. That is something I wasn’t prepared to accept.

Writing a novel is a different way of thinking than writing a business book, switching between the two makes me shift gears and think differently, use different voices and different sources of inspiration. Making things with my hands also demands a different way of thinking (I refinish furniture, paint in watercolor and build models as well). Instead of using a computer as a tool, using hand tools makes my body and my brain work differently together.

Being More Creative

In addition to these reasons, building a Kickstarter project and an Etsy store allows me to see platforms from the inside. To get a better understanding of how they work. Etsy allows me create, sell and market something different, but it also allows me to see how a platform like Pinterest fits into the process. Kickstarter allows me to see how simple workflows can aid non-technical people in creating projects as well as how crowdfunding really operates.

These lessons are then things that I can feed back into what I do on a daily basis. Lessons I can share with clients, audiences and readers. So the whole process becomes cyclic. I get smarter, I get to express my creativity in other ways and I get to educate those who care to learn from my experiences.

So what do I call myself – I’m a creative.

What do you call yourself?