July 27th, 2011
I’m not sure if this was the initial intention of Google when they launched their Google+ service, but by having all their key engineers involved and end-user facing, they managed to get to a point where they take feedback from the users and implement it as they see fit. Beside the feedback tool in the bottom right-hand corner of the site, their engineers also monitor key people’s updates and subsequent comments and give immediate feedback where they can. Google+ is now essentially a crowd-sourced social network and considering the alternative, this makes a lot of sense.
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June 29th, 2011
The short answer is yes, I think Google+ has the potential to steal a lot of Facebook’s dedicated users, provided it gets adopted on a massive scale.
In case you’re not aware, Google announced the Google+ project earlier today and after looking at the promotional videos and accompanying blog post I must say that I think it’s a giant leap forward for Google. This can fundamentally change the way we use the internet. Think Facebook, but without the “walled garden” approach, that’s been my biggest problem with Facebook since day one.
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May 22nd, 2011
So let’s face it, Facebook and Twitter killed your social life, you log on and within 3 minutes you know exactly what everyone, from old school friends to you co-workers, are up to at that very moment. The problem is that you don’t really have connection with any of these people anymore. You sit in front of your computer, they press “Like” from their cell phone and both of you think you’ve just made a connection.
Social networks like Facebook and Twitter killed the monster by feeding it too much. We are human beings and we actually need to have some real human interaction every once in a while. This is where group buying comes into the picture.
One of the few ways you can guarantee that someone is going to do something is by making him or her pay for what they’re about to do or attend. And if the price of that item or service is significantly cheaper than what it would normally cost, then you will have yourself a deal.
I was 1st introduced to group buying when I was approached by a group of friends to attend a beer tasting event. The whole event came about as a result of a very cheap offer on a group buying site and to make the offer valid, there had to be a certain number of purchases. So naturally all the people in the circle of friends were involved.
And I don’t know about you, but I will much rather have some beer with a group of friends instead of writing on someone’s “wall” on a social network. We will probably still need Facebook or some other service for tagging each other in compromising positions, but with group buying the core of this social encounter moved away from online and moved into offline or like we used to call it, into the real world.
Here are a few of South Africa’s group buying websites:
(Please let me know if you know of any more)
