The way it is shown is at the bottom of search results:

Results from people in your social circle for google social search – BETA – My social circle – My social content

SERPs then show pictures of your connections, how you are connected to them, and hopefully relevant content they have written or linked to.

Digging in further you can start to see how Google sees you and your social graph, and going further to the Google Social Circle area (link should work for you) shows you a “neighborhood” of social connections.

It says the following;

This is the network of connections Google uses to identify relevant social search results. It is based on a combination of the following:

• Direct connections from your Google chat buddies and contacts (28)
• Direct connections from links listed on your Google profile (215) such as Twitter and FriendFeed
• Secondary connections (1667) that are publicly associated with your direct connections

This is the network of connections Google uses to identify relevant social search results. It is based on a combination of the following:
Direct connections from your Google chat buddies and contacts (28)Direct connections from links listed on your Google profile (215) such as Twitter and FriendFeedSecondary connections (1667) that are publicly associated with your direct connections

and looks something like this:

This is interesting for a few reasons.  The first is that it exposes the connections Google believes you have.  The second is that it shows the content it thinks those connections contribute to.  The sources are listed clearly as Twitter, Friendfeed, Chat, and Contacts.  This relationship matching is quite impressive and shows that Google Social search is actually matching my contacts with their content, then searching and matching those results back into my search streams.

Earlier this week I got a chance to hear Clay Shirky speak about a concept that is quite obvious to many looking at the micro social media space, but in a new way.   His thesis was around the fact that the most important person in the universe is YOU and the people with close ties are close to the center of the universe (friends) but not quite at the center.

I cannot express his thoughts in the same eloquent way, but my general takeaway was as follows.  Your general social circle, or neighborhood is only so big.  Your secondary neighborhood is some order of magnitude larger.  Your tertiary neighborhood is probably an order of magnitude larger than the 2nd.  This means that by association, you may have a million or so connections that you are indirectly connected with.  These connections are not real in the “friend” sense, but certainly are real in the “I am influenced by what they are thinkingreadingdoing sense” as there is a high probability of correlation between activities.  Some of this is serendipity, but some of it is because of similar social connections and friendships.  He is interested in movie category X, and therefore I have some probability to be interested in the same category X.

How does this translate to being important for Google Social Search?

By looking at the people I interact with Google is building a beachhead on knowing and understanding my neighborhoods.  They know the first tier neighborhood by chat conversations, Twitter messaging, and links.  They know the second tier neighborhood from those friends connections and crawling the content they produce mapping its importance back to me.  Finally, they grasp the third tier (which is perhaps the largest) by connecting tiers 1 + 2, and looking to their outlying friends connections and content.

I believe that Google believes in the thesis that you are located at the center of the universe, and uses these galaxies of connections (or neighborhoods as Clay and sociologists call them) to help you and provide value in search results.

This same information could then be leveraged to provide a better taste menu of content without having to sort through filters, categories, and keywords you are interested in following.  The power of knowing what my friends are reading and gauging my interest is a problem that needs solving.  The constant banter about “too much information” and “information overload” can be quelled by a smarter, yet automatic, filter for content that could be helpful or interesting to you.

The inputs are very clear signal using time, quantity, content, and proximity to influence the taste menu.

If I havn’t spoken to someone in awhile, emailed with them, @replied them, then the connection fades.  On the contrary, if I have chatted with them, emailed, clicked through to their content, and interacted with them that is an indicator that the connection is stronger.  This example does not take sentiment into account, but I think that is fine.  Even if you have constant disagreement with someone – interactions show interest in a category therefore can be signal for the social search content that gets shown back to you.

The other interesting connection, and the reason why I use the phrase galaxies instead of neighborhoods, is the web content Google now knows I am associated with.  In an area called Social Content, Google identifies websites that I am affiliated with.  It is really a natural language association of “back rub” Googles original search thesis of links, but it works.  For example it takes sites I link out to and makes them “connections” simply implying that there is a correlation between the site websites.  Although it misses some of the sites I am a part of, it certainly captures the majority – all using the signal of reciprocal linking and content to make the judgement call.

I think that Social Search is in its nascent stages, and we will continue to see neighborhoods and galaxies of connections uses to create better taste menus.  I think consumer reaction to such a display of connections and friend mapping will be met with initial disdain and privacy concerns, but then people will realize that Google is just providing an organized view of your publicly available interactions.

