Invitations now optional

If you’ve been wanting to try Google+ (and you’re not a brand or business), good news: Google’s social project is now available without an invitation. there’s a joke about +1s and guest lists somewhere in there, but we’ll let you come up with your own. {Google Blog}

The open registration comes alongside a number of updates including Hangouts (the popular group video chat offering that Facebook has tried to take on via a Skype partnership) on Android 2.3+ phones, and Hangouts broadcasts. Broadcasts will allow group video chats to be publicly viewable, which seems like it could be the beginning of an interesting tie-in with YouTube. That’s just our take, but being able to broadcast video content then record it and save to YouTube seems like a natural next step.

Hangouts APIs were part of today’s announcement as well, so if some enterprising developer is thinking along the same lines and grabs the YouTube API, we may not even have to wait for Google.

Also rolled out today is search for Google+. Honestly, it’s hard to come up with a good reason for why it took the world’s largest search company 3 months to introduce search for the product they’re tying bonuses to, but better late than never.

What still remains up in the air are how brands and businesses who want to hangout and get in on the Google+ action will be handled. Hopefully that’s coming in the next 90-days, but for now everyone else is welcome and it looks like there are a few positives with the current Google+.

Everyone remembers Google’s loss on Groupon, but before that they couldn’t seal the deal with Yelp either. Fast forward a few years, and Google has a Groupon competitor under way, but no product to pose a significant challenge to Yelp. Since it seems like most of the product team power has been dedicated to Google+ (and they even missed a few things there), rather than trying to catch up solely through their own branded local ratings Google acquired the 32-year-old, consumer-driven restaurant review company Zagat. {Google Blog}

In the official announcement, Google’s Marissa Mayer (who heads Google Local products) says

“Moving forward, Zagat will be a cornerstone of our local offering—delighting people with their impressive array of reviews, ratings and insights, while enabling people everywhere to find extraordinary (and ordinary) experiences around the corner and around the world…

Their surveys may be one of the earliest forms of UGC (user-generated content)—gathering restaurant recommendations from friends, computing and distributing ratings before the Internet as we know it today even existed. Their iconic pocket-sized guides with paragraphs summarizing and “snippeting” sentiment were “mobile” before “mobile” involved electronics.”

It’s an acquisition that also officially puts Google in the content business. The tie-in with local products is obvious, but until now Google has largely relied on other websites – including Yelp – to fill its review section. We have to wonder if the acquisition means that Yelp, and other sites who previously provided reviews to supplement the ones written directly through Google, will see their search traffic squeezed and pushed through to Zagat. It’s not that Zagat’s content is bad: they actually have a very well respected brand as far as restaurant reviews go, but would they be the best choice in every case? Yelp hasn’t been around as long as Zagat has, but what they may lack in perceived quality, they more than make up for in quantity.

According to Google AdPlanner, Zagat.com had 830,000 visitors in July, compared to Yelp’s 38 million.

That’s a very significant difference, and while the Zagat reviews may help fill in some of the blank reviews in Google’s local listings, they won’t cover nearly as many as Yelp can. It may also explain why Google was able to get Zagat for less than $66 million {TechCrunch}, but not Yelp for $500 million.

While fewer reviews doesn’t necessarily correlate to quality, in some cases reading reviews from 100 people might give a better indication of the quality of a restaurant or hotel than a score based on reviews of 3 people. Would Google push the 3-person review because they own the content?

The Like.com/Boutiques.com acquisition/failure proves that Google doesn’t necessarily do their content acquisitions any favors, but we have a feeling this may be different. Zagat is already being integrated into other Google products in a way that Boutiques wasn’t, and this is an attempt to compete with a defined competitor.

The best review of a successful acquisition will require a bit of time though, so we’ll keep an eye out to see what direction it takes.

According to a post by Christian Oestlien, whose profile lists him as The Google+ Project Ads Guy (ironic), it never occurred to any of the brilliant minds in the Googleplex that brands, businesses, groups or other organizations that are larger than one person would want to participate.

