What Google+ Means for Political Advocacy and Campaigning: Initial Thoughts
Updated below.
Google+ went live for the masses today (assuming you got in before the system stopped taking new users), meaning that the search giant has taken another stab at social networking — and at staving off the threat of Facebook. How should political and advocacy communicators approach this new platform?
First, as Steven Levy points out in Wired (via Matt Stempeck), today’s launch is just one piece of a process that will stretch out for months, so we’re only seeing the bones of what should be a much broader set of tools. But what’s out there now is already interesting, and definitely check out Amy Sample Ward’s excellent overview for a glimpse of how it works. Two elements jump out: first, the platform’s integrated ten-person video chat feature (“Hangouts”), which should be extremely useful for volunteer-organizing, for media/blogger calls and for campaigns whose staff is scattered across the country or the world.
Second, in addition to a Facebook-style social newsfeed, Google+ incorporates what it calls Sparks, which are Twitter-ish content streams on a given topic. These may have powerful implications for communicators down the road, since they could become many people’s primary source of news and information. Even in their early stage, Sparks could encourage us to use more video and imagery, since visual-heavy news items will apparently get more prominent play. But think also about the future implications for groups wanting to cut through the information clutter, via Levy’s article:
7 comments June 30th, 2011 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us
