For the past six weeks I’ve been totally engrossed in Google+. Addicted is the right word. It’s like those dinosaurs that fell into a pit of tar and couldn’t get out. Heck, I’m not the only one. Today blogger Louis Gray announced he is joining Google to work on Google+. Congrats Louis!

What have I learned there?

1. A LOT of people have showed up and tried it in the first six weeks. I have 114,000 followers there. It took me more than three years to get that many on Twitter. That’s more followers than I have on FriendFeed, Facebook, and Google Buzz, combined!

2. A usage pattern has evolved. One that involves beautiful photos and large videos. Just my kind of style.

3. The feature set is maddening. It’s well enough done to make you think it’s competitive (and make other systems, like Twitter, seem boring, even as their streams have not slowed down a bit, which tells me that Google+ hasn’t gotten anyone off of other systems) but you can’t search. Discovery sucks. There’s no noise controls. Notifications suck. Etc etc.

But I’m wondering what that all means for tech blogging?

This morning I saw Read Write Web’s Richard MacManus write that tech media is obsessed with deals and rumors.

I’ve found that too, which is why Google+ has been so fun for me lately. There are a ton of great photographers over there, plus folks who run the music business, and there are tons of others, from artists to web developers. Yesterday I linked to 249 tech journalists and bloggers who are active there. Someone made a place where you can list the best folks, even.

Tonight things head into the scientific realm, with a live streamed hangout with a physicist from CERN.

But I’m finding it very addictive. Why? Because it’s not about the original post, it’s about the comments you get. The +1s you get. There’s a community forming and so far it has been mostly a positive experience, although there are some downsides. What are they?

I say mostly the problems are noise related. Or, another way to say it is they are the chat room problem. Things are fun when people you like are talking with you. But then come spammers and bad actors. Yesterday Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin said she was leaving because she had something unpleasant happen. I assume a commenter got her down, but not sure really what happened. But look at the 269 comments she got in support of her content. That’s the Google+ that has addicted me.

What does it mean for blogging?

1. Bloggers have to add even more value than before. Otherwise they won’t get the engagement that others will.
2. Bloggers have to find ways to get attention, both from their own audiences, existing places they look to get traffic from, as well as from those on Google+. Already lots of my blogger friends say that a lot of traffic is coming from Google+.
3. Lots of “pros” will say I’m stupid to not keep posting on my blog. They are right. You can’t monetize traffic on Google+ unless you have a model like mine (Rackspace pays me to be its chief learning officer, which is why I meet with so many entrepreneurs and others). That means you’ve gotta get off of Google+ and back onto your blog to get those precious page views.
4. Kevin Marks tells me he can’t do the style of blogging he wants to do on Google+. What does he mean by that? He can’t use multiple images. They don’t let you link (you’ve gotta paste out ugly URLs into your posts there) and typographical controls are few (you can bold, italicize, or strike out, but can’t do other things). So, if you need to have more “pro tools” to tell a story, you gotta come out to blogs. Most, however, won’t need those.

If you want to join me on Google+, the first 150 people to hit this link are in!

Is Google+ really ready for mass market? No.

Why not? It needs noise controls. Already for high flow users, like me, notifications are useless there and finding the good stuff, and good people, is very difficult (getting rid of people who don’t add value is also too difficult). I am missing private messages sent to me. Building circles is hard work (I know, just spent most of the weekend on rebuilding mine). The mobile clients are inadequate (you can’t share from them, can’t add those cool + links on people’s names, and on my iPhone the thing keeps freezing up). They also need to solve the real name debate, lots of users keep getting kicked off the system and the policies there aren’t very well thought out (even though I really like real names too). There are tons of other things they need to solve, too, but that’s really another post for another day.

Anyway, you can go through my feed and see the kinds of things I’ve been sharing and talking about. Looking through this selection it’s interesting to see what got engagement and for what reasons. But look at the engagement! It’s more than most people get on even popular pro blogs.

One other thing, I’ve hired Kat Armstrong and she’ll be helping me write up my videos and post those here in the future. If she posts, she’ll mark those posts with “From Kat Armstrong.” Same thing if I ever have guest posters here.

Before we get into the list of old posts, there’s already a post about this post, which is already getting lots of comments and +1s.