“There may be a tiny handful business profiles that will remain in the meantime solely for the purpose of testing how businesses interact with consumers…The platform at the moment is not built for the business use case, and we want to help you build long-term relationships with your customers. Doing it right is worth the wait. We will continue to disable business profiles using regular profiles. We recommend you find a real person who is willing to represent your organization on Google+ using a real profile as him-or-herself,” says Oestlien.

Really? After the massive success of Facebook pages, it never once occurred to Google that if Google+ was going to offer itself up as an alternative to the dominant social network, a business option might be needed? And the solution is just “find a real person”? We can’t recall a single brand telling users to find them on Facebook and add their marketing manager as a friend.

Not to mention, when Google does open up to the public – which is expected to be much sooner than “a few months,” longterm usage and success will probably hinge on less tech savvy users being able to find and follow their favorite singer, or sports team, or news network, or favorite restaurant or any number of other accounts that really just don’t make sense on a personal profile – no matter how advanced or easy to use filters may be.

Recognizing that, Google reinstated Ford’s account, and made arrangements with Mashable’s Pete Cashmore to have him use the Mashable profile as a personal one. Apparently there’s no love for Big Bird and Elmo, because Sesame Street continues to return a 404. News Stream, a program on CNN International still has a profile, as does the Next Web so we assume they’re two of the arbitrary “tiny handful” of business profiles deemed suitable for testing. Meanwhile, the brands and businesses not deemed important enough to participate – Signature9 included – have been left wondering how something so obvious was overlooked in the first place.

Oh, and it’s pissing off the early adopters who’ve been helping Google+ achieve such rapid growth. Lisa Barone at Outspoken Media offers a summary of why playing favorites after creating a messy game isn’t the best move.

Can we at least convince a graphic design over at Google HQ to slap a beta label on this project?

Google is getting rid of Blogger, but unlike Boutiques it’s only dropping the name.

Mashable reports that Google, fresh off the successful launch of Google+, is looking to bring more of its social products under the Google brand umbrella and will be rebranding Blogger and Picasa as Google Blogs and Google Photos respectively. Presumably to emphasize the social areas where Google products have some traction, and as we mentioned earlier, the fact that there hasn’t been a peep on Boutiques in all of this social fervor doesn’t seem to be a good sign for the social fashion site.

Blogger is, of course, far more established (and popular) and frequently pops up in lists of top domains. In the US, Blogger hosted blogs even topped LinkedIn among $100k+ HHI social media visitors.

While YouTube is more popular than Blogger and Picasa combined, it will be interesting to see how users respond to the change. Google famously tried to take on YouTube with Google Video, but conceded to (and acquired) them once it was clear they had a significant lead. Part of keeping that lead growing after the acquisition was allowing YouTube to continue on their way with some autonomy under a non-Google brand. While WordPress.com has emerged as a strong competitor to Blogger and Tumblr is gaining ground, Blogger still leads both by a significant margin when it comes to traffic. Google has never had a Google Blogs option, but we have to wonder if rolling Blogger into Google+ will push the wider adoption Google needs to make its social effort succeed, or just confuse people and push them to a platform that’s still clearly focused on blogs.

The rebranding is expected to coincide with the public launch of Google+ in 4-6 weeks.

Awwkward.

The service is still new, and quite obviously skews tech heavy, so once more invites open up we’re sure that Google celeb favorites like Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber who dominate Facebook and Twitter will kick the geeks out of the top 10 on Google+ as well. And really, if Google+ is going to be a Facebook (or Twitter) killer, that will be the surest sign of future potential.

Though having your primary competitor sign up to see what’s going on isn’t a bad sign either.

Last November Google lifted the curtain on Boutiques.com, the result of the search giant’s $100 million acquisition of Like.com, to great fanfare. All of the right fashion bloggers had their own boutiques on the site, as did a number of celebrities who appear as inspirations on those blogs. The New York launch party was attended by an A-list style set including Carey Mulligan and the Olsen twins among others.

Less than 6 months later, traffic to the site dropped off by 94%. In January, Google AdPlanner estimated Boutiques.com had 2.6 million visitors per month; in April, the estimate was 170,000 visitors. Even worse, it seems that no one noticed.

So what went wrong?

