Google+ is off to a good start: A clean interface that works, interesting and useful  features, a great Android app, and a curious community of early adopters. The screenshots at the bottom of this post will give you a taste of what Google+ is but they will also likely show you what it is not, at least not yet.

Google needs to go above and beyond itself to make this worth our time and theirs. Right now Google+ (or Google Plus) feels like Google Buzz +1 but also like Facebook -1. It’s exciting, but not that exciting.

Below are 10 things that Google can do to change their reputation in the “social” space and become a dominant player instead of an awkward one.

1) Don’t Focus on the Technology

Google Wave was the future… and then it died. Google Buzz might as well be. Google must truly learn from those mistakes and focus on use cases that make sense to people outside the Googleplex. Why do people go online (beyond search and YouTube) and why/how/when do people interact with each other?

2) Compete with Facebook

Google needs to stop saying that this is not about Facebook. It is. It’s time to compete and compete well. Twitter might not be trying to create a Facebook but its definitely competing by enhancing its own network and doing things that are either very much in line with what Facebook is doing, or completely different. A competition is a competition regardless of whether you can coexist or not.

3) Google Ads

A Google social network without ads? Really? For how long? Google must be brave and put some ads up there. If it doesn’t, I simply cannot take this seriously. It’s not that I love ads, but without ads Google is pretending to be something it is not.

4) Make Changes and Soon

Google Buzz looks the same today as it did a year ago. That’s embarrasing and quite useless in a web that evolves on an on-going basis. There must be a long-term strategy and that must involve changes, updates, and major enhancements and announcements. It also includes making mistakes and doing a thing or two that people don’t like. Just do something beyond launching and don’t wait too long to do it. If there are no changes in the next month or two, I’m not staying around.

5) Integrate ASAP (more…)

Simon Mainwaring is founder of We First, a social branding consulting firm that helps companies use social media to build communities, profits and positive social impact. Simon is also the author of the book by the same name. Read my interview with Simon below, and make sure to follow him on Twitter @SimonMainwaring and find out more about the book at www.wefirstbook.com.

The book is unique for a couple of reasons. It does an effective job of consolidating a lot of different discussions going on right now, whether they’re about the future of capitalism, philosophical debates about self-interest, globalization, emerging technologies, the future of the developing world, and the impact of social technology. Specifically, the book is unique because it looks at an issue that many people have discussed: the future of capitalism through the lens of social technology. Mass adoption of social media has only occurred in the last three or four years, so what makes the book unique is that it looks at these questions through the lens of this new technology and provides three fundamental new solutions. First is a new partnership between brands and consumers connected by social technology and aligned around shared values that creates a third pillar of social change in addition to government and philanthropy. The second is the concept of contributory consumption, which builds on precursors like ‘1% for the Planet’ but extends to include not only retail, credit card, online, and mobile transactions, but also virtual goods when applying the concept of contributing a small portion of the sale of every good or service to a cause. Thirdly, the book proposes the formation of the Global Brand Initiative, which is a federation of brands that would combine their efforts and expertise to bring the best of the private sector into the social change space. So the book is unique because it lays out these three concepts.

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It’s funny to see some of the same people who have praised Web 2.0 and social media for years and highly depend on social media themselves, pointing the finger at “social media experts.” These myopic blog posts get views and buzz, but they are so generic that it shows that they don’t really see the entire picture or are simply seeking attention by trying to stand out amidst a sea of social media related content and opinions.

Are these kinds of articles/posts new? Nope. Criticism of “gurus,” “ninjas,” “experts,” “snake oil salesmen,” etc. abound online. Everyone and their cousin has written about it (I’m sure I’ve done it myself and I apologize on behalf of my younger, ignorant self).

Ironically, many of the people  making these claims are the same ones that speak at conferences, write books, and appear on TV and magazine articles to talk about how much they know about social media. They speak as experts and then talk about a generic group of renegade “social media experts.”

Based on my experience, I know how some small business owners see social media and how very large corporations see social media. I also have interacted with PR/marketing/advertising agencies, technology vendors, and startups/developers to have enough of an idea of how they see it.

And from what I’ve experienced, regardless of what you read in blog post x, most large companies need people who specialize in social media in various areas of the organization. In the same way, most small businesses need help with getting started in social media.

Sure, it would be fantastic if everyone from the CEO to customer service reps, marketing departments, and the agencies helping them were not only aware of how the space is evolving on a monthly basis, but also had experience and deep knowledge about what works, what doesn’t, and what it all means for the organization.

In an ideal world, everyone would have experience and knowledge around social strategy, integration, execution, management, testing, and measurement, and everyone would know how to spend dollars correctly to make things happen efficiently, creatively and with relevance, but that is not the case. The fact is that most large companies are still learning and some are still skeptic, despite the strong data suggesting that people are spending a lot of their time and attention on social sites. It takes resources and money to provide great customer service and create great marketing. In the same way, most small businesses probably don’t even have the time to do much more beyond creating a Facebook page and putting a Facebook icon on a billboard.

Pointing a finger at “social media experts” is like pointing a finger at “media planning experts.” It’s terribly vague. (more…)

Privacy and safety have always been key issues in social networking, especially when it comes to children. While Facebook’s terms and conditions say that kids under 13 aren’t allowed on the site, no one is going to stop a 12 year old from claiming that she was born a year earlier. To make things easier for parents and provide a place for 8-13 year olds to connect, Everloop is a site that “creates a privacy loop around kids’ connections.” Below is my interview with Hilary DeCesare, co-founder and CEO of this social network for tweens.