After installing it and getting back up and running I have noticed some unnecessary animations in menus and windows. After doing some research for how to turn them off, do you know what they are called? Unnecessary animations. Yes, seriously.

Below is a screen shot:

How can you build a feature and literally call it unnecessary?

By the way the full path to this area is:
Control PanelEase of AccessEase of Access CenterUse the computer without a display

Wow.

This also got me thinking about unnecessary features in products and software in general. The example above is just a sample of what is out there. By way of the “less is more” mantra I try to put things I see through a filter of what the bare essentials are for a service or product.

By having “also have that” features, you can dilute the core values and reason people will use your service.

A lot of folks think that it is necessary to mention that they “have that too” when compared to a competitor or another contender in the same space, when in reality it is more about what people are using vs. what they could be using.

An example of this is with messaging, forums, and discussion software. Feature bloat can quickly become apparent in many of these solutions when in reality people just want one vertical solution. By strapping on additional complexities and features you actually dilute the core value of the product.

When a product does everything it also does nothing.

First, it is incredible that around 30 companies are actively attacking these categories, whether directly or indirectly, on Craigslist – more if you dig deeper and include competitors within each set.

Second, some of these companies have been competing in the space for a long time such as Indeed.com (USV portfolio co.), Elance.com, and LegalZoom.com while others are very new such as Listia.com, TeachStreet.com, and AirBnB.com

I think you will continue to see small niche categories getting full blown solutions and entrants to markets that would otherwise not be possible in the past. This is due in large part to lower cost of capital to get started, lower production and development timelines, and the fragmentation of attention as people are willing to go to the best possible solution vs. a one size fits all portal.

This concise explanation of providing value has stuck with me. This means being category, niche, topic, and genre agnostic and combining a number of factors both tangible and not, into how I view companies, individuals, and projects. Since early stage investing means the product or idea changes dramatically over time, having a clear thesis and honed pattern recognition is helpful. I take no credit for this as it was developed and matured over time by Brad, Fred, and Albert and even lives online at the USV Our Focus page. It is an organic and dynamic thesis that has changed, and continues to adapt.

Much like experience, you have to live through certain things to get it, see things from many angles to understand it, and the more real cases you see, the more experience you get. There is no shortcut or way around this fact. I learn more about this process every day from my friend and colleague Andrew Parker. Andrew has honed his own pattern recognition skills that come from his world view. In a clear and concise conversation I can understand how he views a product or service and we can constructively debate the pros and cons. It is helpful not only in building up my own pattern recognition, but also in thinking through and clarifying points I may not have thought about.

When I first joined Union Square Ventures my goal was to optimize the partners time. I now add pattern recognition to the always on optimizations I try to provide.

Phin Barnes is a friend and Principal at First Round Capital, and summarized this value add nicely;

Different from a partner I also try to decide if I think a specific partner will share my view and if together, we can build passion for the business across the investment team. Each week I participate in pitches with the partnership and spend time talking to them about the deals they are reviewing. I dig into the questions they ask and understand each business that they are evaluating and what is driving their point of view on each investment decision. When I read a plan or meet with an entrepreneur, I usually know how each partner will react to the pitch, what areas they will be excited about and the concerns they will have about the model, the market and the team.

Phin goes on to describe junior VC people as gatekeepers, which I agree with. In some ways a junior VC extends the bandwidth of the partners and optimally helps them do more, faster.

The best way for me to separate the signal from the noise is to develop and work on pattern recognition.

By productizing these applications and launching them, Google would be doing a disservice to its customers and confusing the marketplace. Rather than launch a new “product” or put it into labs, they market test in current attention streams.

Examples include; introducing chat into Gmail, Integrating Picasa with Google Accounts, Integrating Google Analytics and Adsense, Adding a URL shortner to Feedburner…hopefully you get the idea.

The latest example of this can be seen in what some call the Google Drive or GDrive making it possible to attach files to Google Docs.

This is a feature that is also a standalone launch. If you are uploading files to Google Docs and keeping them private, it is essentially an online locker for storage, which is in a round about way a Google online storage drive.

