Gadgetory

hi everyone i'm rafe needleman in San Francisco welcome to a special edition of reporters roundtable so Google this morning just announced a major redesign of its social network product Google Plus now google plus of course is not Google's first try to build out a social network other products that company has experimented with include buzz orchid and to an extent wave but Google+ seems to be the company's line in the sand this is the product that Google seems to be well it seems to be saying we will do whatever it takes to make this social network product really stick there are two key people behind this initiative over at Google they are Victor and ultra who's the senior vice president of social at Google and Bradley Horowitz is a vp of product for Google+ and they're both with us today gentlemen thank you so much for making the time to join us on your relaunch day it's good to have you here you're welcome and very nice for you to have us on the show right so I want to get started with a little bit of background on Google+ this thing is um not even a year old tell us briefly why you launched animal and what you've learned in these last several months yeah I mean it's a we just celebrated about two weeks ago our six-month anniversary of opening up to the public so we're about six months and a few weeks old and it has been quite a ride you know this morning we announced we've had 170 million people upgrade to a google plus profile and start using our product and so we've been kind of blown away by the progression and the progress that we've made as you pointed out we've had other social efforts in the past we've learned a lot from from those efforts and we've really tried to make Google+ something special and we've just been thrilled at the adoption and at the rate people are upgrading to google plus I have to ask you about the numbers the numbers that are throwing around been thrown around right now we've got 100 million users this morning hundred and seventy million people have upgraded uh that what are those numbers really mean I mean how many people are actually using Google+ not just a little update icon every day or every week or every month yeah you know I think in order to answer that question you really got understand what Google+ is and Google+ is really the unification of all of googles services with a common social layer and so if you think about today products people love like youtube or android or gmail or search your identity is different in every one of those cases if I take a picture of my wife on Android and I want to share it with my family how I do that and how I do that on gmail or how I upload a video on YouTube used to be completely different google+ makes Google simplify by having a common notion of you your identity and then your relationships and so as we take the services people know and love and unify them then sharing that photo or that video with your family is exactly the same across YouTube or Android or gmail in fact even endorsing a search link maybe you see an article on Parkinson's disease and you want your family to note that you you're endorsing that article or sharing that article you can do that in a very very easy way so anywhere people get confused as we also in addition to having a social area cross Google have things like the Google+ stream or the home where you see common social posts and when we say we have a hundred million active users which is an old statistic from from last month we really mean anyone using a google property signed in as a Google+ user and taking advantage of the social graph seeing their friends comments or themselves commenting or endorsing so and so that's a pretty stunning number we think in just a little over six months and we couldn't be happier how many people actually go to plus google com and interact with it on the page like they go to facebook com and interact well I think when you when you talk about Facebook's numbers Facebook releases numbers for facebook usage which includes Facebook photos facebook messaging facebook groups facebook tagging facebook likes the facebook never talks about just the stream right because that doesn't make sense it's all integrated when you tag someone in a photo or when you invite someone to an event or those are all part of the social experience and so that's exactly what we're doing here of course the numbers on the stream are incredible and growing every day we hit new record we had another record again and so it's thrilling to see that growth but really it's a misunderstanding of the Google+ strategy to only focus on photos or only focus on messaging or to only focus on the stream then then then you're not getting the Google+ strategy and and rate this really is in contrast to the products that you mentioned that are the historical legacy things like blogger or buzz or orkut things that are social but we're really sort of over to the side and not core to the Google experience what we're doing with Google+ as Vic said is unifying identity relationship across all of Google and we think any social network should have for instance a great messaging system and we happen to have one at Google it's called gmail and that is part of Google Plus it should have great support for multimedia and video we happen to have a great service called YouTube which is also part Google+ so thinking of these things separately is not the way we think about the Google+ strategy I I get that that's pretty clear but it might be the way that people who are coming from other social products might be thinking of how they approach the social web actually we're seeing just the opposite we're seeing Google users really love that fact that their Google experience from YouTube to Android to gmail is becoming really simplified and unified now we do acknowledge that there are some critics who would love to like get technical and focus only on our photos or only on the +1 button or you know but that's not the way users we're focused on users lets users really we look at the data and we're absolutely thrilled with the adoption of services like chrome and YouTube and Android and bringing them together our users have consistently told us that's what they want and the adoption numbers show it we're really excited about that let's talk a little bit about the new design here what was the the problem you are trying to solve or what were you trying to improve with the relaunch today of the interface for google plus good i I think there's a couple things that are exciting about the design one is really around aesthetics and beauty I think we have done something that sets a new bar for Google products in terms of its visceral experience and we couldn't be happier with the response that we're getting it's pretty gratifying we sort of knew internally that we were on to something that was a big step function from where we were but you know we're seeing very supportive articles in the press and more importantly feedback from users about this experience I think in addition to the aesthetics sort of the bones of our interface were due for a refresh and we alluded to some of this an index blog post there's more coming and we needed to sort of make space in an information