It’s clearly too early to tell.  But so far my Google feed is already becoming similar to my Facebook feed.  A very small number of users are taking up about 80% of the posts in my feed.  These, unfortunately, are people who supply more information than my SMS reader does, and that’s not a compliment.

I think for Google to succeed, they need to put circle filtering in place.  They have that to some degree with “incoming” but what I’d like is to be able to put these voracious posters in one circle, probably labeled “social spammers” and then only view their content when I want.  This would leave my primary feed with only the posts from people whose updates I actually desire to read.

I know.  I’m not the typical user.  I am admittedly outside of social networking.  I’ve been a hater of Facebook for a long time.  I just don’t care to know every tiny detail of every social acquaintance constantly.  There are great people I’ve met through life, but I don’t necessarily need to know every detail of their lives on a day to day basis.  However, the people I do remain close to are ones who I want to follow in that consistent basis.

Perhaps the point of social networking is lost on me.  I think though, that for Google to really gain ground where others have failed is to give users the choice on how the social network works for them. For me, I want very little information and really only the “interesting” stuff from people I really know well.  Others are probably overjoyed to have other functionality that Google offers.

In the end, time will tell what will happen.  I just hope that Google figures out some filters soon, because I already find myself tuning my feeds out.

Here’s a typical browsing experience for me now, and why the advertising is ruining my experience.

First I check my email, maybe read one or two items in my inbox.  Cleverly on the right hand side are ads suggested by Google from the content of the email I’m reading.  This can be a great tactic for marketers since there’s a good chance that something in my email relates to a product I might purchase.  Fine.  I can deal with that.

Then I want to check a couple of interesting sites to see if there’s news.  I’m a big sports fan, so I used to go check ESPN to find out the sports scores and news.  Big mistake.  To the right is a screen capture from this morning of what happens when I go to ESPN.  Half of my web browser is their advertisement.  Even more annoying is that this ad actually starts small when I enter the site and then expands, generally in the time it takes me to find an article in the Headlines section and try to click to read it.

There is no point at all to my browsing ESPN any longer.  The user experience on the site is so terrible that it isn’t worth finding the news they have to offer.  Combine that with a paywall for good content (more on that another time), and the site has marginal usefulness.  I get it, advertising brings in dollars and I’m sure they got some good dollars for having ad placement ABOVE the actual content on their page.  But it annoys users.  And I think the worst part for me with ESPN in particular, I find it hard to believe that their website is the main source of revenue.  They have several TV stations that have to be bringing in some good revenue, they blast us with ads constantly on those too, can’t we just get a web experience without being bombarded?

After checking the few sites I still do visit, I go to my Google Reader to catch up on some blog posts written by far superior bloggers than myself.  Oh good, more ads here too.  Except some of these aren’t static, some of these are animated with all kinds of movement.  Do they test these ads to see what it does to the performance of a RSS reader to have every single post among 200 or so new that I get to have all of these load an animated advertisement?  I want to scroll through my blog posts, read the ones that are interesting.  But I can’t, because the ads slow the whole thing down and again, take up a good portion of my screen as I’m trying to read.   What’s especially annoying is that a lot of these ads are targeted…

Targeting.  Today’s advertisers all get to target us.  When we visit sites we get cookies that stay with us everywhere we go.  These determine the ads we get to see for a predetermined period.  I play a lot of World of Warcraft, so I visit the site from time to time to read news about the game.  Well guess what, their ads follow me.   Some sites that aren’t Blizzard properties, but have game related content, get me targeted to play Rift.   Both of those marketing groups love video advertisements.  I am hit with video ads telling me to play both games, one of which I already pay to play.  Fortunately, there are add-ons that can prevent marketing from tracking you constantly as you browse the web.

Every once in a while, someone will send me an entertaining video they found.  So I’ll head over to YouTube to watch it.  Page loads and I get ready to enjoy my content.  Not so fast.  I get to watch a 30 second advertisement first.  I can safely say I have never waited for an ad to finish. As soon as I see the ad I close YouTube immediately.  I have no desire to sit and watch a 30 second ad before some silly YouTube clip.  Even worse is when I go to watch a music video from a band I like and they have an ad before their music videos.  Are you kidding me?  Aren’t music videos basically ads themselves?  So now I’m watching an ad to watch an ad?