Link to SXSW 2012 data plot. 58 +1s. 31 shares. 16 comments.

Behind the videoconferencing technology of Google+ Hangouts (Video interview). +209. 158 shares. 58 comments.

SimpleGeo’s cool location-based iPhone app (Video interview). +123. 65 shares. 59 comments.

Audio interview of Geekli.st founders. +61. 19 shares. 69 comments.

A share of a very cool bicycle video. +371. 450 shares. 86 comments.

Video interview of Bob Summers, founder of Friendeo, a new way to get Facebook videos to Android and cool video discovery site. +64. 45 shares. 29 comments.

The TV wars. An editorial about what Google’s acquistion of Motorola mobile means. +169. 86 shares. 121 comments.

A link to a TED video that uses iPhones to perform some magic. +272. 325 shares. 51 comments.

A link to the top Google+ conversations about Google buying Motorola Mobile. +149. 78 shares. 80 comments.

Video interview of Luidia. The coolest whiteboard, er, surface computing gadget I’ve seen this year. +358. 379 shares. 96 comments.

Kick ass sports video camera (video interview with founder of Contour sports camera). +104. 66 shares. 37 comments.

Video interview with CEO of Healthline about healthcare info. +32. 21 shares. 11 comments.

Video interview with founder of SceneChat, which lets video producers add interactivity to their videos. +68. 46 shares. 39 comments.

Video interview with founder of Buckaroo, which helps local businesses with promotions. +42. 24 shares. 20 comments.

Video interview with founders of Tout, which brings productivity to email through useful templating system. +60. 42 shares. 43 comments.

Photo of guy behind AOL’s new Editions iPad app. +60. 23 shares. 86 comments.

Link to ShowYou video, cool way to discover videos on iPad. +76. 44 shares. 35 comments.

Audio interview with founder of 6dotinnovations, a braille printer for blind people. +110. 30 shares. 44 comments.

Video interview with Extole’s CEO which helps big brands convert people into brand advocates on social networks. +54. 26 shares. 21 comments.

Video interview with SteelHouse’s CEO, talking about eCommerce tracking. +62. 41 shares. 43 comments.

Video look at Toodo, a social to-do list. +70. 35 shares. 116 comments.

Video interview of founder of the OpenPhoto Project. +78. 15 shares. 54 comments.

Video interview with founder of RentCycle, which helps stores rent things. +38. 10 shares. 32 comments.

Video interview with founder of Alltiera’s Rodeo App Maker, which lets you do “bookmarks on steroids” or apps of websites. +77. 40 shares. 53 comments.

Video with Pioneer, the audio/consumer electronics folks, who are developing an API for controlling your favorite web services with your voice.

Video interview with Scoop.it’s CEO, talking about curation and social media. +42. 25 shares. 15 comments.

Video interview with NewMe Accelerator startups. I hope these startups kick some Silicon Valley ass. +189. 111 shares. 88 comments.

Video interview with CEO of Oyster.com, a new way to search for hotels. +39. 27 shares. 23 comments.

Video interview with GLMPS, cool photo/video app on iPhone. +94. 58 shares. 93 comments.

Video interview of CEO of Wildfire Interactive. One of the best Silicon Valley CEOs I’ve met. +200. 130 shares. 66 comments.

Video interview of Jimdo’s founder. They help small businesses make really great websites. +87. 60 shares. 34 comments.

A tour of Rackspace’s headquarters (my employer) with President of Rackspace Cloud. +98. 48 shares. 101 comments.

A rant about why I can’t wait for brand pages on Google+. +351. 222 shares. 130 comments.

A rant about my “noisiness” on Google+. +282. 26 shares. 356 comments.

An interview with Teens in Tech founders and startups. +83. 31 shares. 55 comments.

Video interview with founders of NowJS, toolset for developers who want to build real-time apps. +100. 91 shares. 60 comments.

A rant about why MG Siegler at Techcrunch is wrong and a bunch of insight into how I am more productive with email. +167. 62 shares. 110 comments.

My answer to Chris White, who asked why he should use Rackspace for his VPS. +43. 3 shares. 56 comments.

My rant on how to recruit the best talent. +253. 206 shares. 103 comments.

