The Texting – Google’s Next Social Circle?

Texting, invented in 1992, has changed little over the past 19 years. In the absence of innovation on the part of the phone companies, a number of companies have stepped in and created this new class of texting product that adds a significant value layer to the basic texting function. Group texting is like adding a party line (for those of you that remember them) to your text messages.

Texting is one of the most personal of communication technologies, it is ubiquitous and typically reaches into the most intimate social circles a user has. It has always been a one to one or a one to many product. Group texting does it one step better and puts any given circle of users into the same context and allows many to many communications through an online hub.

The players in the field, GroupMe, Disco.com, Huddl, FastSociety and Beluga offer up pretty much the same basic functionality of being able to create a new group of texters and an associated voip number via an online interface or a smart phone app. When a message is sent to the group’s unique number by any member, all members of the group receive the message. It is a service enhancement whose value is immediately obvious to even the most technically illiterate user. Group texting allows a group of users (up to 25 99) to coordinate their activities and/or movements quickly and easily.

To experiment with the technology I created a group for my four family members. To the right you can see their responses. My daughter, immediately upon experiencing it, set up one for her small group of 4 girl friends and has since been using it enthusiastically.

There is a business use case for the technology as well as a personal one.  When I showed it to my brother-in-law, a surgeon in a small practice, he created an account to allow the four doctors in his practice to help communicate hospital call schedule conflicts without the intervention of a secretary/intermediary, an immediate stress and time saver.

Beyond the basic functionality each of the services has a slightly different feature set that differentiates them.

Disco.com, perhaps because it is so new, is a bare bones product with just group texting. GroupMe and Fast Society add Latitude-like and mobile tele-conferencing features. Huddl adds more social integration and image sharing options.

Obviously the big boys think the space is important. Beluga was bought up by Facebook in early March. Disco.com, released at the end of March, was created internally at Google by a group that functions independently of the mother ship.

At the time of introduction, TechCrunch speculated that  Disco.com would stay independent of any social efforts at Google. I see that as unlikely. Any development in a corporation ultimately needs to contribute back. While disco.com might be able to make it as a stand alone product it would be much more valuable if integrated with the likes of Latitude, the new Offers or even Google Voice.  The team that created the product might stay as an independent development unit but ultimately the functionality of disco.com, like Hotpot, offers too much long term value to not bring it back into the corporate fold much.

Ultimately, group texting is a activity that is not only extremely useful to the users but also very social and very local in nature. It reaches into the inner sanctum of our lives and exists where we are the most influenced and are the most influential. If leveraged appropriately, it could offer advertisers an incredible opportunity to understand and participate in those inner worlds. The technology, in adding a layer to a trusted medium, holds up the promise of making the telcos dumb texting pipes and foreshadows them losing out on the value created by the layer. It offers who ever runs the service the best view of our most intimate circle of friends and family, the people that we most trust and love.

My sense is that functionality of group texting is so useful and obvious that capability will soon be everywhere. Who the leader will be is not yet clear.

Google Code Jam 2011

The Googlers are spending their 20% time to get ready for Google Code Jam 2011, preparing algorithmic problems for the 10,000 or more contestants who we expect to compete in our Qualification Round this Friday.

A good Code Jam problem has a story to ground it in some version of reality: soccer, ninja and messages from alien cultures have all served admirably. Cushioned by the story, the core of a Code Jam problem is an algorithmic puzzle whose solution needs anything from a few lines of code to a deep understanding of flow algorithms or number theory.

The ninja in the middle is solidly grounded in reality.

Anyone at Google can create Code Jam problems, which means that our methods for inventing them vary wildly. One author might come across a real-life situation, think about what algorithm would solve it, and base a problem on that; another author might think about how to make a problem out of a video game. Sometimes a problem author will start with an algorithm and concoct a problem that it solves. We also really seem to like inventing weird situations on chess boards.

With the story and the problem chosen, our work is only partly done. The problem has to be stated in such a way that it will be clear, even for an audience from 125 countries. At least three engineers work on each problem’s statement: that group includes at least one native English speaker to make sure the grammar is all correct, and at least one non-native English speaker to make sure the language is clear enough.

The toughest part about setting up a problem like this is verifying that contestants got it right. In Code Jam, we do that by providing contestants with an input file full of test data. They send back their program’s output, which should be the answer to the input file’s question. The hard part is deciding what goes in that input file: we need edge cases, plenty of average cases, and a good number of cases that make sure the contestant’s code is fast enough. To create all of those, we generate some cases by hand and others pseudo-randomly. We’ve been known to generate a test case or two out of ASCII art, or as a creative-writing exercise.

Finally, we solve the problems ourselves. We require at least three solutions made by different engineers, and sometimes we have those engineers write solutions that we know to be wrong – just to make sure our test data catches them out.

The end result of this process is the kind of problem we’re proud to ask our contestants to solve. In 2011 more than any other year, we’re excited about the creativity of our colleagues and the problems we’re planning to pose. We hope you’ll enjoy the problems from the other side – and if you’re a great software engineer, maybe come help us write them in 2012.

You can register for Google Code Jam 2011 at http://code.google.com/codejam, and you’ll see the first problems of the year in the Qualification Round this Friday, May 6, starting at 23:00 UTC. For even more details about how we get problems ready for Code Jam, you can read our official problem-preparation guide.
Bartholomew Furrow spends 80% of his time at Google finding ways to eliminate bad search ads, and the rest on Code Jam. Programming contests introduced him to Computer Science, to Google, and to his wife.

The Geo Teachers Institute

For years, Google’s geo products have been identified as a powerful learning toolkit that can help students conceptualize, visualize, share, and communicate information about the world around them.

This fall, we will host two Google Geo Teachers Institutes: September 23 and 24, 2011 in Washington DC at National Geographic Headquarters and September 26 and 27, 2011 at the University of Southern Maine Lewiston-Auburn College in Lewiston, Maine.

This event is a free professional development experience designed to help educators get the most from Google’s geo products and technologies. The Geo Teachers Institute is an intensive, two-day event where participants get hands-on experience using Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google SketchUp, including a focus on features like Ocean, Mars, Moon and Sky in Google Earth.

Attendees will learn about innovative instructional strategies and receive resources to share with colleagues. The Google Geo Education team hopes this event will empower educators to bring the world’s geographic information to students in a compelling, fresh, and fun way.

If you are interested, please complete this application. You will be notified if you are selected by August 15, 2011. Even if you can’t make it to this event, we have many online resources available for Google Earth and SketchUp and encourage you to check them out.