“Google doesn’t get social media.” This sentiment’s been bandied about since the dawn of social in the mid-aughts. Google executive chairman of the board Eric Schmidt even admitted recently that his biggest regret as CEO was “not anticipating the rise of social…”

Social media can be very loosely defined as a construct and in the ever-changing operating system of the web and its users, Google is still poised to thrive even as it continues to slowly, but surely ramp up its own platform, Google+. But things begin to get real when some key moves are made to create a more social environment within YouTube. While SoundCloud took cues to become the YouTube equivalent for audio, YouTube can learn from SoundCloud’s superior integration of social subscription discovery and how that improves the user experience.

YouTube is Google’s gateway to the living room and with the $35 Chromecast dongle now available in several countries, YouTube could become the primary source of both information and entertainment for both cable subscribers and cord-cutters alike. Chromecast makes it easier than ever to watch online video on a television. Sure, Roku and Apple TV have been around for years but Chromecast has the best YouTube integration and can be controlled via native mobile apps or a laptop.

What’s missing? A way to navigate and discover YouTube content based on your personal interest and those of your peers. A more social YouTube can empower not only users but also content creators while redefining the way we use Chromecast.

The fix begins with one [seemingly] simple feature: social subscriptions. The best and easiest way to begin watching YouTube via Chromecast is by browsing the new content from the channels one already subscribes to. But what channels to subscribe to? Users should be able to opt in to publicly share (at least some of) their subscriptions so others can discover new channels to subscribe to. Currently, there is no way to generate a dedicated link to one’s own page of YouTube subscriptions, you can only add a module with videos most recently watched to your own channel (see mine). Granted, not everyone wants to share their viewing preferences publicly – or even with friends – but for those accustomed to sharing and discovering new content and channels on platforms such as YouTube, this feature can be a game changer.

Now YouTube is only one “app” that plays over Chromecast — there’s an entire suite of them, including Netflix, HBO Go, Hulu Plus and others that are standard with the set-tops like Roku and Apple TV. But YouTube is free and has the greatest breadth of content, with more and more being made each day by fast-growing multi-channel networks such as Fullscreen, Machinima and Maker Studios, which will be acquired by Disney and will now be taking several hours of its YouTube content to cable TV, according to reports.

People are flocking to YouTube, no longer just to watch a song or search for a news clip but to watch regularly produced and even episodic content.

UPDATE 12/1/2014: You can now visit a users YouTube channel subscription list, example – youtube.com/user/revolute/channels (revolute is my YT username). There is some semblance of Google+ integration as well, when you go to a channel, you will see Google+ avatars at the top right of your contacts who have already subscribed to the channel. (Click here to make your channel subscriptions private.) With just a unique URL to shareable subscription lists that can be posted to Google+ I wouldn’t have to go through the tedious exercise of creating a web 1.0-style list of recommended YouTube channels for friends to subscribe to (as I recently did — copy/pasted below) and ideally the discoverer wouldn’t need to go through so many clicks to subscribe. Ideally, YouTube could create a profile tab similar to this one on Soundcloud (the YouTube equivalent for audio), which displays the accounts I’m following…

Below: A shortlist of some of the YouTube channels I’ve subscribed to over the years. I’d love recommendations of new channels to check out – there’s so much good stuff out there! Please leave your recos in the comments section.

Right-click (or command-click [Mac] ctrl-click [PC) on the links to open channels in new tabs then click “Subscribe.”

UPDATE: Watch video of the panel below.

For both businesses and consumers, geolocation apps and services are a dime a dozen these days. But many of these apps and tools serve to benefit both when used consistently and correctly. Much like social media itself, geolocation is a two-way entity.

“Geolocation makes it easier for consumers to get the services they want nearby and for local businesses to reach the consumers in their area,” Eli Portnoy, CEO of Culver City-based mobile marketing startup Thinknear told me matter-of-factly.

As consumers become increasingly engaged with smartphones and other mobile devices, geolocation will have a growing influence on commerce. For most businesses and services, location — and circumstance — means everything. More than one-third of U.S. adults (35 percent) are smartphone users according to a July 2011 Pew Internet report. Consumers are always on the hunt for quality goods and services at reasonable prices. As consumers grow accustomed to the “smart” aspect of always-connected, GPS-enabled mobile devices, the bargains appear at their fingertips and it only becomes a matter of convenience. As consumers discover the power of smartphones beyond texts, emails and phone calls, shopping habits change.