architecture sense for where to put the new stuff that will be launching from now through the rest of the year and this is a really durable framework that we're excited about because it not only accommodates the product we have today but all the features and improvements that we know are coming around the corner yeah you know frankly when we launched a few months ago we didn't have things like games were hangouts or plus pages there's so many things we've done in the last few months and many more to come has broadly said that we had to prepare for this and make it interface that's scaled and then the other thing is we just never anticipated not in Bradley and i and the team no one ever dreamed a few months ago that we would have people on the service that would have millions of followers you know competitive Social Services took many years in cases before followers before people had millions of followers and because of the rapid growth people were actually posting very high value content on Google+ and that content needed to look beautiful we wanted not just the people who had a million followers but for the people who are sharing with their family we wanted them to have a place that they were proud of where their content really shined and looked beautiful and I think today's a new and improved Google+ is about both points the one that Bradley mentioned getting ready for all the new stuff that's coming and keeping up with our torrid growth and the point about making it a great place for you to be proud of your content how it appears to your friends and family and just making something that has emotional resonance with people that is something that's beautiful Picasso once said good artists copy great artists steal and there have been many great social network artists that have come before you Facebook and MySpace to extend Twitter product other products you've done from these other services other products what aesthetics what user interaction what emotion have you tried to put into Google+ and how is it reflected in today's product I think as you point out we're not sort of entering the market in a vacuum and there are certain established gestures and paradigms and metaphors that users and and the industry has developed over over years I think what we're trying to do is serve the user so where existing paradigms make sense and there are sort of comfortable ways to convey information we use those where there are new opportunities to do something more valuable of I think our hover comments are an example of something that is both beautiful and industry-leading in terms of our ability to sort of allow you to mouse over any user's name and get really great representation of who that user is in relation to you we will set that new bar and so I think it's a combination of sort of serving the user not sort of vaulting them into unfamiliar territory that that is going to disorient them but finding improvements that actually make a material difference in their experience where possible and in much of the the new stuff is not about the pixels you know it's about providing a new and a better user experience for things people need to do you know before Google+ multi-user video with your family where the camera would dynamically switch based on whoever was talking those were only high-end systems or systems that you have to pay for we've made that simple and free you know and so that's a kind of an example where the user experience were focused on the user doing breakthrough things I'll give you another example since you talked about existing social products when we analyze those products we found some awkwardness we'd often ask people is there anything you don't like and we often heard well I feel kind of awkward my boss send me an invite if I don't accept it i'm going to feel bad but if i do accept it he's going to see the pictures of me on the beach and so we designed circles to deal with that awkwardness you can add your boss to a circle he never knows the name of the circle you don't feel any socially awkward you don't feel social awkwardness you can share the right things with the right people so our innovation is more than just the pixels it's in the design from hangouts to circles everything is really thought through to make it better for the user enabling the user to share the right things with the right people one of Facebook's most powerful features is the idea of the like and the like button and we're seeing in the case of Pinterest for example we're seeing the that button migrated out of pages and into the toolbar so people are pinning everything Google+ has the +1 yet it's still not completely integrated into the mainstream of what users are doing it talked about the evolution of +1 and how important it is as a social signal yeah I mean it's very important we r thrilled with the integration of plus one if you +1 something on cnet's article it shows directly up into Google+ the integration is absolutely gorgeous and it actually gives the user the ability to decide which circles that cnet article is going to go to the coverage this the +1 button across the web has astounded us I don't think any of us could have dreamed a year ago that the +1 button would be literally everywhere and we're very humbled by the adoption it certainly has succeeded beyond anything we ever imagined you can go literally anywhere on the web and see that +1 button integrated yeah but I think one of the value propositions Wraith is that the +1 button gives you this opportunity to provide contextual value right now if I plus 1 a toaster that's probably not interested to the million or so people that have me in circles on Google+ I you know when it is valuable to them when they want to buy a toaster and they can go to google and type in toaster and suddenly see an endorsement from someone they know someone they trust and so it sort of changes what used to be spam this sort of you know inhibition that people have in sort of spamming their friends it changes it into a gesture of generosity that they can actually label an endorsement for a product or a website or another person in a way that is generous and contributes to the relationships that they have I think the Parkinson's disease article I used earlier is an example of that I don't want all one millions of followers that I have to see what article on Parkinson's disease because i injected it into my strain but for my family who may be dealing with that issue that's a great article and i have the discretion of + wanting it and then that's it then they see it when they do a search for Parkinson's disease or I have the ability to actually push it into the stream scope it to my family circle and make a comment we think this level of nuance this level of dexterity and control is exactly what users want and the data that we're seeing uptick in usage the adoption by users really tells us that that we're on to something let's talk about mobile for a little bit obviously the world is moving to smartphones how's the Google+ evolution going on mobile devices Android and iPhone in particular I'm not sure once again we could have ever expected Android to have the success that it has and remember Google+ is just a social layer