We often cover the intersection of fashion and tech, and as far as that goes the acquisition of Like and subsequent launch of Boutiques would seem to be a pretty big story, but we held off on covering it. As big as their acquisitions can be, Google’s track record on non-search products is actually very hit or miss. If you want an example of why talent + a big buyout doesn’t always equal success, look no further than the story of Dodgeball/Foursquare. The same people who built current mobile darling Foursquare sold a similar product called Dodgeball to Google in 2005, and left after about two years because Google didn’t support the project the way they had in mind. The fact that you now check in to Foursquare, and not Dodgeball, should tell you everything you need to know. For every YouTube, Google likely has 2 Dodgeballs; and if their drop in traffic is any indication Boutiques.com is likely going to have more in common with Dodgeball than YouTube.

We can’t offer any inside information on this story (contact us, if you can), but even from the outside looking in there are a few things that seem to smack of neglect and a business that ultimately just doesn’t fit with Google.

Google’s Social Manifesto

When Larry Page took over as CEO of Google, he made the importance of social abundantly clear to Google employees, tying 25% of their bonuses to the success of Google’s social strategy. {Business Insider} Google’s +1 button is the most recent iteration of a strategy that ties search and social together, but in addition to Boutiques not being mentioned in any company communications surrounding social, there’s not a single +1 button on any Boutiques page.

In one of the few critical pieces after last year’s launch, Fashionably Marketing listed a number of the site’s cons from a publisher perspective. “Itâ€s going to be hard to get users to abandon other sites to be a part of the Boutiques.com community.  There are limited social sharing features; you can email or Tweet about a boutique, and thatâ€s it. Facebook was clearly left off because Google may want to compete with Facebook in the brand/customer engagement and sales arena later on,” editor Macala Wright wrote.

For a site built heavily around social features, the fact that no social improvements have taken place since launch is telling. For a comparison, Polyvore has nearly 90,000 Facebook fans – Boutiques.com has less than 750. The fact that they aren’t even tied in to Google’s broader search efforts makes us wonder how much time Boutiques has before it hits the deadpool.

Too Much and Not Enough

Part of the problem may be that Boutiques is still trying to figure out what it wants to be. Is it a celebrity shopping site? Place to follow fashion bloggers? Social community to share products? It’s a little bit of all of those things without being particularly great at one. In a New York Times article that ran when the site launched, that confusion spilled over to potential users.

Yet, after the meeting, both women identified an obvious shortcoming of Boutiques.com: As curated as it is, a lot still comes up in a search. Suggesting that too much information may be a turnoff to inexperienced Web shoppers, Ms. Son said, “Itâ€s going to take some getting used to, thatâ€s for sure.”

Nodding, Ms. Oliver said: “I feel itâ€s an amazing site, but there are a few aspects that are not very intuitive. Some people might go back to the regular Google search and look for their boots.” {New York Times}

Which might be okay if that’s how user behavior played out, but from all indications, users aren’t going to Google. They’re going to more precisely defined sites like ShopStyle (product search) and Polyvore (curated product layouts and social).  And though Boutiques recently introduced product analytics, which seem to be a better fit with Google’s offerings, Polyvore’s much larger audience is going to offer a much larger amount of data to brands.

Not Measuring Up

The numbers may be off, but Quantcast shows the rise and sharp decline of Boutiques.com

In the same New York Times article, Like.com founder Munjal Shah said “Shopstyleâ€s done one of the best jobs in my opinion of creating the right high fashion experience, but we think of it as Layer 1. Itâ€s kind of broken things down, but they didnâ€t go for a detailed categorization and they didnâ€t personalize.”

When we wrote about ShopStyle’s new mobile content offerings in February, audience data from Google Ad Planner put their January audience at 3.8 million visitors and Boutiques.com at a smaller, but respectable, 2.6 million visitors. Fast forward to data from April and the estimates for ShopStyle are 3.9 million, Boutiques.com is at 170,000.

The dropoff is more than likely the result of marketing arrangements coming to an end. Polyvore and Lookbook.nu were reportedly traffic partners, and lots of A-list style bloggers and celebrities were attached to the project as well. Which was great for a one time push – as indicated by January numbers, but not enough to sustain a site that at its core isn’t offering something markedly better or different than its competitors.