In the same Pew survey, 25 percent of smartphone owners indicated a preference for using the internet on their phone rather than their computer. This is likely not just a matter of convenience, it’s based on better circumstantial results. The top search results for “yogurt” on a home or office computer likely yield the Wikipedia entry, and links to the Dannon and Yoplait websites. But the same search from a smartphone directs the user to the nearest fro-yo shop. Geolocation is a win-win: consumers can find what they want and need at their fingertips while businesses can acquire new regulars by dangling their goods and services right in front of the smartphone user around the corner.

Geoloco & Business:

Do you see a map and a location listing for your business when you search Google? If not, you can list all physical locations on Google for free: www.google.com/placesforbusiness.

Gowalla, Foursquare, YP, Yelp…. Help!?! Forget about your business for a minute and try out each of these services via their mobile apps as a consumer. There are many tools, including these, which make it easier for consumers to get what they want. Search for your business on these applications? Is it there? Is the listing accurate? Not everything in the world is automated (yet) and so it’s never a surprise when new stores replace old ones but the old listing remains.

Your business (if it relies on a physical location) may only have one physical location but by making sure it’s populated and using any and all geolocation services at its disposal, you are doing the best you can to bring your offering to potential consumers on their terms. Foursquare may have more users than Gowalla but your next customer might discover you through Gowalla. Either way, these serendipitous, location-based discoveries often lead users to return and more importantly to share their experience with others via social media and word of mouth.

I was honored to be a panelist at this month’s Social Media Club Los Angeles event on geolocation, a topic I’ve been obsessed with for quite some time (it’s the subject of my Master’s Thesis). I wrote this post in advance of the July 26 SMCLA event.

One of my favorite Google features got a facelift and a major upgrade this week. Google Web Fonts makes it easy to stretch your typographic design far beyond the limitations of the basic, old school, web-friendly fonts of the world wide web.

Today the Web Fonts kit graduates from the Google codebase to the big G at google.com/webfonts/v2 and adds a suitcase for you to collect and easily reference your favorite fonts. And there are now 180 font families to choose from.

As I ecstatically posted last year:

Now we’ve got the quickest shortcut to open-licensed, cross-platform fonts since… well it’s only been a few months since a bunch of designers and typographers got together to develop the Web Open Font Format, a soon-to-be-standardized font specification that wraps core web fonts (including Apple’s TrueType and Microsoft’s OpenType) into an encoded, embeddable file. Google also partnered with TypeKit to offer the Web Font Loader, offering more flexibility.

That’s not all Google updated today — the new homepage top nav bar gives it a slick Android 3.0 look and feel. On top of that — the announcement of Google+, currently in closed beta.

How to use Google Web Fonts in your WordPress blog:

Google took us further into the digital media future with some compelling announcements at the fourth annual Google I/O developers conference in San Francisco this week. Recent Google I/O keynotes seem silly in retrospect — both Google Wave and Buzz were epic busts. But this year Google narrowed its focuses to it’s strengths, namely the Android mobile operating system and the Chrome browser and operating system. The gist was this: Use Google’s web-based tools and applications, combine with seemingly infinite storage space in the cloud, and bulky hard drives and desktop PC’s will become mere artifacts of our technological evolution. A Google account combined with a device running Android or Chrome OS will be all you need to do [almost] anything.

The day one keynote (video) included the expected launch of Google’s cloud-based music locker. Google Music Beta, currently invite only, was launched without proper licensing from labels, publishers, and artists. In skirting questions regarding working with labels, Google consistently claimed it had big plans but couldn’t comment on the ongoing negotiations. The beta is a bit half-baked from a user perspective, essentially one must download a Music Manager application to upload mp3s from a computer to a cloud-based server, which then can be played via the web-based player at music.google.com or via the Google Music Android application. Google currently doesn’t offer any MP3s for purchase or download, however, a sampling of tracks from various genres are made available for new users to add to their collections and stream from the cloud. Amazon, which does have a web- and mobile-based mp3 downloads store, launched a cloud-streaming application earlier this year. Apple is rumored to have a cloud-streaming app in the works.

Google also expanded its Android Marketplace to include Books and Movies. Movies can be rented for streaming on the web and on some Android tablets (it was announced that it will soon be available on Google TVs as part of an upcoming full Android Marketplace integration). Movies can be rented via market.android.com/movies from $1.99 – $3.99. Google beat Netflix by about a day with this announcement, as Netflix began rolling out its streaming video service for Android devices on Thursday.

