At issue are the data plans that never amounted to much for wireless companies until smartphones and specifically the iPhone came on strong. All of a sudden, data networks are being pushed harder than anyone ever expected. AT&T was particularly caught off guard by this and their iPhone service suffered badly.

Now, a secondary problem has arisen in that many people have several data intensive devices on their wireless accounts. A smart phone for the husband, one for the wife and a tablet. Each of these devices requires it’s own $25-30 a month data plan. This is pretty cumbersome and expensive. I have been a proponent of shared data plans for a long time now. In the same way you share phone minuets you will soon share a pool of data.

The industry, which always seems to work together on these things, thus eliminating the competition factor has decided to use the shared data pool to change the game completely. Instead of the usual unlimited data for your $30 a month, you will now have to buy into a tired system of data. The larger the data pool you want, the more expensive it will be. I totally get this model and understand it from a business perspective but here is my worry. When data was unlimited, customers did not have to worry or think about anything. They could download and run all types of applications including streaming music and video services. It’s part of what made the smartphone take off so fast. Now, if customers have to be counting bits, it’s going to put a big freeze on certain apps and innovation that will take up too much data. Mobile, Internet connected devices are only as good as the data connection they have. Capped bandwidth could have a drastically negative effect on the adoption and use of connected devices. It’s like we’re going backward. Customers are now getting less bandwidth for more money.

As far as marketing goes, these location aware connected devices hold the greatest promise for a next generation of personalized, localized marketing. Marketers should want nothing more than the most number of people possible walking around and using a wide variety of connected devices. Wireless service is already ridiculously expensive (have you looked at your bill lately?). Here’s hoping the wireless industry doesn’t commit hari-kari like the music industry did.

For young people nothing is hotter than video these days so this site makes so much sense for Disney. It’s a great example of a large brand using elements of the social net to great effect. The only thing I see missing are links to purchase the source content. The Disney Video site is a place I can see kids spending a lot of time on which keeps them connected and engaged with the brand.

Google, running a little late to the party on this one, released their version of a social network late last year. Google+ adoption, if you believe Google’s number has been fairly strong, with 170 million users already. Of course that pales in comparison to Facebook at 900 million users.

After a somewhat slow start, Google has decided to put a considerable effort behind Google+. Google looks at Google+ as a backbone of it’s entire company and has been moving to Google Plus-ify everything it can. You will find Google+ wrapped into more and more Google services as we move along.

So with Google banking so much on Google+, this new study should be very troubling. 30% of users who make a pubic post never make a second one. You would think with Google being Google and with a majority of the world using it to search for information daily, it would have a huge leg up on moving users into its social network. I’m sure that’s what they thought to, but while you can lead a horse to water, you can’t make it drink. 170 million users in the short time of Google+ existence is impressive, but users are just not taking to the service. There is nothing inherently wrong with Google+, it’s quite nice technically, but I think we are starting to reach social network fatigue. With Twitter and Facebook and YouTube already so dominant, how much time and energy do people have for yet another social network. The answer, I believe, is little.

So the key question we always want to address here is what does this mean for you and your business? Do you need to put time and attention into Google+ for your business or can you safely ignore it? Unfortunately, this is not as easy question. If it were anything but Google, I would say ignore it for now, but since it is Google, you cannot simply turn a blind eye. Google+  profiles and activity is starting to show up in Google search and that alone is powerful enough for me to say, you should have at least some presence on Google+. Search, as we know is the critical component and anything attached to that is automatically important.

Google+ supports brand/company pages with multiple administrator support and your company should have a Google+ page. Unfortunately, Google+ does not support automatic posting via other applications, so everything you do on Google+ is a manual process. I would try to post at least some content but I wouldn’t put anything but the most limited time into it at this point. Social media is so fluid, however, Connected World Media will be keeping a close eye on things in case conditions shift as they can in a moments notice.

This week Google launched Hangouts On Air for all of it’s Google+ users. Hangouts are online video chats for the Google+ social network. Until now, Hangouts were limited to 10 participants and video chats were not recorded for later viewing. Hangouts On Air provides a true live broadcasting capability with virtually unlimited viewers and in addition, Hangouts are recorded and posted to YouTube for viewing later. This puts Hangouts on par with other broadcasting systems like Ustream and Justin.tv. Of course Ustream.tv has more features, a more mature platform and user base, but whenever a giant fish jumps into a small pond, it’s going to create big splash. Another big advantage for Google, Hangouts On Air are already connected to your growing social network on Google, whereas Ustream.tv does not have nearly the social network features.

What all this means for your business is video continues to grow in new and different ways. It’s a force you will not be able to avoid soon. What kind of video content could your business provide on these platforms?

I used to work for the hard disk manufacturer Quantum Corp many years ago. The folks at Quantum were always obsessed with the mechanics of the drive; the rotation speed, data density per platter and error rate. These are all wonderful things to have in a quality disk drive and when you are selling primarily to computer makers like Dell and Apple I suppose it makes good marketing sense. I always wanted Quantum to do a consumer campaign that centered around what I knew what was truly important, the data that lived on those drives. Much like the Intel inside campaign, this would be an effort to get consumers to specify Quantum for their hard drive. Consumers buy based on emotion and what they are emotionally connected to is their data.

I also love that this ad does not talk about features and specs, but focuses on the utility of Google+ and the automatic upload feature. This is a very Apple thing to do by the way. Look carefully at any Apple and you will see a greater emphasis on the utility than specs and features. This is one of the great secrets of Apple’s marketing, they understand people care a lot more about what a particular product can do for them than they do about specs. Other companies can try to compete on specs, but they never tell or show you how their product can change your life.

The party is about to end, however, as Google will be changing their algorithm to compensate for “over optimized sites”. This penalty for overly SEO’ed sites will level the playing field, giving sites with great content a better shot at ranking above sites with not as good content but great SEO.

It’s a constant fight between Google and those that seek to artificially manipulate results. Google’s job is to help customers find what the are looking for in the most pure sense possible. It’s always been about the content and this new change is going to make that even more true than ever. Rather than paying thousands of dollars a month for SEO wizardry, companies will be forced to focus on the content. Real, honest, authentic content. It’s about time.

Connected World Media has always been more interested in content and the strategy that surrounds that content than SEO tricks. Please give us a call at 503-208-6426 if you would like help getting your content strategy in order. In the meantime I would recommend  reading Content Rules by C.C. Chapman and Ann Handley. This is one of the few new marketing books that focus on content and content strategy exclusively.

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Just recently, Google has done something I think is pretty extraordinary. They have posted an 8 minuet video of an engineering meeting on Google search. Completely unedited and unscripted. It’s not particularly thrilling viewing as it’s filled with technical talk about how the spelling corrections work in Google search, but it’s a fascinating look inside one of the world more important companies. It helps people realize there are actual people behind the giant company, people who care about the product they are producing.

So much of what we see from large corporations are heavily produced and edited video and productions. The message crafted. Can you imagine Apple doing much a thing as this? Not in a million years. People like behind the scenes stuff anyway. I wish more companies would have the courage to do things like this. It is moving much closer to what I call talking in a human voice. Being this way and realting better to your customers and prospects is one of the largest strategic advantages smaller companies have against their larger rivals who often are not capable of doing it. Bravo to Goggle on this move.