Google is slowly but surely progressing towards becoming the centre of our global communications. The launch in the next few weeks of the new service Google Voice is another step in this direction. Google Voice will allow users to maintain a single phone number forever and maintain that number diverting it to any number that you may currently be using, home phone, work phone, mobile, hotel room etc. It has a raft of features that will grow exponential moving forward, some of these include:

• Make phone calls and conference calls
• Store and recall messages convert messages to text
• Different greetings for each person in your address book
• Centralise all your contacts
• Integrating the web and your phone

David Pogue writes in the New York Times, "One number for life," pretty much says it all. At GrandCentral.com, you choose a new, single, unified phone number (more on this in a moment). You hand it out to everyone you know, instructing them to delete all your old numbers from their Rolodexes. From now on, whenever somebody dials your new uninumber, all of your phones ring simultaneously, like something out of "The Lawnmower Man."

The other important point is that it’s free, so what’s in it for Google? If it is a success it will make Google will become the centre of your communications system, effectively giving them control and data on everyone you communicate with on every channel giving them a multitude of ways of monetising the system. Even though it is not available in Australia yet I’m sure it won’t take long particularly given they already have the infrastructure setup for phone services so I for one am hopeful it won’t take too long.

For more info check out the Google Voice website and an article by TechCrunch.



What are your thoughts?


Dan Oxnam, Interaction Director

The internet hype machine is going into overdrive this morning over the announcement that Facebook is launching a bunch of new features. Some people are calling it a revolution comparative to the launch of Twitter and an EPIC change. So what are these new features and what impact are they really going to have?

The two big updates are

• Pages will become more like Profiles, moving brands into the general social sphere
• Subscriptions will allow user to delve deeper into other peoples information stream and Publisher will allow users to selectively broadcast information
  

These updates will be launched with a Home page re-design with updated news feeds and filtering of friend lists and apps.

So firstly the biggest change is squarely aimed at increasing the ability for marketers to engage with users, firstly “Pages” which are used by Brands etc will now act and feel like standard “Profile” pages. This will allow brands to move from being segregated from the primary Facebook experience to becoming intimately involved in a users social process. Mark Zukerberg is playing down the obvious advertising and marketing opportunities that this opens up saying in his blog, “Starting today, we are announcing new profiles for public figures and organizations, Just as you connect with friends on Facebook, you can now connect and communicate with celebrities, musicians, politicians and organizations.” Basically what he means by that is that now a brand, organisation or personality will be able to post updates directly to every persons Wall associated with that Profile which will then be visible to all of their friends etc. That is a massive change giving brands both a massive opportunity and huge responsibility!

The second massive update which is aimed squarely at taking on Twitter will allow users to share their information with an unlimited number of friends. The updates, according to Facebook, can "be brief messages" similar to Tweets or longer ones that include photos and videos. When combined with the Pages update allowing brands to communicate in a similar fashion may allow Facebook to out-Tweet Twitter.

To check out the new look check out Barack Obama and Britney Spears

For brands there are a few updates that need to be made in the next couple of days to ensure that your ‘Profile’ is ready

1. Ensuring that a profile picture for the Page is set.
2. Configuring tab settings - both choosing the “landing tab” for non-Fans and choosing who can write on the Wall.
3. Rearranging boxes on the Boxes tab, if necessary.
   

For more info go to Inside Facebook

I understand the motivation for all of these changes in terms of increasing the ROI for business and pushing more information into the data stream. I do wonder however, if brands can be trusted with this much power in a social network, but I guess that is the answer, hopefully users will ‘out’ any brands that abuse the system and will ultimately self monitor in much the same as Wikipedia or the big fuss about the new Facebook T&Cs. If previous Facebook updates are anything to go by you should be prepared for a rocky ride over the next couple of months while they sort out the teething issues however, all brands should sit up and take notice because this could just be a very interesting way of engaging with your audience.

What are your first impressions?

Dan Oxnam, Interaction Director

Labels: Web Culture and Trends, Web marketing