Link to a cool video from astrophotographer Tom Lowe. +517. 458 shares. 88 comments.

A post about what my first month on Google+ was like. +315. 167 shares. 161 comments.

Video interview with CEO of Orb.com, which is bringing a new way to watch online TV to your TV. +71. 50 shares. 49 comments.

Video interview with CEO of Twilio.com, which is enabling developers to build a new kind of phone system. +50. 41 shares. 10 comments.

Interview with CEO of Tackable, puts your local newspaper online and on a map. +68. 62 shares. 26 comments.

Report on why Google is asking people to use their real names on Google+. +1146. 1103 shares. 414 comments.

Video interview with CEO of Fwix, which is making an API of geotagged info from around the net. +118. 74 shares. 37 comments.

Video interview with CEO of Cleversense, which is an iPhone app that helps you find good things near you. +43. 22 shares. 26 comments.

Audio interview with Bert Monroy, who made the world’s largest photoshop file (he’s a digital artist who worked on this for four years). +80. 21 shares. 53 comments.

For the past month I’ve fallen in love with Google+. Instead of spending time on my blog, I’ve been hanging out there posting long posts and participating in the quickly-growing community there.

Truth is I’ve been a bit bored and the engagement there got me over my boredom. I even reformatted one of my iPhones to see if I could live without any apps (I couldn’t, but the ones I really could live without are fewer than even I expected). One app I’ve become addicted to over the past month is GLMPS, that launches today.

First, we all know Instagram passed 150 million photos uploaded yesterday. That’s amazing for an app that’s only nine months old and that most in the mainstream still haven’t even heard of.

The other apps in this space, Color, PicPlz, Path, seem to me to be struggling to come up to the nice UI and use case of Instagram. To be honest, I’ve been using them a lot less lately because of GLMPS.

So, what is GLMPS?

To the untrained eye it looks like an Instagram copycat.

But I’ve found it to be more engaging than Instagram. Why? Because in addition to shooting a photo and uploading that it records five seconds of video too.

It doesn’t sound that cool, right?

But, chase around your cat, or chase around your babies, or watch your significant other for when he or she does something goofy. Shoot the photo. What you’ll notice is that the five seconds of video ENDS with that photo.

Huh? How did it record video before you push the shutter button?

It is recording in the background on your phone. When you push the button it grabs only the last five seconds and uploads just that and a photo. Nothing else is sent to the servers.

Anyway, here co-founders Paul Robinett and Nicholas Long talk to me about it. By the way, why are they talking to me on Google+ instead of in my house, or me visiting them? Well, they did visit me this week but I screwed up the video somehow. I covered that on Google+ itself. Sorry about screwing that up, but I think this actually worked pretty well, I might use it for other videos in the future.

For the past few days I’ve been hanging out in Jackson Hole with a bunch of geeks and one thing I’ve noticed over and over is how boring Twitter has gotten when compared to Google+.

Why has Twitter turned boring?

I’ve found several areas:

1. First experience.
2. Pictures and videos.
3. Control over content distribution.
4. No API, no auto pushing of content.
5. Signals are visible from who you excited and pissed off.
6. Auto flowing webpage.

So, let’s take each of these areas on, and talk about what Twitter could do to make users excited again.

FIRST EXPERIENCE

Forget everything you know about social networks. Now, visit my Twitter account. Then visit my Google Plus account.

Which one draws you in more? Which one shows engagement? Which one has a better about page? Which one shows passion, excitement, that something is happening? In all cases, Google+ is blowing away Twitter and it’s not even close.

So, what can Twitter do?

1. Buy Twylah. Look at my landing page there, it’s MUCH better than what’s on Twitter. Then, Twitter should add some stats on each twitterer. Stuff like “how many retweets has she gotten today?” or “how many @ replies does this user answer?” That would make Twitter more engaging and interesting.

2. Completely revamp the list idea in Twitter. If you follow one of my lists, which I’ve spent hundreds of hours on, they DON’T DO S**T ON YOUR ACCOUNT! This is so lame that it, alone, will get me to pour more time into Google+. But, what should they do? First, if you follow a list all those people’s tweets should be added to your home feed. Second, if you follow a list you should be able to send your Tweets to people on just that list. Third, if you follow a list, you should be able to send private messages to those people. Fourth, the people on the list should be able to tell the list itself whether that was OK or not.