I think that there are many people like me who are getting tired of the ads on the web.  There are too many, they are everywhere, and you know what?  Because of this they aggravate rather than inform.  Sure, they may still be effective as a whole, and I bet marketers look at their fancy ROI graphs and point to their success and how they can spend even more and place even more ads.  But pretty soon, more people will be like me and just completely ignore them, find technology solutions to remove the annoyances, or just find a better way to enjoy the web.

EA is also notorious for their slogan “If it’s in the game, it’s in the game” to which many consumers add “and if it’s not in the game, we’ll charge you for it later”.  Which makes me wonder how well EA would be able to do with titles like Plants vs Zombies or Bejeweled, which are arguably some of the biggest hits for PopCap games.

The  best bet for EA would be to allow PopCap to operate independently and not force some of EA’s more draconian game policies onto the company.  As it is, PopCap is trying to survive in a mobile space where consumers have nearly infinite choices and where games can quickly go from unknown and unheard of to the flavor of the month.  Take Angry Birds as a prime example and its dedicated following, certainly a game without the resources of a large developer.

What it seems to take in the social space is a bit of luck, a great price, and free support and addons.  These are not strengths of EA

However, I’m back with all the inspiration to give this another shot… we shall see how long I last this time!

Because of the sheer number of sites available, this review won’t be nearly as comprehensive as I would like.  However, I hope it provides a good starting point for understanding the sites and what they offer.  One of the other challenges in reviewing job sites is that my feedback is most helpful only for those looking for similar types of opportunities.  Some job sites do a great job with certain niches while others cater to quite different opportunities.  To put it into perspective, I’m mainly looking at small tech companies.

I think it’s also important to think about what the purpose of the job boards is in someone’s job search.  For most, it’s the least likely way to get a job, but it’s also the easiest in some respects.  With a good cover letter and resume in hand, it doesn’t take long to apply to a lot of jobs through the job boards.  However, the chance of success is also extremely low.  The boards can be a great resource for finding and applying to jobs, but it’s also a great way to find jobs where the job seeker has better connections and can network their way to the job.

The sites I have been using at one time or another include (in no particular order): LinkedIn, Monster, CareerBuilder, IvyExec, Career Accelerator, OneWire, PartnerUp, StartUpHire, Doostang, VentureLoop, Indeed, SimplyHired, and TheLadders.   Those are the sites I’ll be covering during the rest of this post.

In addition to important sites, I think it’s important to talk about various features that could be important for job seekers.

Cost
When looking at a job site, you want to understand if it’s free or paid.  Some sites require a subscription to apply, others to see who the employer is that is hiring, and others to even view jobs at all.  It is my opinion that a job site that seeks to gain money from those seeking work isn’t worth the time.  I understand that some people are looking to switch jobs and so they are coming from a point of income to a better job.  But many job seekers are out of work for one reason or another and need to tighten the budget a bit.  As a job seeker myself, I don’t want to be paying $50/month or more to apply for a job for which I have a very low expectation of being moved along in the process.

The Good: LinkedIn, Monster, PartnerUp, VentureLoop, StartUpHire, Indeed, SimplyHired, CareerBuilder, OneWire
The Bad: Doostang, Career Accelerator, TheLadders, IvyExec

Search Functionality
Because of how time intensive it can be to keep up with multiple sites, each site’s ability to search becomes very important.  There are a few factors to consider:

• Does the site allow search across multiple locations at once or is it limited to single locations?
• How detailed is their Industry information?
• How well do they categorize titles?
• How well do the sites find jobs based on keywords?
• Does the site allow saved searches?
• Can you get email updates of search results?

Those are a few of the questions I ask when thinking about whether the site’s search will meet my needs or not.  Because of how complex this category is, I unfortunately won’t go through all the sites.  It’s worth noting that Indeed and SimplyHired are specific to having good search capability though, so start there to understand how it can be done well.  I also like the way LinkedIn provides check boxes to narrow a search down on the fly but wish they provided more options.

Site Focus
Some sites are just for jobs, others have networking and other capabilities built in to complement the job search.  LinkedIn does a great job of using my professional network to help me understand the best way to approach an opportunity.  If I don’t know anyone connected to a certain position, I might just apply and hope for the best.  A lot of the time, I find an opportunity and realize I know someone who can help me get that job.  In a tight job market, having a personal connection is the best chance a candidate has of landing that elusive position.