The opening-night afterparty was dubbed Infinite Playground and, as you can see in this video, included awesome inventions such as the Bicycle-Powered Merry-Go-Round in addition to the self-driving Google car and various robots. All enjoyed to a live soundtrack performed by Jane’s Addiction, DJs Mark Farina and Miguel Migs (watch video of all 3 sets).

The highlight of the Day Two keynote (video) was the launch announcement of the Google Chromebook. In June the Chromebook — a netbook with cloud-based applications built specifically for the enterprise and education — will hit the streets, with Samsung and Acer as partners. The Chromebooks will be available to businesses for $28 per user per month and to educational institutes for $20 per user per month.

The Chromebooks, with 11.6-inch (Acer) or 12.1-inch HD displays (Samsung), will be available to consumers from $349 for the Acer to $429 (WiFi only) and $499 (3G) for the Samsung.

Google I/O has become wildly popular thanks in great part to valuable giveaways in previous years (the Nexus One in 2010 and the Android G2 phone in 2009) and this year topped all in that department. Google I/O 2011 sold out in under an hour (early bird registration was $450 for the two-day event). All 5,000 attendees this year were given the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Android tablet a month before it’s available in stores. (Disclaimer: I] shamelessly accepted this gift).

Both Android and Chrome are built on Open Source platforms which provides both developers and users more flexibility and control in customizing or optimizing devices using the operating systems. The I/O conference is not only a showcase for developers who have found ingenious ways to create applications, robots, cars, etc, that rely on Google tools in some form or fashion.

Originally posted at LAist on May 13, 2011

Chrome 11 benchmarks at 10 times the speed of previous versions and Google is ready to pronounce the death of the PC, as we know it. On June the Chromebook — a netbook with cloud-based applications built specifically for the enterprise and education — will hit the streets, with Samsung and Acer as partners. The Chromebooks will be available to businesses for $28 per user per month and to educational institutes for $20 per user per month. The Chromebooks, with 11.6-inch (Acer) or 12.1-inch HD displays (Samsung), will be available to consumers from $349 for the Acer to $429 (WiFi only) and $499 (3G) for the Samsung.

Also coming soon (live as of May 12) — the team that produced Arcade Fire’s The Wilderness Downtown interactive video will launch and even more interactive music video with integrated UGC built on top of the Danger Mouse with Daniele Luppi release titled Rome + Jack White (dropping May 17th, stream via NPR)

More cool GPL-based wizardry at chromeexperiments.com.

More on the Google Chromebook at google.com/chromebook.

[See image gallery at andysternberg.com]
Click here to view Google I/O photo gallery on flickr.

“Welcome to Googlepalooza,” joked Perry Farrell, constantly making fun of the mostly male and very geeky crowd. “I don’t know what we got paid here – we did it just because, right?”

In other news from the opening keynote: To date there have been:
* 100M Android activations
* 400,000 daily activations on 215 carriers
* 200,000 available apps on Market

It took:
* 2 years to 1 billion app installs
* 5 more months to 2 billion
* now 4.5 billion app installs from Android Market

Honeycomb 3.1 coming soon to all devices
USB output
Ice Cream Sandwich – new Android OS – 2.4 – coming soon

…and all 5,000 attendees at Google I/O are receiving the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet (a special-edition model, a month before it hits stores)!

[See image gallery at andysternberg.com]
Click on thumbnails to view full image

The summit trail to the peak of Camelback Mountain is deceiving — it’s only 1.2 miles from the parking lot to the top. But a steady elevation gain (1,300 feet total) on a trail of boulders and loose gravel makes a rather strenuous adventure. It took a little over an hour to summit and a little more than half that to get back down. But my quads still feel as though they’ve both been charlie horsed after absorbing the shock of the descent.

Awesome hike, tracked here with MyTracks, an open source Android app led by a team at Google.

Total Distance: 4.54 km (2.8 mi)
Total Time: 2:12:13
Moving Time: 1:02:21
Average Speed: 2.06 km/h (1.3 mi/h)
Average Moving Speed: 4.37 km/h (2.7 mi/h)
Max Speed: 12.73 km/h (7.9 mi/h)
Min Elevation: 398 m (1304 ft)
Max Elevation: 794 m (2607 ft)
Elevation Gain: 426 m (1398 ft)
Recorded: Sun Mar 27 15:37:22 PDT 2011

[See image gallery at andysternberg.com]

“$15 for $25 worth of microloan credit to help global entrepreneurs on Kiva.org.”

