Prior to their integration with Google Buzz, individual Google Profiles have not had a high level of visibility, falling fairly low on the social ecosystem ladder when contrasted with more siloed services, including Twitter and Facebook. Yet, as Google looks to further integrate social elements into their platform, it appears that Profiles will play an ever-greater role in how both individuals and companies represent themselves online. Today, Profiles snagged a notable convert, adding Rick Klau, a product manager for Google's Blogger platform, to the team.

Klau, who joined the Blogger team in 2008 following Google's acquisition of FeedBurner the previous year, has largely been the service's public face - playing a visible role in the company's feature roll-outs around Blogger's 10th anniversary, which took place in late 2009, and more recently, tackling the challenge of migrating a large installed base of users off FTP-hosted blogs - which proved to be taxing, even for a company with the resources of Google. Klau served as one of now three Blogger product managers, accompanied by Siobhan Quinn, a 7-year Google veteran, and Chang Kim, based in Seoul, Korea, who joined the team after Google acquired his company, TNC, in September of 2008.


In a conversation I had with Rick this afternoon, day one of his time on the Profiles team, he said the move was the result of a "confluence of need and opportunity". Assuming increased importance for Profiles over time, this role may mean direct impact on a swelling number of Google users, not just those who blog, and appears to be another step in Google's march to becoming a more social company.

"With the Buzz launch, and an increased focus of getting social right, this was a huge opportunity where we weren't doing as much as we could," Rick said.

Rick said that even prior to the Buzz integration with Profiles, the product gained more prominence thanks to Google Profiles results being displayed in core Google search results. This makes the content on your own profile increasingly more important, whether Buzz succeeds or falls flat. And similar to the work on Blogger, he saw an opportunity to let users be more creative in terms of how they were represented, but in a new place.

"How you express yourself online is a lot more than just a blog," Rick said. "We want to give people an option for how they are presented in that context."

To spread more light on the transition, and what this means for Google's properties, both Blogger and Profiles, I interviewed Rick this afternoon using CinchCast. He was gracious enough to participate, and the conversation is embedded below.





You can find all my CinchCast recordings, including this one, at http://www.cinchcast.com/louisgray. Also, Rick has now posted on the news on his blog: New role - Google Profiles

The Friday night surprise of Twitter having acquired Tweetie from Atebits, and adding its creator, Loren Brichter, to the company's swelling mobile team, on the back of Twitter's also announcing their first mobile client for BlackBerry, not only was big news on its own, but it has set off waves in the world of Twitter application developers and users, some of whom are seeing the move as something akin to a betrayal or an anti-competitive move, which puts the owners of the platform in conflict with those expanding it. While I am sympathetic to some of their positions, having seen competitive clients find the world in which they live a lot more difficult, the step is a brilliant one, which is an important stepping stone in terms of moving Twitter forward as a business. For years, as users and coders, we begged for Twitter to graduate from the lean startup mode, with questionable quality and uptime, to one focused on delivering an exceptional product. Now, they are executing, and the next 12 months will undoubtedly be defining in terms of how the company potentially transitions from an cash-burning endeavor to a revenue-generating technology giant.

First and foremost, the most telling bit from Twitter's post on the acquisition of Tweetie came in the first paragraph, when the company explained that people searching Apple's iTunes App store for a Twitter client would not find an official application, but instead a host of them, which was confusing and offputting. While we early adopters have enjoyed the array of Twitter clients, from TweetDeck and Seesmic to Tweetie, Brizzly and many others, it is easy to see how the mainstream audience could be lost before even starting. After all, Facebook and LinkedIn have official applications for the iPhone, from the company themselves, and Twitter didn't - a major hole in their offering. This admission by Twitter to said hole, and solving it on two platforms in one day, is a big move, and one that further cements their brand leadership, instead of sharing that brand with another client or another service.

The acquisition of Tweetie instead of other applications is sharp for more reasons than one. Note that TweetDeck and Seesmic and Brizzly, as well as many other applications serving Twitter, have been drawn to support multiple services in addition to Twitter, most often Facebook. Twitter buying Tweetie, which had remained Twitter-centric, avoids the headaches of peeling away Facebook or Identica or other services' updates, and keeping the application dedicated. Also, despite my personal relationships with many different Twitter client developers, I have always found myself coming back to Tweetie, both on the iPhone and on the Mac. In October, after thinking aloud about Twitter (Web), Tweetie, TweetDeck, Seesmic and Brizzly, I came to the conclusion that Tweetie was closest to the ever-elusive perfect Twitter client. Not only did it offer a top-quality feature set, but it did so with an unmatched interface and innovative integration with practically all leading-edge options, like location, photo integration and lists. So Twitter is not just buying a solution, but they are buying the best one. That Atebits was practically a sole proprietorship, not burdened with millions of dollars of VC funding, as Seesmic and TweetDeck are, made the purchase an even easier move.

If you wrap all that into one statement, Twitter arguably purchased the best client for the best price with the best dedicated feature set, keeping their service at the center of the universe, not competing for attention from other social streams. In one fell swoop, Twitter went from being a zero on the iPhone and Mac client space to the leader, and we can expect iPad comes soon.

