BEST OF THE WEB: Will Google+ go the distance?

Google has been the focus of a lot of attention this week, and rightly so. Its return to social media with Google+ is definitely one of the most interesting launches of the year.

Google needs a win here. Its last efforts in networking, Google Buzz and Google Wave, were failures and the latter was even shut down. But this time it’s managed to pick a winner, particularly with the idea of “circles” and group chat programs.

First impressions have been good. If this piece from MG Seigler from TechCrunch is to be believed, then Google+ should keep users coming back.

This in-depth piece from Wired on Google’s entire social strategy is worth a read too, and provides some good context for how the company plans to go about being the next big thing in social.

“A post from someone in your extended network might have less weight than someone in your family circle,” says Shimrit Ben-Yair, Google product manager. “So you may or may not stumble upon it, based on the ranking it would have.”

This emphasis on separating different circles of friends may end up being a winner for Google – time will tell if Facebook follows suit.

Mobile payments? Try mobile keys

There’s a lot of talk about mobile payments right now, and with figures like these from Juniper showing mobile payments will grow to $US670 billion by 2015, there’s good reason to be excited.

But there’s more research going on in the smartphone space than just payments. This piece from the New York Times shows how one day, your smartphone could not only replace your wallet, but your keys as well.

This is an exciting prospect, but think of the ramifications. Security experts are already trying to figure out how businesses can protect themselves if an employees’ phone goes missing. Just imagine if they misplaced their keycard as well?

The most important woman in Silicon Valley

There’s been a lot of talk about Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg lately. With the company preparing for an IPO next year, expanding with new products and proving that it might have the edge over Google, Sandberg is responsible for a lot of the company’s direction.

This in-depth piece from the New Yorker takes a long look at Sandberg and her history. After joining Facebook at Mark Zuckerberg’s request to help steer the network in its next phase of growth, Sandberg has brought some much-needed experience to the youthful start-up.

The piece describes some of the more interesting ins and outs of the early days of Sandberg’s job at Facebook, (she rejected a job at Google to work there) and positions her as a key player for the next few years – and a potential chief executive.

The rising cost of tech

As the world depends more and more on technology in the home, the cost of living required to keep up with everything increases as well.

But as this piece in The Atlantic points out, that’s becoming a bit of a hurdle for some. The increased need for internet-enabled smartphones and tablets, along with more powerful televisions and set-top boxes, is also putting a lot of upward pressure on electricity bills.

It’s great having all the newest tech, but as this piece points out, there’s clearly a very real price to pay.

Building business in a revolution

It’s been a while since the Egypt revolution kicked off and the political strife has simmered down. But as the country begins to rebuild, the question remains: how will businesses survive?

This piece in All Things Digital examines just how tech companies can survive in such an environment, and profiles three entrepreneurs that are managing to navigate the tech industry in a country that has just undergone a revolution.

“A country with a decent crop of engineers and a fresh start seemed to me like a reasonable place to develop a start-up community, especially one that could build products for the Middle East, based around cultural norms that foreign companies might have difficulty designing for,” says Weather HD app maker Amr Ramadan.

Egypt still has a lot of work today, but as this piece shows, the potential for entrepreneurship there may be better than ever.