1. What benefits does Everloop provide to tweens that may be too young for Facebook and too old for Club Penguin?

Online, tweens want fun while parents want safety, and Everloop delivers both. With more than 600 million Facebook users across the world, social networking site has changed the way people communicate and share information. Everloop has created a unique age-appropriate social media experience by interconnecting customized micro-social networkscalled “loops”. Loops featured on Everloop include community loops of common interest (art, science, culture, reading, sports, fashion, etc.). Social “looping” was specifically designed to allow tweens to share, communicate, and collaborate discretely with their friends while online.

The site also features creative applications, music, games, videos, photos, animation, user generated content and other integrated online experiences. No other social platform on the market today offers as many real-time communications, content-sharing, and collaboration features designed specifically for tweens.

2. What are some of the things that these kids are most interested in doing in social networks?

We’ve found that kids love sharing content with each other, chatting, playing games, creating groups and using technologies that are similar to those being used by their older siblings and parents.

3. Today’s tweens are growing up surrounded by technology and social media. It’s all very normal to them. What kinds of things do you think they will expect from the websites of the future?

I think kids expect and deserve a lot of the same tools adults use and that’s why we offer many similar features provided by major social networks. (more…)

The “Social Media Exchange” Empire Avenue has been getting a lot of buzz. While I heard about the site last year, people like Jeremiah Owyang, Peter Kim, Scott Monty, Robert Scoble, Caleb Storkey and David Armano have written very interesting thoughts in the past week or so, and the community seems to be thriving like never before.

I was going to write a few fun Empire Avenue predictions (e.g. A “Buy” button that’s like the Facebook “like” button), but instead I decided to ask CEO Duleepa Wijayawardhana (aka Dups) a few questions about the past, present and future of his company. I think you’ll find his answers, including a hint about Foursquare as the next network to be integrated, very interesting!

Follow @dups and make sure to add some “DUPS” and “ESTEBAN” shares to your social portfolio.

1. What do you think about Seth Priebatsch’s prediction about the next decade being the decade of games and the “Game Layer?”

To be honest, I happen to believe that most of what we do in real life reflects the human mind’s love affair with what we call games. In fact, in most cases a game takes aspects of what we do in life, things we can understand, and place finite scores, missions, obstacles and rewards into it and then allow us to “play” it.

What I will agree with is the notion that this decade will be the decade that the mainstream understands the use of games and gaming layers in more than just building crops and shooting enemies. I do believe we are seeing the start of a generation that has grown up with computer games and can see that games can actually teach us about Real Life and, indeed, ourselves and how we affect our environment. It’struly an exciting time in my opinion.

2. There have been a few applications/sites that simulate investing in people, websites and organizations. What do you think is the one thing that positions Empire Avenue for success?

We studied almost every single one of them :). What we realized almost immediately is that stock market sites are based on current stock market models, which, I hate to say, are complex and almost incomprehensible beasts. With Empire Avenue, we actually went backward in time to a simpler market system. We have a system of “Market Makers,” who are algorithmic”people” who analyse your content and engagement, and create share prices every night. People add to or subtract from that share price by buying and selling. In effect we have created a very simple BUY/SELL/Earnings system which is not at all a real stock market — something that has many more Bids and Asks and so on. We admit, it does take a little while to “get it,” but if you start with Buy and Sell and watch your money grow, the game mechanics should lead you in the right direction. We also have a long way to make the whole thing simpler and easier. The one thing that puts us ahead, in my mind, is our team and our community. The team is dedicated, the community equally so, and they have helped us move the site to what it has become.

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Burt Herman is a co-founder of real-time curation service Storify. I first heard about Storify on this Scobleizer post, and I’ve tested it for Samsung USA at SXSW and for myself at M2C (you can see an embeded example at the bottom of this post). I met with Burt at the Samsung Blogger Lounge at SXSWi and he was kind  enough to answer my questions. You can follow Burt @burtherman

1. What’s the story of Storify?

Storify is founded by Burt Herman, a former Associated Press bureau chief and correspondent, and Xavier Damman, a Belgian engineer who was publisher of a crowdsourced student magazine. Both share a passion for media and technology, and about how to reinvent online publishing to embrace the social Web. They met early last year and joined together to launch Storify in private beta in September 2010. Storify is about enabling storytellers to find the best of social media to tell elegant stories that resonate and enlighten. We want to empower storytellers with simple tools that help them find the media that matters amid the flood of media.

2. Journalists have always been storytellers but they haven’t always been “curators” of social content. What does social curation mean for the future of journalism?

Curation is a buzzword that represents what journalists have always done: Finding sources for information and synthesizing it into concise stories that a general audience can understand. We now have more sources than ever due to social media empowering people to create content, so journalists now have a much richer pool of information to choose from. This is an opportunity and the start of a new golden age for journalism.

3. There are some people that have been “curating” since the beginning of the web. Are you targeting such curators or do you believe Storify is for the masses?

Storify is about empowering users to easily tell stories using social media, and it can be used by anyone — journalists, bloggers, companies or just regular people. Everyone has a story to tell, from serious news like the Japan tsunami to a personal story about a wedding or child’s birthday. (more…)