{"id":3405,"date":"2011-06-28T15:04:15","date_gmt":"2011-06-28T19:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=3405"},"modified":"2011-06-28T22:03:47","modified_gmt":"2011-06-29T02:03:47","slug":"google-claims-to-better-reflect-offline-social-norms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2011\/06\/28\/google-claims-to-better-reflect-offline-social-norms\/","title":{"rendered":"Google+ Claims to Better Reflect Offline Social Norms"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Today, Google announced a new service called “Google+<\/a>” that explicitly attempts to replicate offline social norms onto an online platform. Besides the conceptual consistency between this goal and the concept of “augmented reality<\/a>” that I write about so often, I also find the timing of the announcement interesting.<\/p>\n

When Eric Schmidt was CEO of Google, I critiqued<\/a> his statement that having multiple identities online shows “a lack of integrity<\/a>.” Schmidt stepped down in April of this year and less than two months later Google announces<\/a> Google+ (which is an umbrella term for a whole host of services centered on better replicating physical world social norms in a digital social media environment).<\/p>\n

The service is brand new and invite-only so we can only speculate at this point what it will actually provide. However, the announcement of Google+ on the company’s official blog provides some interesting statements about privacy. The post is an implicit retraction of Schmidt’s insensitive statements and perhaps a lesson-learned from Google’s Buzz debacle that angered and even endangered<\/a> many of its users. Further, much of the post is also a direct attack on the Facebook platform<\/strong> and its inability to reflect offline social norms that long-since predate the Web (e.g., the platform’s often incorrect usage of the term “friend”). Some quotes from the Google blog:<\/p>\n

Today, the connections between people increasingly happen online. Yet the subtlety and substance of real-world interactions are lost in the rigidness of our online tools.<\/p>\n

In this basic, human way, online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it.<\/p>\n

The problem is that today\u2019s online services turn friendship into fast food\u2014wrapping everyone in \u201cfriend\u201d paper\u2014and sharing really suffers<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

First, let’s acknowledge that the sappy text and cheesy videos that tug at our heartstrings really exist to make us feel good about a big, scary company with one ultimate goal: to make you share more.<\/strong> More sharing means more data which means more advertising-based profits for Google. This is a company that, like Facebook, is out to make a profit (for better or worse, depending on your perspective).<\/p>\n

Second, as much as Google is attempting to build a service that reflects the enmeshment of the physical and digital worlds, they still push the outdated semantic habit of calling the physical world the “real” world<\/strong>. If anyone should know that online is “real”, it is Google (and, of course, the offline is increasingly virtual at the same time). Is Google not reading<\/a> the Cyborgology blog?<\/p>\n

Much, much more will need to be said about Google+ as details come forward and people start using the service (that is, if <\/em>people start using the service; Google has a mixed track record when it comes to social services).<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, Google announced a new service called “Google+” that explicitly attempts to replicate offline social norms onto an online platform. Besides the conceptual consistency between this goal and the concept of “augmented reality” that I write about so often, I also find the timing of the announcement interesting. When Eric Schmidt was CEO of Google, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":559,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9967],"tags":[2324,4256,10447,942,775,10818,2954,424,414,732,1197,3753],"class_list":["post-3405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","tag-augmented-reality","tag-circles","tag-digital-dualism","tag-facebook","tag-google","tag-hangouts","tag-jurgenson","tag-privacy","tag-publicity","tag-social-media","tag-spark","tag-web-2-0"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/559"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3405"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3416,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3405\/revisions\/3416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}