A look at the boutiques of many of the bloggers and celebrities turns up an abundance of items that have long been out of stock, seemingly indicating that few people are updating any more. Jack of all trades, master of none is the phrase that comes to mind. Meanwhile, Like.com has remained focused on a core visual search product and is estimated to have had 630,000 visitors in April.

We push fashion brands to embrace technology, but this is a good reminder that going at the fashion/tech intersection from the other side isn’t any easier. From the outside, it’s difficult to assign responsibility solely to Google or the people behind Boutiques, but everything so far seems to indicate that Google is going out of fashion.

Jeff Huber, Google’s SVP of Commerce and Local, posted on the Google blog “weâ€re moving to close this acquisition as soon as possible, and then weâ€ll start the important work of bringing our teams and products together,” so it seems that the DOJ’s conditions will be agreed to by the search giant.

The key conditions agreed to in the settlement are that Google:

• Continue to license ITAâ€s QPX software to airfare websites on commercially reasonable terms
• Continue to fund research and development of that product at least at similar levels to what ITA has invested in recent years
• Further develop and offer ITAâ€s next generation InstaSearch product to travel websites
• Implement firewall restrictions within the company that prevent unauthorized use of competitively sensitive information and data gathered from ITAâ€s customers
• Not enter into agreements with airlines that would inappropriately restrict the airlines†right to share seat and booking class information with Googleâ€s competitors

for the next 5 years. {TechCrunch}

In other words Microsoft, Expedia, Kayak et. al would have until 2016 to build or fund their own airfare search software. Until then, the terms of the settlement means that Google wouldn’t be able to price competitors out of the software, stop developing it to hobble the software for companies currently dependent on it, share data from ITA within other departments at Google or cut deals with airline customers that would force them to choose ITA over another airfare search provider.

According to Bloomberg, Groupon has held talks with banks about an IPO that would give the company a valuation of no less than $15 billion, and as much as $25 billion.

Groupon’s eye-popping growth hasn’t slowed since the Google offer fell apart, and despite solid efforts from LivingSocial (the closest competitor) and a Super Bowl ad campaign that rubbed some people the wrong way, they now have 70 million users in 500 markets – up from 300 markets when the Google talks were under way.

Google was rumored to have their eye on BuyWithMe – a much more distant competitor who is fighting with most of the other group buying sites for third place (earlier coverage here) – but decided to get into the group buying game with their own product.

Facebook also reportedly has their eye on the group buying market, but Groupon’s massive sales force and first mover advantage haven’t been easy for Google to catch up to, and we’re pretty sure Facebook will have similar challenges.

Why? It’s not totally about the size of the audience – although 70 million users is really, really impressive. Having the audience is one part, but the success of Groupon is also due to their significant sales force. The Groupon page on LinkedIn shows 1,353 employees, with 43% in sales and marketing. Google and Facebook, while incredibly valuable companies in their own right, are much more tech heavy. For comparison, the Google page on LinkedIn shows 26,899 employees with only 13% in sales or marketing functions. Facebook has 2,540 employees, with 23% in sales and marketing.

While Google and Facebook battle each other out over top tech talent, Groupon is building themselves up on sales talent. For small businesses, that’s important. The vast majority of small business owners aren’t sales or marketing geniuses. They may be fantastic chefs or wonderful masseuses, but that doesn’t make them online marketing experts. So when Google or Facebook present self-serve options, they may be technically perfect, but without the human touch of someone to help walk the business owner through the process and explain things to them those self-serve option will continue to underperform when compared to a company like Groupon that’s driven by sales people rather than engineers.

So far Groupon’s been using the massive amounts of money they’ve raised to acquire companies with local sales teams, and hire additional sales and marketing people. Google and Facebook largely used the massive amount of money they have to acquire new tech talent, and while that’s serving their core businesses well, it’s very difficult to change the culture of a company from tech led to sales led overnight. Google and Facebook find their strength in ideas, Groupon finds its strength in execution. No, their business model isn’t completely original, and yes, there are many other companies doing the same thing. The thing is, none of those companies are doing it better.

