search

Guest Post by: Hamid Sirhan

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably already signed up for Google+ or you’re teetering on the brink. At the very least, you’re probably wondering why you should bother signing up for Google+ at all.

You’re a 16-year-old Muslim kid in America. Say your name is Mohammad Abdullah. Your schoolmates are convinced that you’re a terrorist. They keep typing in Google queries likes “is Mohammad Abdullah a terrorist?” and “Mohammad Abdullah al Qaeda."

I've been deeply immersed in Google Plus for the last week or so, not only following what's being said about the service but actually using it, kicking the tires and making observations along the way. For what it's worth, I think Google Plus has an incredible amount of potential for a number of reasons. Here's a few thoughts or more accurately opinions. Everyone has a take, so the only thing can offer here is that I've had these thoughts in my head while using the service but wanted to give it some time before putting it into writing.

I finally found time to cash in on one of my Google+ invites after taking a much needed vacation. My initial assessment? Google has actually figured out how humans work, so mark Google+ as one to watch and ignore the pundits that are telling you it's no threat to Facebook.

One of the trends colleague Steve Rubel and I identified for 2011 was the re-emergence of Google through furthering the integration of social into their search ecosystem. Google's latest iteration of social search now further integrates platforms such as Quora, Flickr and Twitter more aggressively and points to a new reality for businesses in how they approach social integration themselves. In short, ignore at your own peril. So what's a business to do as search increasingly integrates signals from multiple ecosystems? Here's a few tips:

A friend of mine visited me from Japan and our conversation was around mobile search, since Apple’s acquisition of Siri, a company that makes voice-operated personal assistant app for the iPhone, people wonder what Apple's intent was. This move has big implications for the future of mobile search and is just a first step into the game.