Total Assault

Google, one of the most important tech companies of this decade, has gone into the social space for the third time.

Countless opinions are circulating about the product, whether it’s fascination with a feature or thoughts on their corporate strategy.

Common press outlets are echoing the same message:

Will the tech giant destroy the Facebook Empire!?

Who knows. In truth, there’s no way to really know the viability of the product with such limited information about its performance. Yet it continues to stir up article after article for each little feature adjustment.

Rather than bore you with another glorious review of Circles, or a discussion on how Google+ added billions to their market value, let’s dig up the stats that matter.

The founder, Larry Page, announced very positive results: 10 million users in two weeks. But, what should they be tracking here? More relevant metrics would be active users, average time spent on platform, or Zuckerberg’s recent focus on “sharing frequency per user”.

Google didn’t need to put big dollars into marketing Google+. They have a built-in user base of millions, eliminating the friction of a registration process (this explains the 10 million captured users). Their focus was giving Google users a compelling reason to join the service (group videochat? Yes!) and driving great results with goals they knew could be achieved.

Unfortunately, they aren’t focusing on per-user metrics. Why should I share things here instead of Facebook or Twitter? I need to build ANOTHER profile? In designing Google+, they haven’t shown users a compelling reason to stay.

For us, it’s no surprise that Google+ is suffering from a user retention issue only four weeks after launch. The news came out recently from Bloomberg:

“Total Google+ visits fell about 3 percent to 1.79 million in the U.S. in the week ended July 23 from the prior seven days, said New York-based Experian Hitwise, which tracks Web traffic. Google+ had risen 283 percent in the week ended July 16. The average time spent on the site in the most recent week declined 10 percent to 5 minutes and 15 seconds, the research firm found.”

We feel Google’s innovative approach to the social space is worth the controversy. It’s interesting to learn how one of the most important companies of the decade looks to change our lives even further. However, at the end of the day, maybe people don’t like to categorize their friends?

Up next: Google+ for businesses on the next rollout. Many businesses have already tried to use Google+, only to have their profiles wiped out. Keep a look out for our critiques once the service finally ships.

Last weekend was essentially geek heaven down in San Diego. More than 125,000 fanboys, geek girls, and overall pop culture enthusiasts descended upon the town to indulge in everything genre and sci-fi related. With such an enthusiastic crowd, it should come as no surprise that attendees are at the forefront of consumer technology who consider themselves early adopters. Every year, new gadgets, and therefore practices on how to incorporate them on the exhibit floor and in panels, pop up to get everyone buzzing about the latest in television, movies, video games, and yes, even comics. Two years ago it was Twitter, last year it was FourSquare, and this year it seems that a new trend had come to roost.

This year, the new belle of the ball was QR Codes. Every booth seemed to have a QR code to scan. Instead of entering giveaways with an old fashioned pen and paper, people would scan the QR code with their smartphones to enter to win. Want to watch the trailer for the WB movie you just passed a poster for? Scan it to pull it up on your phone. One booth was even having a scavenger hunt throughout the convention center via QR codes, where one scan would direct you to the next, and the first to the end won a box set of comics and prizes.

On top of the tangible prizes, entertainment check-in service Get Glue got involved in the fun too. For a few of the TV and movie panels, those inside got a postcard with a QR code to scan to receive a Comic-Con exclusive Get Glue sticker. As a social media enthusiast, I live-tweeted the panels I attended and these Get Glue stickers are so desirable that random people on Twitter were asking me to post the picture so they could check in too. They searched out people tweeting about certain panels in hopes they’d respond with the pic to get that coveted check-in, regardless if they were actually watching it or not.

As Comic-Con is essentially a gathering of 125,000 of those at the forefront of technology, it’ll be interesting to see how QR Codes continue to be adopted and utilized in less tech-savvy gatherings. Given their success at this event, I expect to see them shape even more event experiences in the future.