Dani Doles Out Advice: Google Can Do More

Hi all! I am just brimming over with ideas for everyone. So, in this new column, I’m going to share them.

Let’s start with Google. Google gets slammed a lot by people who don’t trust it. Interestingly, I’ve seen friends post to Facebook about not trusting Google, seemingly unaware that Facebook actually has sold consumer information. Google aims to have people’s true identities in life converge with their identities online and wants to deliver information to people as accurately as possible. The benefits are many, including knowing exactly who the awful trolls are, but Google faces numerous hurdles, including that consumers are gun shy to tie in their online selves with their real selves for security and/or privacy reasons and many people (myself included) benefit from having multiple accounts that serve different purposes in our lives. But let’s say that Google really could find a way to have users match their online identities to their actual identities. What does the company do next? The obvious answer is that Google tries to identify segments of the population. Facebook attempts this by aggregating “likes” to different pages, although it’s estimated that only 1 percent of Facebook users engage with brands they’ve liked. How would Google accomplish this identification better? Well, Google has the +1 that allows users to show their circles what they like, but it’s still pretty new. Say Google wants to find everyone who cares passionately about the Civil War. Facebook can go through the pages it has about the Civil War and track every person who’s clicked like, but what’s Google to do?

Dani’s advice: Buy Twitter, Google. With an active user-base that posts about trackable subjects, Google can determine people’s interests. It’s not a perfect answer. Clearly, buying Twiiter doesn’t get you to every single person in the world who cares passionately about the Civil War. But with 340 million Tweets a day, there’s a lot of people talking about their interests and interacting with companies and brand they’re interested in.