Random Tangent Part 2

Here is the second edition of the Random Tangent which at this point will be a biweekly recurring post.  Hopefully the 5 people that read my last tangent (the Twitter valuation post is currently my most popular) found it interesting as I covered a new idea for Google+, The Groupon/Foursquare partnership (I still owe a full post), and thoughts on the Debt Crisis.  Be on the look out for a new series of posts on finding a job in the NYC Tech Scene to premier this Thursday (tomorrow) and will hopefully be posted weekly.  On to the news:

Google buys Motorola, S&P doesn't have a leg to stand on, and a surprisingly good GOP debate gets lost like dust in the wind.

A Random Tangent

Its been too long since my last post but a two week lack of motivation/inspiration has created a bottleneck of random thoughts.  I've decided to string together these thoughts similar to my June 15th post and my favorite daily column from Dan Primack's Term Sheet: "Random Ramblings."  Without infringing on Dan's IP here is my Random Tangent:

Kind of a long post about Google+, Groupon meet Foursquare, and the Debt Crisis Averted.  Hopefully worth the read.

Google Plus...what?

Last week I found myself on the outside looking in at the Google+ frenzy that was their short lived beta test.  Now that I'm in (with everyone else)...I can understand the criticisms Google received for their failure to answer (ask) the right question.  I almost didn't write this blog because Semil Shah covered most of the points to be made about the addition of a new social network but it would be remiss not to include my commentary.

Where Google+ falls short is in its lack of integration with the existing social networks.  Taking their tools and blending them into a new network isn't enough of a value proposition for Google to kill Facebook.  What the ecosystem needs is an application or platform that makes sharing and consuming information across platforms more intuitive.  Google should have created a tool to make sense of the endless stream ("firehouse") of Comments, Likes, Tweets, Retweets, Shares, and now + 1s rather than creating another stream of information in a silo.  Until I can broadcast out of Google +, I'll continue loading Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and now Google+ whenever I launch Chrome.