Tighter integration between Google+ and Google Drive

The Google Drive Android app was updated earlier this week in order to make it use the cards interface, the same Google+ and many other Google products are starting to use. So I thought that there is no reason to stop there, and that it would be better to integrate it more tightly into Google+.

First off, there's no need for Google's classic black bar. Drive can be put into the new ribbon, just like Google Photos was:

Moreover, why use the cards UI only in the Android app? The web interface would also benefit from it. Here's how it would look:

But leaving the interface aside, there are other ways to integrate Drive with Plus and other Google Services. Drive's document chat was updated last month but, contrary to expectations, it doesn't use Hangouts. It would be cool to create a Hangouts conversation with other viewers and make use of all the advantages Hangouts offers:

A document's comments should be no different from the Google+ commenting system: every time you comment a document you should be given the option to share your comment with the other viewers in the Google+ stream, where they can reply.

You should also be able to harness the power of Google+ to share documents with people in your circles, or even with whole circles or the general public. Using Google+ should enable you to specify who can do what with your document, in a far easier way than you can do it now:

Last but not least, this kind of integration should allow you to share not only photos or videos, but any kind of document from Hangouts or the Google+ stream. Just start writing a post and choose to add a file, then upload one from your computer or choose one from the ones already stored on your Drive.

Would you like to see these changes? Please leave a comment and, if you want, send them as feedback to Google to let them know.

Nested replies with unlimited levels that (still) keep the conversation simple.

Every time I hear someone ask for nested replies on Google+, I'm torn. On one hand I don't really like how they branch the conversation, making it harder to follow. On the other, it is true that they are useful when the conversation really needs to be branched because a particular comment brings something new to the table.

It turns out there's a way to have the best of both worlds, and the key is in Google+ Comments. You have probably noticed that blog comments have two levels: the first level ones are actually Google+ posts with a link to the blog post, and the second level ones are actually Google+ comments.

Here's an article in Blogger's official blog. It has a level 1 comment with a couple nested comments inside it.

But when we visit Google+ we discover it's just a Google+ post with the link, and a couple comments inside. The point here is that a post and a comment can be basically the same thing. But if we look at them closely we se that comments are second-class citizens in Google+:

Now, what if you could click the second link to be taken to +Phil Oakley's comment? What if clicking it took you here?

The basic idea is that a comment is really a post pointing to another post and therefore it can be plus oned, shared and yes, replied to. You can see in the mockup how I'm writing a reply to Phil's comment, thus branching the conversation. My reply would also be a post and could in turn be replied to, and the conversation on +Anuj Ahooja's original post would remain simple because my reply, being off-topic and only related to Phil's comment, would not appear there.

The idea is, let's suppose I read Anuj's post and its comments, and I have something to say. If I feel that it's related to what Anuj said I can just use the "Add a comment" box and be done with it. But if it only relates to what Phil said I can open his post and write my comment there, or use a "Go off-topic" button:

Either I would keep Anuj's simple and free of unrelated comments while giving me the possibility to expand on Phil's idea and discuss our thoughts:

And, of course, this would allow anyone to go off-topic on my comment without bothering Phil's commenters.

Would you like to have something like this? Do you see any problems with it? Don't forget to leave a comment!

Improving Google+ Comments

You probably know that +Google announced Google+ Comments yesterday. Basically you can now read a blog post, write a comment using your Google+ profile and optionally share that comment to Google+, for your followers to read and reply.

The benefits for readers are important: they can now easily let not only their followers read their opinion, but also anyone interested in the topic who might be reading the blog post. It also makes it easier for them to keep track of potential replies, since these will trigger a Google+ notification. It's good for authors too, because they can see everything everyone is saying about their post (or at least everyone on G+, that is).

The problems

Google+ Comments do have a few hiccups. if you uncheck "Share on Google+" you won't push the conversation to your followers, but you won't get any notifications in case someone replies. You can see and reply to public comments (or private comments that you're allowed to see), but comments directed to a community work differently: you can see them but you can't reply to them, and there's no explanation why. And most importantly: they are broken because of the way sharing (and resharing) works on Google+.

See Alexander's comment? Neither do I. What happened here is that Alexander opened Google+ and pasted the link for his followers without saying a word about it. This is useful as a Google+ post (after all, his followers might be interested in seeing Google's announcement) but not as a comment in the blog post. It's empty, it doesn't add anything to the conversation and there's no reason why people not following Alexander would want to see it or reply to it. It just has no place as a comment.

