My thoughts on Google Profiles
Posted by austin under Tools
I just setup my public Google Profile - (Look here if you are interested in setting up your own Google Profile)
Suggestions for Google,
- I’m sure this is being considered, but vanity URLs optimized for SEO would be great. Instead of http://www.google.com/s2/profiles/100761717775559459217 I’d like to see the profile url be customized like LinkedIn allows (e.g. http://www.linkedin.com/in/austinhill)
- Consider auto-suggesting discoverable links to other profiles. I’ve already linked my FriendFeed account, blog & twitter to various other parts of my online public profiles. If Google wants to be the ‘One profile to rule them all’ it should consider using it’s indexing power to take some of the custom links I’ve added and detect links to my other profiles and suggest them to me as profiles to link to this one. (For instance, I still haven’t added my Friendfeed, Flickr or Last.Fm accounts. There are many others….)
Update: I added my Friendfeed account and discovered that Google does detect & suggest other links to add to my profile. Since Google has a much larger audience then Friendfeed, they might consider extending this functionality for users without Friendfeed.
- Provide the user with a clearer explanation of the benefits of setting up a Google Profile. I know that Google likes to sneak features & products into their mix of offerings early, but there isn’t a clear user value proposition associated with Google Profile. I happened upon it while doing something else in my Google account and because I’m promiscuous with use of online profiles I decided to give it a try. Users should understand what they gain, exchange & how the profiles might be used in conjunction with other Google products.
- Allow me to enter Tags associated with my profile. This could be a powerful way of creating, discovering other Google Profile.
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