But enough about that. People are still throwing up their hands about Twitter's move, saying it makes developers less likely to work on their platform. That platform owners sometimes innovate in ways that go head to head with their own ecosystem is not new. (See: Charles Hudson: Three Reminders About Platform Businesses) Microsoft has made a living from it. Apple does it all the time. And now Twitter is maturing and doing the same. This isn't because they are evil, or hate developers at all. What they need to do is extend their product and extend their brand and start to do a better job of owning the user experience. To date, the Web site has not seen as much growth as the client ecosystem, meaning much of Twitter's onboarding and initial user experience has been owned by third party apps who are not as loyal to the platform, all too happy to offer options to gain data from Facebook and Linkedin, for example.

Much of the discussion in the last week has centered around Twitter developers plugging holes in the company's product. No doubt for the most part that has been true. For example, SocialToo, Jesse Stay's company, where I am an advisor, in early March, enabled phishing protection in all direct messages for all users. (I wrote about it) That was announced on Monday, March 8th, after significant development. But the very next day, on Tuesday, March 9th, Twitter announced that they too were stepping up their anti-phishing attacks in direct messages. The assumption could be that Twitter was cutting Jesse off at the knees, but in reality, they were working to protect their own customers and doing the right thing. Jesse wrote a little about that tonight in a post titled "Twitter, Two Years Later and Nothing Has Changed", and he knows, as I do, that it will take more than plugging holes in Twitter's product to develop a successful business.

While Twitter's move removed a competitive lead from SocialToo in this specific case, it was no cause for alarm or fury, any more than it should be for dedicated Twitter clients who will be building alternatives to Twitter's own products now. If they are looking to attract users, they will need to continue finding ways to offer differentiated user experiences, and innovating where Twitter may be behind. Keep in mind that it was Twitter's users who came up with hashtags, replies and retweets, and clients like TweetDeck who debuted columns and multi-account support. Buying Tweetie doesn't mean that Twitter overnight is going to be innovating at that level.

In December, following a presentation by Ryan Sarver, Twitter's director of platform, at LeWeb, I said that "Twitter's Maturation Continues As They Embrace Developers". While this week's news may not feel like an embrace, it is absolutely sign of maturation. The company is now stopping those holes, and securing the infrastructure. We also have already seen hints of a new revamped Web interface that should take the user experience up another level again. The company continues to hire new people practically every week, almost all of them notable - and bringing with them solid resumes from Valley giants.

This rich pedigree of people and a growing user base that is showing record site activity every month, along with the company's planned @Anywhere platform, pending advertising model, and expansion through business development and word of mouth around the world is setting Twitter up for market leadership approachable by only a small handful of Silicon Valley titans. It's what we all have been asking for them to do as we begged for site stability, greater user discovery, improved tools and reduced latency. There will be some bumps along the way, as the developer community sees churn, and some products eventually are made obsolete. But Twitter can't reduce its own potential in the name of being the friendly nice guy. They need to think about their own business and driving the greatest possible experience for the greatest number of people, in a profitable way. This weekend's moves, and updates we can expect from Chirp this week will push them further along the path.

DISCLOSURE: I am an unpaid advisor to SocialToo. I hold a small equity stake in the company.

Nearly a year after the company's shift away from aggregation into a full-fledged social mining tool and personal details engine, Spokeo has seen traffic and awareness dramatically spike in the last 30 days, following the release of Spokeo 4.0, which expanded the company's digital identities search to include name search, phone search, e-mail search and friends search. As people find their own listings in Spokeo, and are routinely surprised to learn how much data the site has on them - some of which they may not have known was public - word is spreading, leaving the small team "dazed" and "overwhelmed" at the traffic spike, which has made the site among the top 1,000 visited by U.S. Internet surfers, and has frequently seen the term "spokeo" among the top 100 search terms in Google in the last few weeks.

Spokeo, an eight-person strong team based in Pasadena, California, first gained my attention in the fall of 2007 as one of the very first to aggregate data from multiple social networks, with RSS feeds to boot, all in one place. But in the face of strong competition, as well as a general distaste with the world of Web 2.0, the company switched gears a year later, leading to the service they have become now, an occasionally controversial database with tons of personal data - much of it right, and some of it wrong.


In March, Spokeo quietly introduced version 4.0. Only two weeks later, as word of the new service spread virally, the company had to reiterate their promise to keep information private, after what had to be an assault from skeptical Web visitors. They explained how they were aggregating public information, and decried the often-used but not often described approach many have taken, called "privacy by obscurity".


In a blog post on March 18th, they said:

"Many people believe in a concept called "privacy by obscurity", which argues that public information is private if you don’t know how to find it. This concept is flawed, however, because the fact you, yourself don’t know how to find such information does not mean that other people are equally clueless. What Spokeo does is something that many marketing and investigative firms have done for years and years, so this information has been available for quite some time, just without your knowledge!"

In the post, they committed to becoming "the best people search engine ever", and to continue making adjustments based on user feedback.

