Today was the day we met Google... well it's London offices anyways. You would think the offices would be hidden away in some virtual wonderland, but it is in fact slab, dab right in the middle of London Town. It has a very unassuming exterior, but the offices are tucked up on the 6th floor with cool lighting which look like beach lilos, fluffy carpet and free canteen loaded with sweeties and soft drink. We were there to get a, sort of, starters presentation as the agency work closely with them. Essentially, Google is the way forward, the future of everything technology... I discovered a few new products which I didn't realise exist and which Google offer their users for free, so I thought i'd share them with you as I think they are awesome....
First of all, there is the Chrome Book. This is basically as laptop which only operates on the internet. There is no Word or Excel or microsoft... you open the computer and there is the chrome web browser.... nothing else. You do all you work via the internet and store it in a 'cloud', which apparently an online database which you save all your stuff to and which you only have access to. This way, if anything happens to our laptop, everything is completely backed up in the virtual world.... cool eh? I don't know how far this will go, after all nearly 70% of everything we do on a computer uses the internet.....
Following on from the Google chrome web browser, you can sync your chrome web browser to your phone through downloading an app, and anything you find on the net, but you want it on your phone (e.g. a number of a restaurant), you can send the search results from your desktop to your phone..... very very clever. This is called Chrome to phone, get it!
We were told prior to us going there that we must sign up for Google+ and then download the Google+ app..... which I did before I left the office. The sign up seemed pretty straight forward, very much like other social networks - but had this unfamiliar term 'circles'. You can create circles in order to group your friends, you can manage what these circle of friends or people can see on your profile, what you want to share with them etc. It seems to be an amalgamation of both Twitter and Facebook. I was not totally convinced when I first signed up, but then Google showed me about 'Hangouts', you can choose which circle of friends you want to 'hang' out with, in a virtual sense. It then creates this virtual common room where people in those circles can come and go as they please. Its sort of like Skype conference calling, but you can have lots of people in a conversation at once where you can flick through the cameras or the computer flicks through for you... wicked wicked stuff.
One of the highlights was definately 'The wilderness Downtown', if you do not gave Google Chrome, download it and go on to http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/ and type in your address, inc house number street and postcode, press play and see what happens! Although not enitrely difficult to put together, seeing as the images are already on Google maps, the images are displayed in order with an emptional track with this person running (who seems to be running to your house) - my description really doesn't do it justice.... do it and you will see what I mean.
The whole day was very useful in telling you best to optimise clients website so that your natural search appears right at the top and how a pay-per-click campaign can work well alongside a search campaign.... in essence Google provides a very good platform for businesses to generate more visits to their website and get their brand name out there. YouTube is another fantastic platform which allows user and non-user generated videos onto the site, where nothing is impossible. They used the example of the two young 8 and 5 year old girls, who sung a version of the Nicky Minaj song 'Superbass' in their bedroom (see link below).
The very original version (not the one in the link below) generated over 14 million hits which resulted in a YouTube sensation.... the video got so much hype that they were invited to go on the Ellen show in the US to perform with Nicky Minaj.... crazy eh? (See link below)
What lucky little girls, this should really provide some inspiration for all of us to upload some crazy video in order to generate enough attention and get something good out of it! If your video reaches over 250,000 hits, you will be approached by YouTube/Google and may be asked if you are willing to put advertising by it, by usually in a way of a pre-roll... this in turn would give you a bit of pocket money!
To sum up, Google have so many wicked products avaibale to their users at the moment, which are not cluttered with advertisement. In fact their advertisement methods are done in a very sophiscated way, which encourages people to use their site as a user and a brand even more. I will write a blog specific to Google advertising when I have my notes in front of me, but I was too excited to share this info with everyone!
 |
| Google Offices, London |