3. Get rid of the freaking spam on search and give us amplification abilities and noise controls. Many new users will come because a blogger or someone will say “hey, we’re talking about the new iPad on Twitter.” Have you ever looked at a search for the word iPad? It’s full of crap and spam. There’s no way to say “only show me items written by people with a Klout score of more than 30 (which would get rid of the spam) or there’s no way for me to say “show me only items that say “Apple iPad” and that have a positive sentiment.” If there were, many new users would see the value in Twitter, especially around news and location. Instead, every search I’ve done lately is full of spam. Boring!

PICTURES AND VIDEOS

Google+ has beautiful photos and videos. Twitter? Just page after page of mind-numbing 140 character items. Now, Flipboard demonstrated to all of us that photos and videos CAN be added into the display, and the new Twitter UI does do some of that, but it just isn’t enough. Google+ is blowing Twitter away here.

So, what could Twitter do? Totally rethink the clients it owns, and rethink the stream itself. Let us add photos and videos into each tweet and, even, let us do that outside of the 140 character limit, which would let Twitter continue to blow away Google+ on where it is strong: which is on mobile.

CONTROL OVER CONTENT DISTRIBUTION

Google+ lets me publish a post to JUST A SINGLE PERSON +or+ to a small group of people, or, even, to a circle that has 5,000 members in it. Twitter has no such way to do this.

Why does this make Twitter boring? Well, because, my friends can feel safe sharing, um, “racier” posts with me on Google+ where on Twitter they either need to DM me, which isn’t as good as a group (my other friends can’t say “great photo” for instance) and isn’t nearly as nice.

What can Twitter do? Revamp lists. But Twitter’s management thinks lists suck, so I don’t see Twitter getting this feature anytime soon and that’s really too bad. It’s what will really put Twitter into a box and soon, you’ll see, how this affects search and all sorts of news. This is Twitter’s weakest point, and it will become more and more apparent that Twitter has blown a real opportunity here to make its system more interesting.

NO AUTO-PUSHING OF CONTENT ON GOOGLE+

I look at Twitter and a lot of it has turned into a boring RSS feed. I get items from news organizations, and even people now are using it to automatically Tweet (there are even systems that will send out tweets automatically at specific times). I don’t know who really posted these items, and I don’t get answers back from these people a lot of times because, well, they aren’t even online. Not true over on Google+. At least not yet.

This is one area where I’m not sure how Twitter can help, but Google has chat and “hangout” videoconferencing features, which help me see whether someone is really online and available (even Michael Dell has done a few hangouts and those really get people excited). So, I would add some interactive features into Twitter where the sender MUST be online and there to answer them.

YOU CAN SEE WHO YOU EXCITED AND WHO YOU PISSED OFF (and you can see same for other people)

On Google+ I can see if what you wrote excited or pissed people off. Why? There are comments right underneath it. As a writer this feedback makes Google+ extremely interesting. Why? Because I can change my behavior if I’m pissing people off, and my ego gets fed when I see 3,000 people commented and said “great post.” I am seeing a LOT of engagement on Google+ where on Twitter I can’t see that.

Quick, go visit Mike Arrington’s Twitter account and tell me of his last 20 tweets which ones pissed off the most people? Which ones thrilled the most people. But on Google+ that’s a simple chore.

What can Twitter do? List under each Tweet engagement statistics. How many times was it retweeted? Who retweeted it? Which one caused the most @ replies? What was the sentiment of those replies (there are lots of companies that can tell you whether a reply is positive or negative).

THE POSTS AUTOFLOW

If I open a web browser and put Twitter and Google+ side-by-side, one automatically shows me new stuff, one doesn’t. That makes Twitter look old and crappy. Yes, if you use newer Twitter clients you can get tweets to autoflow, but I’d rather have the web page do this like Google+ does.

Anyway, there are other things, as well. On Google+ the Notification page shows you anytime you get engagement. Twitter has nothing like that. It’s amazing how cool that is.

Are you finding the same thing? So far I’ve been asking the geeks I’m hanging out with here in Jackson Hole and they really are seeing these differences and wonder how Twitter will react to them.