In my own tests of Spokeo, it absolutely proves solid in terms of discovering people, relationships, online profiles, and even locations, phone numbers and e-mails, if available. It correctly found my wife's maiden name, her place of residence and her brother and mother. It also correctly stated her age and zodiac sign. For me, Spokeo listed an old address, including apartment number, where I lived a decade ago, but otherwise, gained the data from Facebook and other sites to complete a fairly accurate profile. It also works extremely well for tracking down ex-girlfriends' current residences, marital status, and even their families. I'll just ask you to trust me, instead of providing you links on those...

So if you were in the people discovery business officially, or the stalking business informally, Spokeo absolutely has value. While the service had been kicking around for a year in its newest focus, it took version 4.0 to bring a tipping point. Seeing the spike in traffic for search terms related to Spokeo in my own blog traffic, and my younger sister bringing up the service on Facebook, I reached out to co-founder Harrison Tang to get an update. He confirmed tremendous growth and infrastructure expansion to take on the new load.

"I am not sure if our business is booming, but our traffic has definitely shot up in the past month," Harrison wrote me in an e-mail. "It's a pretty crazy experience, especially for a young 8-people team. We are overwhelmed by the response, and honestly, for the first 10 days after this traffic surge happened, we were just sitting there and looked dazed. We've now gathered ourselves, and we are trying our best to tackle each problem one-by-one."


Regardless of what traffic stats engine you prefer, the data shows Spokeo jumping up and to the right. Alexa showed Spokeo outside the top 20,000 Web sites in mid-February, spiking to 746th overall in the United States as of yesterday. Meanwhile, even before the spike, Compete.com showed Spokeo at more than 600,000 unique visitors in February, up from about 100,000 the year before - and Quantcast data shows about 1.2 million visitors over the same period, tripling from January's numbers.


The spikes have made the site unresponsive at times (See: Traffic Surge and Spokeo - the 60th Most Popular Search on Google from the Spokeo blog), and the company reported being inundated with e-mails and phone calls about the service late last month. They seem to be fending off all the inquiries from people excited and alarmed about just how much data is available online. (See also: The Truths vs. Myths about Spokeo)

"We (are) taking our time to add in new features to improve the site usability," Harrison said. "The first week was uneventful, and then all of the sudden, our traffic shot up to today's level. The only reason why we couldn't get more traffic is because we limit the number of connections to our servers to make sure they don't crash."

Having first reached the public eye in 2006, Spokeo is a little long in the tooth in terms of how some Web technologies are viewed. But they have shown the ability to adapt their business model to walk away from failure and find something that clearly has gotten incredible attention. They may not be the Valley darling that you see written about with regularity, but they look like they are on the verge of crossing the chasm. They even have a business model. Advanced searches and data discovery are available for monthly or annual fees. The 12-month account I purchased last June is still in effect, so I am looking into you guys.

What do you think I will find? Check it out at http://www.spokeo.com.

As Google Buzz users discover their own approach to using the service, and being selective as to which programs they pull into the site, many have been dissatisfied with the way Buzz has handled Twitter. Unlike other aggregation services, including Cliqset and FriendFeed, Buzz's imported tweets are not imported in real-time, and can seem very disjointed - made worse by their being imported in clumps. Today, one Googler explained they were going to solve the clumping issue in what was termed a public experiment, making things "less awful" in the interim before more capabilities are released, including filtering of imports by source - a popular option seen on sites like FriendFeed and Facebook.

Why Buzz does not pull in tweets in real time is extremely curious, given Google's much-publicized relationship with Twitter, their focus of late on recency in search, and of course, Buzz's centering around standards, such as PubSubHubbub, a big player in the real-time world. That Twitter does not support PubSubHubbub is obviously one contributor, but other services have managed to find a way to get Twitter updates with practically zero delay, through leveraging Twitter's APIs. The result is a truly unsatisfactory experience, contributing to many people removing Twitter as a service feeding Buzz.

The way Buzz polls Twitter for updates now can mean older updates get pulled in as new along with more recent items. To date all "new" updates were added concurrently, but now they will be redistributed using the timestamp of the tweet from Twitter, in effect shuffling those updates throughout the network. This will make Buzz's mysterious "unread" counts even less relevant, and should be seen as a band-aid.



Josh Wills, an engineer on the Buzz team, explained:

"Personally, I really like Twitter, and I want better integration between Twitter and Buzz. My hope is that this is a temporary change until we work out a way to play nicely together that is beneficial to everyone."

Josh went on to say that the changes were intended to "make things less awful" while things get "worked out" to make the tweets appear in real-time. Whether that's a business development decision or an engineering one, to make things "play nicely together" was not explained, but he added that he believed "real-time twitter updates don't make sense w/o the highly-anticipated source filtering."

The ability to hide sources, such as Twitter, from one's feed in Buzz will be as important as it has become to hide services in FriendFeed, or to stop seeing Farmville updates in Facebook, should you not be interested. While Buzz has been fairly close-lipped in terms of talking about future features, Josh's comment referring to the filtering shows it's on their radar, and no doubt coming, rather than being speculated about endlessly by hopeful users.

Older Tweets that do enter Buzz can of course be made more prominent if they gain conversation, and therefore, get bumped to the top of your feed - but from what I've seen, most engagement comes on native items on the network.