Friday, November 4, 2011

Google, Google+, YouTube, and You.


One big happy Google family! I wasn’t a bit surprised to learn that YouTube has been integrated into Google+.

There it was. The YouTube icon, beckoning me on the upper right of the page. I clicked on it. A little window opened with a friendly question: “What would you like to play?” so I typed in one of my favorite tunes by Melanie, Peace Will Come. Then I clicked, and a new window opened up with a whole list of videos for the tune. The first one automatically started playing, so do be prepared and don’t have your speakers cranked up at full volume.

How cool is that? But I became even more joyous when I noticed the little green share button at the top right of the video. A comment is easy to add and the choice of public or just a circle or two is available as well. Sweet!

What does this mean? For starters, we’ll probably start getting inundated with music videos on Google+ just like on Facebook! Yeah, I should talk! Some of you know I have a music/pop culture page on Facebook, Groovy Reflections, where many videos are posted every day. I’m going to defend myself and say “that’s different”. It represents an element of a business endeavor by solidify the imagery of the brand and besides, people choose to like the page, thereby saying “I WANT to see your posts”.

Wondering if Google+ will section off the YouTube feature at some point, sort of like what they’ve done with games? Personally, I’m happy that I don’t have to worry about hiding or blocking games or getting requests to join games all the time like on Facebook! But I really DON’T want to see zillions of music videos all the time. Wouldn’t it be nice to just click on a little icon to see a stream of everything just from YouTube? Like Blip.fm, for example, but with video right there? You could pick a tune or two and take a five minute break …then get back to work! Just kidding.

Facebook, on the other hand, has discouraged folks from posting videos as they move forward with their integration with Spotify and some other music sites. And lately, I’ve noticed that many posts I’ve attempted to make from YouTube come through without a thumbnail. Don’t know if Facebook is the one doing that, but hey, why would they want posts from YouTube since it belongs to the competition?

Will be interesting to see how things unfold over the next few weeks. I’m assuming that people will embrace the new feature on Google+ but who knows?

Google has their smarts on and it will be wonderful to see more of the blending of their tools in the future.


3 comments:

Mark said...

I left fb because of all the hackers and garbage going on in there. I'm trying out google+ to see if I like it;-)

Gerry Wendel said...

Hi Mark,
Have heard of a few folks that have left FB. Agree that the hacking possibility (hasn't happened to me but to several friends) is quite annoying. Google+ so far is so much cleaner and can easily be 100% gameless (love that) but let's get ready for all the twists and turns to come. I DO think Google has taken and extensive look at what doesn't work and is making a dedicated effort to think about what the member of the network wants (unlike Facebook).

These are exciting times!

Everything712 said...

I like google+, but I'm still confused with the tool in google +.. hhehe
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