Other times sites have a sector or other specialization.  Ivy Exec and TheLadders try to focus on “premium” jobs.  StartUpHire is mainly geared towards people looking for very early stage opportunities.  VentureLoop is all about scouring for opportunities in companies that have received Venture Capital financing. Those are just a few examples, I’m sure there are plenty of other examples as well.

It’s difficult to say if the focused or general sites are better than the other.  It seems like it’s good to use a combination of different sites to make sure the job search process covers as much territory as possible.

Resume Upload
This one is tricky.  Many sites allow you to post a resume or your credentials on their site.  This is both good and bad: on the one hand it allows employers to search for you which can lead to finding opportunities.  However, it also leads to a lot of opportunities you have no interesting in whatsoever.  The other disadvantage is that it’s great to get your resume on every site that allows it.  What ends up happening is you post your resume on the first site, you get offers from all the major financial planning and insurance companies asking you to apply.  You politely decline because that’s not the kind of work you want.  Then a day or two later, you add your resume to another site and get the same offers again.  Not a big deal, but after you’ve added your resume to 4-5 sites and changed some details a couple times on each, your inbox can be swamped with a lot of offers that you probably don’t want.

While it’s great to have your resume out there to try to gain interest from an employer, it is also inevitable that you’ll have to filter through offers.  The good news is that if you do want to go into financial planning or insurance sales, posting a resume is a surefire way to get into the hiring process.

Closing Comments

I think there is some definite benefit from using the job boards.  It’s important to understand going in what you are hoping to gain from the use of the sites and choose a site that fits that need.  The nice thing is that without spending a lot of time you can find out a lot of hiring trends in various Industries and also apply to a few jobs.  You never know what will end up landing you that great job.

First off, for those not familiar with the game, it combines a FPS style of play with some highly addictive RPG elements.  I find it has a nice balance between the two.  For some players, the game is all about completing quests and improving the character.  For others, it’s about finding the best and most powerful gear and weapons available.  And for others, it’s simply about the fun of running around a detailed world shooting things.  The game offers all three aspects in full force.

What is really impressive about the new content is that it feels like the original game but also improves on several aspects that customers had felt were lacking.  Sometimes customer feedback is best ignored, particularly in the Video Game Industry.  Here are some improvements the new content added:

• Increased Difficulty: Prior to Knoxx, the game was pretty easy and therefore a bit repetitive.  Knoxx cranks the difficulty knob all the way to 11.  My first time playing I was dying constantly and actually had to wait for support from a couple of friends before embarking on the quests.  We had to have a strategy and plan our attacks in order to succeed.
• More Loot: Who doesn’t love new weapons, shields and class mods?  The community asked for more and Gearbox delivered
• Boss Farming: Like World Of Warcraft, the new boss in Borderlands now offers the best loot in the game and can be killed over and over again.  The boss is a true challenge and worth the effort it takes to bring him down
• New Vehicles: The old vehicles were a bit stodgy and not at all powerful.  Knoxx brings us 3 new vehicles each with its own specialty and provides a great way to roam about the new world.

This is just a taste of what the new content offers.  It adds a conservative 15-20 hours of new game play.  For the $10 price tag that is being charged, that is a bargain.

I for one am impressed at how well Gearbox has been able to improve this title and how much dedication they have shown to it.  The game was released last fall and has already seen 3 new additions.  The latest is by far the best and has me looking forward to future offerings.

The problem I have is that as a consumer, I have limited dollars I am willing to spend on new music games.  If I wanted all 4 of these, I’d be spending $240.  Add on top of that the money for Guitar Hero 5, Guitar Hero World Tour, Rock Band, Rock Band 2, and instruments… well, I think you get the point.  Plus there’s DLC for some of the artist specific titles as well as the main titles themselves.

This is certainly a lucrative Industry, but is it as lucrative as it could be?  It seems to me that the overall music game audience simply is not that large.  The games and content are being sold to mainly the same people.  Beatles Rock Band was expected to increase the overall size of the Industry by bringing new music gamers into the scene.  I can’t say for certain that didn’t happen, but my suspicion is that most of the purchasers had played a music game beforehand.