Me too. So, Twitter, what you gonna do to keep from being seen as the most unexciting social network?

UPDATE: Here’s a post about this over on Google Plus so you can see the kind of engagement that I’m getting there.

I’m not always right (I doubt anyone can in the world of tech if they are trying to predict the future) but here’s an example of when I got something really wrong (this was an example from my writing back in 2007). I thought more human-oriented approaches, like Mahalo, would get better results than algorithmic approaches, like Google. Why? I showed an example where SEO techniques had put stuff into Google searches that just wasn’t very good and compared that to where Mahalo had done a better job.

Anyway, it’s 2011 now and it’s clear that the Google way of doing things is still better for most people. It’s instructive to go back and see where I went wrong.

1. I didn’t listen to my own user behavior. Truth is, since 2007 I’ve rarely been to Mahalo. I rarely find that that site is authoritative on, well, anything. Compare it to Quora, for instance, and I find Quora more interesting in almost every case. I should have listened to my own behavior more.

2. I was trying to kiss someone’s behind and let that bias my conclusions. Why? I had visited Mahalo, gotten a tour of it with Jason Calacanis, who is an entrepreneurs who, back then, had a lot of power because he was a partner with Techcrunch and because he had successfully kicked off WeblogsInc, which included Engadget and sold to AOL. I assumed what he told me about where the industry was going was correct. As most journalists learn, I should have fact checked his statements. In college we learned “if your mother says she loves you you should check it out.” I didn’t, and now am facing the damage that happens when you say something that later turns out to be wrong.

3. I bet against momentum and user behavior. Truth is, even if Mahalo DID beat Google, it just wasn’t going to beat Wikipedia or Google itself. Why not? Mahalo couldn’t compete with the data Google had to study. Google knows a LOT more about our reading behavior than Mahalo does and can readjust its rankings accordingly (since 2007, for instance, Google brought out Instant Search which is far more useful for me than anything Mahalo has done. Why was that possible? Google has the user data, Mahalo doesn’t). Another more modern example of this is while I like Chewsy’s featureset, it is totally failing against Foodspotting because Foodspotting has more users. Same as I pointed out in my most recent post. Foursquare is beating Gowalla mostly because it has more users.

4. I went for cheap SEO tricks. Truth is, if you bash the SEO world they will all link to you, argue with you, etc. (Bloggers even have a name for this: “link bait”). Folks who do SEO as a profession love fighting about that stuff and it almost always works. But, does it really help you get the traffic you want? The reputation you want? No way. Putting up great content, like when I interviewed Mike McCue and told the world about Flipboard is a far more effective way to get good Google Juice. Taking shortcuts just tarnishes your reputation.

Anyway, just wanted to say I’m sorry to the SEO industry.

I’ll try to get it more right next time.

I’ll be honest, it’s been a while since I’ve used Gowalla (a location-based checkin service you use on your phone). I’ve found that in most of the cities I visit Foursquare has more users, more tips, is faster, easier to check in, etc.

But when I arrived at DisneyWorld yesterday for a private tour with several Disney employees, among others, I learned that Disney liked Gowalla more. That got me to redownload the app onto one of my iPhones and as we went around the park I checked into both Gowalla and Foursquare.

Some things became clear immediately. Gowalla has a much more attractive design, and has a bunch of fun games to play as you visit different attractions. But I kept asking myself “will this experience get me to use Gowalla and, even more importantly, will it get average visitors to the park to use Gowalla.”

In the end analysis, no. Why not? Because even though Disney’s management likes Gowalla they haven’t made it easy for an average park visitor to find out about it. I never saw a “check into Gowalla here for a fun game” sign in any of the three parks we visited. I never saw Gowalla named in the brochures, maps, etc I got.

And, worse for Gowalla, when I did check in on Gowalla I never saw the number of users that I saw on Foursquare and the tips that Foursquare users left were generally more interesting than Gowalla’s better design and cool virtual objects left around to pick up.