across Google properties and so as we take the services you see in Android and unify them so that sharing and identity is common across Gmail and YouTube and Android I think users are going to absolutely love it of course the Android you're already logged in every user who uses android is already logged in and having that identity so that when you take a picture and those pictures are automatically backed up so if you lose your phone your pictures and videos are up there Google+ and you can access them at all times even as you upgrade phones you never lose a photo I think that's the kind of magic that we're just getting started with wait till you see what we're going to go do next man what are you going to go do next with Android I just said you have to wait we have a lot of surprises but let me tell you across the company across the company we are working to unify Google and make it more beautiful and delightful for users we think automatically backing up your pictures on your phone for your eyes only for free is a kind of scenario that we can deliver to users that people just love and what they expect from google now one of the things that you've done in this big social push at Google is you've actually removed some social features from other products like reader obviously there was a lot of thinking that went behind that talk about how that is part of the integration the unification strategy um actually we don't spend much time on things that are not solutely core to what we're doing and so Bradley and I are probably not the right guys to talk to you about reader we do have people on the team we can get to talk about reader but I suspect we're not even familiar in details about about that product okay now our time on things like Gmail and YouTube and Android and chrome and search and ads really the main focus of the company and bringing those together in a magical way now privacy we have to talk about when it comes to social networks no big online company has a perfect track record us included yes that's what I'm talking about so what is your philosophy here how do you correct for missteps because you're going to make more in the future we all are and how do you square the need to protect users with Google's need to generate revenue well one of the things about having made mistakes is you become acutely sensitized to the topic of privacy and I think that some of what we have been through as a company has given us an opportunity to ask can we make the world's most privacy considerate social network it was part of the philosophy and underpinnings of Google+ from the beginning and it was a market opportunity frankly it was something that would be good for users and they told us that they wanted so the design of circles is a privacy considerate feature it allows me to expose parts of myself to the appropriate people in my life and protect parts of myself from others that I don't want to see it so this is inherent in the very design of the system and we're extremely proud of the privacy track record we have had lots of people adopt Google+ that have raved about the fundamental architectures that allow them to be authentic on the system because they know exactly who they're talking to at any moment Vic has a line that I love which is there's a reason that there are frictions in systems for instance there's a reason every thought in my head does not come out of my mouth that's a good thing and what we've tried to do is present the same sort of contextual opportunities at every point of interaction in our system so when you share we always ask you who is the audience are you sharing this with your family the public and we expect your behavior and what you say in your tone to be different in those contexts and so that's a fundamental design philosophy of Google+ and i think that the lessons the hard one lessons that we have brought to this have informed the very design of the product and it's actually quite hard for competitors to sort of bolt on these privacy considerate features they have to be thought of in a fundamental sense from the inception of the service and something we're very proud of I have to ask you about the recent acquisition the Facebook made of Instagram it was a very expensive acquisition and it was arguably one of of a big user base what what are your thoughts on on photo sharing on Instagram and that particular acquisition I think those 12 people did very well yes and the users will see we're really focused on delivering a great experience for Google users as you might imagine with Google users across Android and Picasa and Google+ the number of photos that our users are sharing is staggering and Bradley and I on the team or focus on making that experience better and that's what we're putting our energy all right so finally you've got a bunch of people a whole lot of people all over 100 hundred seventy million users being upgraded today in the next day or so to Google+ what are the things that you would like people to look for in the new experience that you think will reflect most what you're talking about here well I hope that people appreciate the aesthetics of the experience and that is sort of the first impression in the one that we're immediately getting tons of feedback about it's extremely gratifying again these sort of phase shifts in products are often hard we both Vic and I both been through very many of them very few of them in fact none of them in my recollection have gone as well as the you know six hours since we launched this this morning so it's been really great to see the accolades and the acceptance of the community of something that is a big change for them and I would invite them to really invest in the product to play with the product we're still in a mode where we have lots of opportunity ahead of us and we're very good listeners so the feedback we collect in response to our users very much informs the product strategy and and that's what I always love to see our users who are engaged and vocal about what they love and what they'd like to see change because it really does give us opportunities to serve those users yeah and I think I would just say you know we're going to keep up the speed of innovation that the world is seen over the past couple of months we constantly hear from our users that one of the things that they find most delightful is not only the fact that we're listening but the service itself is improving I don't know too many services who barely six months after they've open to the public do a major forward redesign and I think that's just indicative of what they should expect from us going forward phenomenal rate of innovation and improvement and we can't wait to show everybody what's coming next we will be watching thanks very much gentlemen Vic Gundotra is a senior vice president president of social like Google Bradley Horowitz vp of product for Google+ continue to good luck when will you roll out be complete when will the users uh all users have this we think we just completed the rollout to a hundred percent so if not a hundred percent we're almost there almost everybody should have the whole new redesign right on alright guys thanks very much for the time good luck thank you you