What does that say for the state of the Industry?  Something has got to change.  I for one probably won’t buy Green Day Rock Band because I only enjoy a handful of their songs.  I also don’t want care about the “Green Day” experience like I did with the Beatles.  I don’t own Metallica or Aerosmith titles either, since I only want a select few songs from each artist.

The money gained from more band titles down the future is going to have a hard time justifying the time and money being spent to develop these new titles.  Aside from a select group of die hard fans of each band, most other consumers will simply pass on the new opportunities.

The other thing to consider is that the Beatles game had a lot going for it, and had lackluster sales compared to expectations.  The Beatles are arguably the most popular band of all time.  The game itself had a very unique gameplay experience as well as an innovative harmonizing voice feature that was unveiled just for the Beatles game.  Yet people didn’t buy it in droves.  I wonder how many people would buy songs from the game to play in Rock Band 2 though… However, that is not an option currently available.

One of the other problems with all these titles is that it makes it hard to have a fun gameplay experience.  I want one disc that I can put in my game console and play for hours.  I don’t want to constantly have to switch discs, especially when I’m playing with a group of people.  It’s disruptive to the band experience.

If I had a way to have a master disc that encompassed all of my content at once, I would spend the money on it in a second.  Of course, Activision and Harmonix compete with each other.  So although collaboration on this front would be mutually beneficial, I find it unlikely to occur.  Doesn’t mean I can’t dream though.

In the meantime, I hope that developers realize the customer base as a whole is not interested in seeing more band titles, but rather more unique and innovative playing experiences.

However, that’s a small niche.  It makes me wonder what other people use the Slingbox for, under what circumstances, and how often.

Enter the iPhone app.  At $30, it is most definitely on the high end price-wise.  Does it deliver on value?  I think the jury is still out.  For me, it’s a nice little app and I enjoy it simply for the “cool” factor.  I like being able to check my home DVR from anywhere and pop in to watch a little TV.  The problem is that very often the times I would be watching content are also times when no good content is available.

I do imagine that if I was a heavy commuter with a 30 minute train ride, I might leave shows on my DVR to watch on the train.  That could be a great use of time versus reading or listening to music and watching people.

I am not sure that’s worth the up front cost for people though.  The app itself at $30 is a lot for most people to justify.  On top of that, if they don’t already have a Slingbox, will the app itself merit the purchase of a $200 device?

It seems that either the marketing or the features aren’t quite ready for Sling to hit the mainstream yet.  Or perhaps the price point is simply prohibitive for most potential customers.  If I wasn’t obsessed with playing with all the new apps and technology, I would never have purchased.

I think the move to 3G was essential.  At $30 WiFi only seemed like a huge barrier.  Now that it is lifted, I’m sure a few more people will download the app.  But either I’m missing some value, or the app needs something else before I can believe that it will catch like wildfire.

One immediate addition would be the ability to dock the iPhone and output the video to a full size television with good quality.  Last time I tried, the app didn’t support video output.  If it did, my iPhone would become a portable cable box wherever I went and that could be really cool for the frequent traveler.

I would also love to see the ability to share content with other people.  One person being connected at a time is fine.  But there are a lot of people living in other areas who I would convince to get a Slingbox so we could “trade” TV with each other.  Right now is a perfect example: my Canadian friends have far better Olympic coverage than we do in the US.  But yesterday I had the Men’s US Hockey game but my Canadian friend did not.  If he had a Slingbox and I had one, it would have been great to give a temporary guest login so that we could both enjoy content.  Definitely a gray area based on usage rights, but if possible, I think it would propel sales in a big way.

Overall the app is great and I think Sling is on the right path.  I think they are still a few features and a lot of sales away from being a must have tool though.

Look, I get it.  There are a lot of events.  It would be difficult to cover every single one of them Live for the fans.  At times there are 3-4 things happening at once.  What bothers me is that last night, the big event was the Men’s Moguls Freestyle.  The medal round was happening around the same time as the figure skating short program.

