Slide Animations - This is a critical part of any Powerpoint ninja’s repertoire. Now finally we’re able to create more interesting animations to bring results alive on a slide. Currently they have about 6 different animations available but hopefully more will roll out.

Enhanced Transitions – Moving slide to slide is always a necessity, and although I don’t usually like to use involved transitions because it usually takes the focus away from your presentation to the technology driving your presentation, I realize that it has it’s place. More work seems to be needed on this aspect, however, as some transitions like “Cube” works well when you have light colors as the majority of a slide, however if black is the main color, transitions like “Cube” seem a bit awkward and clunky.

Shape Linking - This is an excellent tool that not enough people use in whatever platform they’re working in. Now you can link any shape in your google presentation to a) another slide b) a specific url or c) an email address. This is great if you want to do simple wireframes of a website in your google doc or use it to other resources (like publicly shared google docs, or google sites or another cloud service). Right clicking is supported which is awesome. Note too, that you can link other things besides shapes, like lines, words and images. You need to use the hyperlink icon for this, as currently I’m not seeing an option to link to these things under a right click context menu.

All in all, these are important elements that have been keeping me from using google’s presentations product. We’ll have to see if presentations can now completely rival Microsoft’s product or if MS still has the upper hand here.

Case in point – I was sent an email about Starbucks’ new iphone app. (Apparently the old one will break, and you gotta get the new one.) The problem is that I don’t currently use an iphone app. However, I just downloaded a Starbucks Android app a few weeks ago. If Starbucks were truly at the cutting edge of customer relevancy they would have taken the data that I gave them when I downloaded my app and matched the email that I used within the app, which is the same email address as is linked with my rewards account and email opt-in subscription. All of that data should have fed to a database that updated my profile in terms of what channels I’m using to relate to the brand. Android, yes. iPhone, no. It’s a pretty simple distinction, but it’s a data complexity that’s hard for Starbucks, and I think all major consumer brands to get a hold of.

Part of the problem is that usually companies use a stand alone service to send out their marketing emails. That service, while excellent at delivering emails and producing reporting for those emails, fails when it has to integrate data from other systems. It’s not just email, because companies have to deal with data collected from social media efforts, customer website visits, loyalty program interactions, direct mail responses, phone calls and other touches. This is why it’s critical that every company invests in their systems so they communicate with each other. There isn’t yet a holy grail company that will handle this perfectly across channels, but there are quite a few that are coming close and make it a priority to easily integrate with other systems whether it be custom apps for that platform, or more generally, an API that can be used to sync relevant fields.

In the end, it’s really the customer’s experience that matters. When a loyal Starbucks customer like myself gets disappointed by a “miss” experience like this, and I get an advertisement from Pete’s Coffee or a local coffeeshop that impresses me, then I’m one step closer to being an ex-customer. But for now, I’ll forgive Starbucks, because I know how frustrating data silos can be.

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Identity – the newest battleground for social media

When you see timeline, from a consumer perpsective, you immediately notice how the infinite scroll format is much like posterous, or other blog oriented platforms.  The difference is that because all of the assets on  your facebook page are your own, personal assets, this page does indeed resemble who you are.  Online.   So it makes sense as Google takes alot of heat for demanding “real names” from it’s users, and other startups create “about me” plays encouraging users to customize and curate on their pages what their online “face” looks like, that Facebook has leveraged their defacto leading status as the leading U.S. based social network, to make it easier to represent who you are, online.

On other social networks your identity is based primarily on “what you say” or “what you do” – but often not both of these things are very well integrated.  Facebook timeline will be the mega play at representing both actions and thoughts for each individual facebook user out there.

Things are Speeding up in the Social World

It’s interesting to note the rapid pace of improvements that has happened at Facebook in the last 2 months.  Privacy and sharing improvements that users have been wailing for for years have finally been implemented.  Timeline’s magazine style layout introduces a more personal, almost “My Space” customization ability (but not quite so liberal).  Again, this freedom for expression is something that users have asked for and Facebook’s been critiqued for not implementing.  Yet we’re seeing it roll out in just a few short weeks after Google+ hit the net.  Not to mention minor tweaks like Facebook’s increase in the character limit to compete with Google’s.

The great part of all these indications is that now that there are competitors to Facebook that are lean & nimble, it increases the competition in the space and this means a better experience for social media users all over the world.  The options for expressing oneself through social media is increasing at an almost extreme pace, and it means that companies will be watching each other very closely to see where this evolution is heading.  For us as users, this can only be a good thing.

Verbs as Monetization

I have to wonder when Facebook will really sink their teeth into the brand money that’s out there, and I got a glimpse at the next step.  Though I hadn’t thought much about the vocabulary used on Facebook before, they emphasized that they’d only really used nouns before “Luis liked Stevie Wonder” (proper noun).  Forthcoming, Facebook will make verbs accessible on the platform.  So sentences like “Luis hiked at Diamond Back Trail” will start appearing, thus linking action with a thing – which ostensibly could be a brand name.  Right now, the open graph concept allows all developers to use the verb / noun construct however they want – but requires developers to wait while they review and approve submissions.  It follows that this would be a perfect monetization strategy for Facebook, charging a premium for brands to list their app’s activity under certain verbs.  I don’t think they’re doing this currently, but it would make sense as part of a larger monetization strategy around timeline.

I would love to “own” a verb.

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Chart courtesy of The Economist

via Nation’s GDP as US States, China Provinces | The Big Picture.

via 170 million Americans

via Why Save PBS ? | The Big Picture.