See Nuno's Comment? No, of course you don't. That's because Nuno opened Google+, read +John Blossom's post about it and reshared it. Again, this is useful for Nuno's followers because John's comment is interesting and they probably want to read it. But it has no place as a comment in the blog post, and do you know why?

That's right: because John's comment is already there for every one to see and reply to. Nuno's reshare adds nothing, and simply makes John's comment show up twice instead of just once. And why would you want to see again a comment you just read?

Now imagine what happens with comments from popular plussers such as +Yonatan Zunger or +Vic Gundotra. Yonatan's comment, for example, has been reshared as much as 216 times. That means that his own Google post shows up repeated more than two hundred times as a comment on his own blog post. Why on Earth would you want to see the same comment repeated that many times?

Even worse: many of those reshares are empty and offer absolutely no value: they are noise and only make it difficult to find and reply to the original comment. Many people will just see one of those empty reshares and reply to them, branching the conversation and possibly missing everything everyone had said about it.

The obvious solution: don't show empty reshares as comments. Simply use them to post the original comment to the top.

Whole posts on our streams

Now isn't this funny? I follow +Yonatan Zunger, +Google and +Blogger on Google+. Yonatan wrote that blog post for both Google and Blogger, but in order for his followers to get it on their streams he had to manually write a Google+ post with the link.

In the blog, that Google+ post looks as if Yonatan had replied to his own blog post, which makes no sense and is much worse when that reply appears, as we have seen, repeated hundreds of times. I think there's a good solution for that problem, but I deal with those in another post.

Do you agree with this? Do you see things differently? Don't forget to comment and share your opinion.

Full posts on our streams

If you are a webmaster, +Google lets you create a Google+ page and connect it to your webpage. It also lets you create a Currents edition linked to your feeds. One is useful if you want your followers to get your Google+ posts, the other if you want them to get new content from your webpage. But there is no way for them to get both.

In fact, many webpages use their Google+ page primarily in order to promote new content. See this post from +Cracked.com:

However, these posts are often semi-automatic (there is an actual person writing them but they use the same introduction in all social networks) and not very attractive. And since their comments sections are separate from the web, they often don't have much interaction.

Now, imagine if Cracked could grab their feed RSS and create automated posts from it. Imagine if every new post on cracked.com could get to your stream automatically. Something like this:

Now that's much more eye-grabbing, and more importantly: it didn't take any effort from Cracked's crew because it was pulled from its RSS. The user can add their page to her circles and have all their content delivered to her stream, as if it were an improved Google Reader.

Cracked obviously wants to attract traffic to their website, because ads. But many bloggers just want to get their content to as many people as possible, and this would be the way to do it. For example: yesterday +Yonatan Zunger posted on +Google's and +Blogger's blogs about their new Commenting system. But in order for his followers to get the update he had to create a Google+ post about his blog post about it, which Google and Blogger quickly proceeded to reshare so that their own followers would also notice.

This is not how sharing to Google+ should work. If Yonatan wrote the post and it appeared on Google's blog, both Yonatan's and Google's followers should get the article on their streams automatically. Something like this:

Let's recap: because I follow Yonatan on Google+ and he told Google that he wrote that blog post, I get it in full in my stream as if (again) Google+ were some kind of vitaminated Google Reader, or some kind of web-based Google Currents, if you will.

If I don't follow Yonatan, but I follow Google, I will get it all the same because it was published in Google's blog.

And thanks to the new Google+ Comments it doesn't matter if I comment the post from Yonatan's profile, from Google's page or from the blog. The conversation is always the same, so I can comment right from my stream...

...and see my reply appear on the blog.

But what about all the SPAM?

Some pages do post a lot of content, and could potentially flood your stream. But Google Currents and Google+ Communities give us the answers.

If you have ever created a Currents edition, you know that it lets you grab contents from several different feeds. Each of them because a section, and users can then subscribe to the sections they like and unsubscribe from the ones they don't. Shame that Currents doesn't have a web version, isn't it?

Well, why not use Google+ as a web version of Currents? In this mockup we can see that +Google Plus Daily has set up four different sections; the visitor has checked two of them but unchecked the other two, meaning that she will only get blog posts from the topics that interest her.

Would you like to see something like this? Do you have a different idea? Please leave your comments!