As I see it, there were a number of options available to NBC: cover the Men’s Moguls Live, as it happens and delay Figure Skating.  Cover Figure Skating Live and delay Men’s Moguls.  Or, they could have used their secondary or tertiary networks to cover more live events.  I had Women’s Ice Hockey on their secondary channel.  I don’t want to take anything away from Women’s Ice Hockey, earlier in the day I watched a rout by the US Women’s Team of China and it was a great game.  But, the game being played was not nearly as timely as the Medal contention event going on at the moment.

The sad thing is, this won’t be the last time I’m forced to get updates on an event from a friend in Canada or from a website.  Meanwhile, NBC finds plenty of time to interview athletes and to play up the back stories behind the events.  While the stories behind the athletes are fascinating (almost all of them have endured some kind of hardship), it’s still less fascinating than getting the results of an event when it happens and not 30-45 minutes later.  In today’s interconnected and social web, 30 minutes late might as well be never.  Once I know the results of the competition, watching it unfold isn’t nearly as dramatic.

The really disappointing part of all this is how many easy solutions there are to the dilemma.  Technology would provide NBC with the ability to have multiple channels on most carriers so that every event is Live when it happens.  There are plenty of good broadcasters who would love to get the chance to cover the Olympics and I’m sure there are advertising dollars to back it as well.  In addition, they could offer content on the web for events as they are unfolding.  I picture an interface like MLB.tv where you can see each event and switch between them as drama builds.  It would be like having an entire Sports Bar at your fingertips.

Instead, NBC is showing all of two events streaming through the Web and then going after anyone who takes it on themselves to stream content NBC doesn’t offer.  Surely their dollars could be spent better.  I spent 20 minutes scouring the web to try and find a Live feed of the Moguls event and was unable to do so.  These are the Olympics, why can’t I watch what happens?  It just seems asinine.

So, to NBC: You are leaving dollars on the table.  You are leaving viewers unhappy.  You are failing to innovate on the World’s largest stage.  As a customer, I’m sick and tired of it.

I think that Buzz is certainly new, and it adds functionality users have had with Twitter and Facebook to email, which is a first.  Beyond that, Google Buzz is just taking from sources that people already used.  It’s like a bad aggregation of social tools.  I now get my friends’ twitter updates sent to a link below my email.  Not really a huge deal, since for me Twitter is marginally useful to begin with.  I also now get reader updates from some friends in my email instead of just in my Google Reader.  Again, not particularly useful for me.

I think that Buzz certainly has some benefits, but will people use them is another issue.  As great as Google has done in some of their endeavors, it seems they don’t understand the social web very well.   I lasted about 10 minutes on Google Wave before getting annoyed and throwing it away as not being useful.  New products can’t function if they require several bloggers and multiple videos to explain how they are useful.  New innovations take hold because they are both useful and easy to understand.   Buzz is neither of those things for me.

Take one example: it took me about 10 minutes of tinkering to figure out how to add a filter to my email inbox simply to remove email notifications of updates to my Buzzes.  If there’s a link right below inbox, why do I need Buzz updates sent to my inbox?  That seems a little redundant to me.  And it’s not even a setting somewhere that I can simply deselect and move along in my happy life.  I had to ignore a user message to complete my ignoring of the Buzz (use search for label:buzz, the label is applied immediately and therefore works in the filter unlike other labels that are added after the filter completes).

All that being said, Buzz does have some potential.  Most significantly, the reader commentary has always been atrocious.  Although I’ve been sharing with several people using Google Reader, it has never produced a meaningful conversation among my peers.  Perhaps the blame lies among us, sure, but the program also does not make it easy to have those kinds of conversations.  I think Buzz is an easier medium in which to talk about blog posts and other items.

It will be interesting to see if Google removes Buzz from the inbox.  There have been rumors of this floating around, but the reports aren’t very definitive.  I think that if it is removed from the Inbox we’ll have another Google Wave and it will die a slow painful death.  People have too many ways to communicate with each other in the same fashion already, and Buzz just doesn’t bring anything new to the table.

The one advantage Buzz does have is that it offers some of the social tools to people who don’t go to Facebook or Twitter everyday.  I use my e-mail on a daily basis though, in fact the window never closes on my computer.  If Google was able to show the value of social tools to e-mail based users they could gain some adoption.  However, I still don’t know what Google’s end-goal is for Buzz.

Needless to say, they have my attention and I will be watching the service as it develops