What did I see on Gowalla? Tons of Disney employees playing, but after a while they even admitted there were some severe problems with Gowalla. Here’s a list of things that came up after using it all day long:

1. Gowalla is SLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOWWWWW to check in. Foursquare consistently beat it on check in speed.
2. Gowalla still has problem checking in. Why? Because Gowalla has this lame philosophy that you must be exactly where you say you are checking in. Often times, though, we were already walking away from a ride when we remembered we didn’t check in. Foursquare let us check in while walking away. Gowalla often didn’t.
3. Gowalla didn’t let park experts fix bad entries, Foursquare did. Most of the people I was walking around with are Foursquare power users. Foursquare gives those kinds of users special abilities to fix their database in case ride names are misspelled, or some guest entered in a duplicate name, etc. We saw all sorts of evidence in Gowalla that there were mistakes, duplicates, etc, but in Foursquare there were none. Disney employees say they would fix mistakes, but aren’t given the ability to.

Then, once you get off park property it gets worse. As I type this I’m in Orlando’s airport. It says two of my friends are checked in here within the last three days. In the last hour there are three people listed in recent activity. I open up Foursquare and 74 other people are here along with 430 tips.

So, no contest, Disney can’t help Gowalla. Bums me out, cause I like the Gowalla team and design. But users beat all that. Disney should make a deal with Foursquare and get on board.

When my friend Trey Ratcliff (he’s a great photographer who builds iPhone/iPad apps, among other things) begged me to come to the Shuttle launch I never imagined I’d be standing on the grass in front of the countdown clock with tears streaming down my face.

So, why was I here? Well, I got a special invite to be part of NASA’s Tweetup.

What was that? NASA invited 150 people to the Kennedy Space Center to get a very intimate look at the operation here. They gave us better access than a lot of the press get and I think I met four astronauts so far. I interviewed one on my iPhone, while standing in front of the Shuttle.

One bit of credit: NASA’s Stephanie Schierholz put on the best Tweetup I’ve ever been a part of. Part of that, for sure, is cause she had so much to work with, but she — and her team — just treated everyone so wonderfully and I was able to watch how hard they worked. They randomly picked most of the participants out of 5,000 applicants (I was one of a handful who were actually invited, I took vacation time to go and didn’t charge Rackspace for anything).

If you get a chance to go on a future NASA Tweetup, go. It is an amazing experience and one where you’ll get to do incredible things.

But, back to the end of an era in technology. After the launch, I interviewed NASA’s Chief Scientist, Waleed Abdalati, about the changes that are happening in NASA now. You can listen to that interview, but what you can’t see is we both had tears in our eyes.

A few people this week have tweeted at me and said “what a waste of money.” Well, sorry, I don’t see it that way. As humans we should always be exploring.

But I am excited that we’re moving toward a more private, and lower-cost, method of taking people into space. I doubt I’ll live long enough to be able to fly affordably into space (maybe) but my kids certainly will. I can’t wait to see the Elon Musks of the world take us into that new world.

That said, this is an end of an era. One that started when we were in a cold-war fight with the Russians. Now our astronauts are forced to fly on Russian spaceships. All around me are evidence of the huge costs that our country took on back in the 1960s to get to the moon. But the Shuttle continued that kind of thinking. Now we’ll have to do space travel for a lot less. For a lot of people who work at Kennedy Space Center that means a lot of disruption.

Anyway, here’s some of my photos from an incredible week in my life (there are more on my Flickr account).

Speaking of photos, I interviewed Trey Ratcliff yesterday. He’s one of my favorite photographers and is a world expert on HDR photography.

I got to meet many of my heroes. Here’s Bob Crippen, who piloted the first Shuttle back in 1981 when I was in High School. He’s juxtaposed by the crew of the last Shuttle Crew getting set in Atlantis.

The Tweetup participants got to wave to the astronauts as they headed toward the launch pad. This is something I’ve always seen on TV, but here it was in real life in front of me.

Along one side of the press area are small block buildings where the big networks have their setups. Aimed right into the famous countdown clock. Jim Long, NBC Cameraman, invited me in to get a tour. You know him as NewMediaJim on Twitter (he is on the camera crew in the White House).

This morning this is the view that greeted me at my parking space. I got emotional. So much of my life has been influenced by the vehicles built inside the Vertical Assembly Building (I got to go inside, something very few people from the public get to do). One of my earliest memories is sitting with my family watching the trip to the moon. That was the beginning of our modern era of space.

Today was the end and, yes, that is sad.