My point is that with the identity that is your Google Account you now have yet another feature added. The network effects of this move are clear in that you are less likely to go somewhere else to put your files if Google has permeated into the rest of your online existence. Looking at the large number of competitors that are out there in this space gives some vindication, pause, and apprehension in my mind. In some ways these services can be seen as more mainstream as many people did not know storing something “in the cloud” was even possible – and choice helps the consumer. In other ways, it becomes difficult to fight large identity incumbent.

By continuing to release features under current product offerings, Google can drive many users to a new service and do a live customer development process right in front of all of our eyes. They are doing this today with Google Wave.

The features you need most are appearing when you need them, not when you don’t. That is what makes today’s “social networks” the real “networks” of tomorrow.

You don’t need a resolution, a mission statement, or the perfect set of people to accomplish what you want to do. You don’t need a set amount of money in the bank, the right time at your job or life, or even for whatever event is going on right now to pass. You don’t need permission, you don’t need official approval, and you certainly don’t need a book telling you what to do. You probably do not need a course or how-to guide, a newsletter, or video series. You don’t need the perfect background, you don’t need the perfect business plan (man how that will change over time!), you don’t need a 3 year projection or budget. You most likely don’t need the amount of money you think you do. You don’t need to incorporate, you don’t need business cards, you don’t need a “website tonight”, and you don’t need to max out your credit card. Heck, you don’t even have to wait for the new year – pledge to start 12/31/09!

The biggest psychological hurdle in doing something is always the first step. If yesterday you were “going to start something” then tomorrow you should simply start saying “I started something.” Try it out and see how it feels – you will be amazed at what happens next.

There is no big difference between saying you are going to do something in the future, and they saying you are doing something today, but the psychological hurdle is tremendous.

Everyone has a different first step, but the best way to begin is to start today.

Instead of using the normal categorizations, genres, descriptions, or wordy answers I normalized everything as disruptive.

It might be overused at this point but it boils everything down to a very easy to digest word that can described these audacious goals of entrepreneurs.

Image from ShutterStock

The last Boxee event back in March was a huge success and brought out a huge crowd – but this time the show was even bigger.

You can watch the entire presentation here:

A lot was announced last night and I have included highlights below, but the biggest news was the showcasing of the Boxee Box by Boxee and D-Link

Above is a picture of Avner Ronen, CEO of Boxee, talking about the new device.

You can read the full details of the announcement on the Boxee Beta blog post.

Here is a favorite example of putting all the wood behind one arrow from the Sun CEO back in 2007.

It basically boils down to concentrating on one area and focus.

It provides a worldview that provides solid constraints but focused energy.

I realize that describing this one is harder than it looks, but hopefully you get the idea.

It is usually within this context:

Me: Is it a done deal?
Them: Yeah totally.
Me: Is the deal signed?
Them: No, but it is 99.99% going to happen…

This can apply to so many different things but I thought I would share a few examples below

The advertising deal

This one usually comes with different odds – somewhere in the 50%+ range

“We are about 60% certain this IO is going to get signed”

This applies to a few different cases but usually gets into things like sales pipelines and assigning percentages to deals in Salesforce

The Sale (goods or services)

Anything above the 80% confidence level gets attention and scrutiny.

“We got 90% of the way there – and have the last 10% to go”

Warning: This last 10% is the hardest part. You might as well reset your scale and have the last 10% reset to 100% left to go.

What can get in the way?

Diligence
Terms
Conditions
Exceptions
Last minute shenanigans (yeah, I put shenanigans in the list)
Caveats
Out clauses
Launch timelines
Leaked information
Competitor language

The new company hire

This one always gets a 50% chance up until deal docs – then seems to move magically to 80%. I remember an experience in a previous company where this one woman was 50% for about 3 months, then we went to deal docs and she was at 80% then got another offer out of left field for literally DOUBLE the offer I was aware of and she didn’t take the job.

Time wasted? Maybe not as there are lessons learned.
Percentages talked about? 50%, then 80%, which got the wheels in motion for “making room for the new hire”

The sale (of the Company)

This one suffers from a major misinformation problem. People at the top have their percentages, and the people at the bottom have theirs. In my limited experience these range from “10% going to happen to 99.99% going to happen”

This one is a favorite because the “%” has almost no bearing on anything other than the psychology of the number. Things can go awry at any moment and it literally is not a done deal until the documents are signed.

There are countless other examples but I wanted to share some that come to mind.

My point? Nothing is a done deal until it is signed. Everything else is just a percentage chance of happening.