Om Malik and others have recently blogged about the emergence of the "Alive Web" - which is all about the live interaction with others, the real-time, the here-and-now. Turntable.fm has been one of the representative example of it, and also Chatroulette.
People talk about how Google Plus also supports this trend, giving the Google+ Hangouts as example. I agree the Google+ launch has taken the Alive Web one giant leap forward - but for me the major "WOW" moment is not about any of its end-user features like Hangouts, Huddles, or the new Games. What is the most amazing leap for me is Google's "Alive" development and iteration of the Google+ product.
I have NEVER seen any company be as open and as interactive about feature and UX design of a product in the scale of Google+. This is not about how high-ranking Googlers are publically active on the product while some exects of other companies that don't use their own product (+Thomas Hawk mentioned Carol Bartz doesn't have a Flikr account). I am talking about how, from day one, the Google+ team is in the frontlines, using the product itself to generate a live conversation with the users, eliciting feedback through the feedback button, posts that ask about general or specific feedback, responding to user's posts about suggestions and/or complaints, or holding public hangouts for Q&A. Every few days we see another post and video with new features, directly responding to user comments and requests. Some recent examples by product manager +Shimrit Ben-Yair, designer +Jonathan Terlesky, and software wizard +Andy Hertzfeld, here, here, and here.
This is way beyond the traditional "agile development" methodologies. This is a near-realtime development cycle, with continuous user engagement, feedback, and response.
What we're seeing here is the Alive Development of the Alive Web.
What we're seeing here is the Alive Development of the Alive Web.
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