My first thought upon seeing this was: who pays the other $10? The [not-so] small print below today’s Groupon says that it’s paid for by Groupon (and sponsors). Up to $500,000 of the $800 million to $2 billion in revenues the Chicago-based startup will reportedly take in this year.

That’s a hefty write-off donation for most, and possibly a perk for some Groupon sponsors, and a nice, lucky penny pitched into the pond by a company that allegedly turned down a $6 billion or so buyout offer from Google earlier this month.

Billions in revenue. Huge numbers. It’s important to note how individuals and corporations choose to spend their philanthropic capital and I really like the way Groupon does it here: Empowering regular people to give by subsidizing our donations. I’m sure Groupon wishes it could boast about the kind of repeat transactions that a Kiva.org — where the average user has made 6.5 loans — and what better way to grow it’s community during the holiday giving season by encouraging the habit of giving (or lending) while otherwise luring subscribers to habitually consume on first site of bargain.

Last month, a Kiva.org Groupon raised lead to $100,000 in microloans and Oprah Winfrey promoted Kiva to her audience (for her part, Winfrey was the most charitable celebrity of 2009 with $40 million in donations to various charities, according to The Giving Back Fund. Today’s Kiva Groupon was trumped by a DonorsChoose coupon, which was 60 percent subsidized by the Pershing Square Foundation ($10 for $25). Last May, Groupon and Pershing Square teamed up with DonorsChoose to raise $1 million in funds for public school classrooms in need.

Last week, 17 billionaires, including Steve Case, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren Buffet, Michael Bloomberg and Carl Icahn, announced their intention to give the majority of their wealth to charity — the Giving Pledge.

In an age where it’s so easy to set examples — for better and worse — it’s comforting to see more and more bold acts of goodwill.

I’m a repeat Kiva lender. Are you?

This is a question that commonly comes up among friends and peers engaged in the business of content and discovery. And the answer changes as the web changes.

The algorithms, languages, and technology that enable users to curate an online experience that feels genuinely and uniquely personalized is fascinating. To me, it’s what the web is all about. I’ve long been hooked on RSS and its ability to deliver content of all kinds, from audio/video podcasts to earthquake alerts, almost immediately as published.

The concept of RSS feeds and readers ultimately sum up my experience as a web consumer and user from my early days of BBSing, surfing threads and trading music on The WELL to using various clients and GUIs to keep up with a number of Usenet feeds, keeping my finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist as a publisher, to monitoring various Google alerts, search terms, and Wikipedia edits as a communications manager and consultant.

After fiddling with multiple RSS readers in the early-to-mid 2000s, including NewsGator and FeedDemon (and others I can’t recall), I got hooked on the RSS Reader incorporated in an early version of Mozilla’s Thunderbird… and later fiddled with it in Outlook Express. Had my fun with NetNewsWire and fell in love until it started charging me at which point Google Reader came along and stole my heart.

For the past couple years I embedded my RSS feeds in a Grazr reader on my “newsfeed” page for backup. Prior to that I used a wordpress plugin called Optimal (for OPML) which one day just failed (click here to see how it appeared on this blog a couple years ago). It was fun to show people how I categorized various feeds as a way of teaching the many ways to use RSS as both a consumer and producer of content. But now Grazr is gone and even Dave Winer can’t think of an alternative though it looks like he might be close to an updated Instant Outliner. (if you know of one, by all means let me know). Finally, for event-based and topical feeds I’ve played around with Yahoo! Pipes (check out Glenn Fleishman’s recent post on Y! Pipes best practices)

Google has never updated Reader capabilities to allow for this sort of embedding feature and it’s frustrating but I have been able to create “bundles” from my many feeds (see the here), there is no functionality to read them inline.

In recent years, services such as Facebook and Twitter have significantly changed the way we keep up with each other and our news. But friends don’t let friends quit blogging. And I’ve been disappointed to see an increasing number of dead RSS feeds in my reader – you can move to Tumblr or whatever but don’t forget to publish one last post if you’re unable to redirect! And most importantly know that your Facebook / MySpace / Twitter posts are not necessarily wholly yours and such content’s discoverability and relevancy across the web will vary as terms of service for content inevitably change. So publish far and wide but be sure to home it where you own it.

Let me know what I’m missing in my bundles — I’d love your feedback and input so I can have the latest and greatest resources at my fingertips for staying up to date! To get a better idea of how these bundles function within a reader, click the “preview” button at the bottom of each widget).

photo at top by Ed Yourdon used with Creative Commons license.