For the tech giants it’s going to be very difficult to add on that culture fast enough to pose an immediate threat to the group buying leader. For competitors, if Groupon is snapping up the top local sales talent it will be expensive to compete with them, and in the group buying space, it’s near impossible to outspend Groupon.

Japanese Tsunami Damage - Â Photo by Keichi Nakane via Jezebel

Japan is used to earthquakes, but one this big was unsettling even for one of the most earthquake prepared countries in the world. Though Japan has very strict building codes that help minimize the damage caused from falling buildings, the tsunami is a different story. The speed of the water can often outpace any warnings, leaving people in low lying areas minutes to escape fast moving waves – nevermind cars or houses in the path of those waves.

So far the death toll in Japan is in the hundreds, but expected to rise. While it may seem minimal, social media and the internet are playing a role in helping people communicate, and tech companies have stepped up to do what they can. With voice phone lines overwhelmed, and transportation severely hobbled, tweets and data posts on social media sites may actually be one of the few ways people are able to get information to or from loved ones when voice lines are down.

• Yahoo! Japan has a list of earthquake resources
• Google’s People Finder, originally created following the earthquake in Haiti, has been revived for Chile, New Zealand, and now Japan (embedded below)

The story is unfolding over Twitter and YouTube as well, and a second 6.6 magnitude earthquake (not aftershock) is being reported near Nagano, Japan.

Let’s hope that somewhere a tweet or text resource is helping to make a difference.

Yup, just like that, things are going to be a lot more interesting for current group buying leader Groupon.

First, the details on Google’s planned competitor.

Image via Mashable

Mashable received a confidential fact sheet spelling out the merchant benefits of Google Offers, “a new product to help potential customers and clientele find great deals in their area through a daily email.” From the fact sheet, we learn that Google will provide writers to write up offers (just like Groupon), promote the offer on the Google Offers website and through email to local subscribers (just like Groupon).

Right now Living Social is Groupon’s closest competitor, and even with a national promotion that topped Groupon’s national promotion (their 50% off Amazon giftcard deal ended up pulling in a little more than $13 million), they’re a distant second. Here’s why competition from Google will be unlike anything else that Groupon’s had to deal with so far:

1. Google knows Groupon’s secrets

Even though an acquisition never happened, Google surely had plenty of time during due diligence to examine Groupon’s operations inside and out. They know their strengths, but more important they know their weaknesses in a way that other copycats don’t.

2. Google knows a lot of Groupon’s secrets

Even beyond anything they learned in due diligence, Google runs what is arguably the largest ad network on the internet. Perhaps you’ve heard of a little product called AdWords, or a small acquisition that did happen called DoubleClick. Google will offer some church and state separation assurance that they aren’t looking into specific advertisers campaigns, but let’s be honest – Google’s seen a lot of things on Groupon that they can’t unsee and we’re pretty sure that includes ad data.

3. Google made $8 billion last quarter

Groupon recently raised $1 billion and is rumored to be going for a $15 billion IPO. They also do approximately $2 billion per year in revenue – as much or more than Facebook pulled in, on a smaller user base. Google made $8 billion in one quarter. And they own millions of email addresses through Gmail. And they own the ad network that runs ads to those users. And they could afford to keep pace with Groupon’s spending, even if they didn’t.

Uh oh.

Lest we seem to be all doom and gloom about Groupon’s prospects, there are a few things to keep in mind. First is that the companies have different DNA, and if Google was willing to buy Groupon in spite of that – or perhaps even because of that, it’s a sign that email addresses and an advertising budget may not be the end all be all of dominating the space. As a company, Google is probably the smartest guy in the room but Groupon is the life of the party.

When it comes to local business, that may make a difference. When it comes to your search results, or your phone doing cool new things, you probably want the smartest guy in the room. When it comes to trying new things, you probably don’t want that guy telling you what’s fun, even if it’s algorithmically correct.

That life of the party, witty promotion is central to the type of community spirit that got users hooked on Groupon and the businesses they promote in the first place, and will be what keeps Groupon in the fight as much as billion dollar investments.