Thunderbolt Digital is home to a professional team with expertise in all things digital, including web design Surrey, social media management, web development, hosting, and more! The team here at Thunderbolt HQ are big Google fans, and as such like to keep up with what they’re doing so we can remain inspired and motivated to keep working towards our goal of being the best digital agency in the South East. Google always have interesting news to share, and it’s no different with their recent announcement of their newest app, Spaces.
Google have recently announced the creation of a new app called Spaces, which allows for easier group sharing with integrated chat; in Spaces, you can search Youtube and Chrome without having to switch apps before sharing. A key highlight of this new app is that users can keep talking whilst watching video or reading posts; again, these open in-app without closing the conversation. Google’s powerful search algorithms also function within Spaces, making it very easy to search past conversations, posts and even photos (sophisticated image recognition allows pictures to be found with keywords even if they aren’t in the metadata).
So what could such an app be used for? Well, Google has suggested using Spaces for things like study groups, organising trips and get-togethers, planning home renovations, and creating social groups about common interests (such as comic books or TV shows).
Some seem to be confused about the exact purpose of the app and have argued that it’s somewhat superfluous, and that Spaces seems to be overlapping with Google+ Hangouts. It has also received criticism for being too generalised to make an impression (and has even been described as “a social app that’s looking for a purpose”), as it’s believed that apps need to be more specialised to gain traction.
It’s certainly true that Google know what they’re doing when it comes to data and search algorithms, but are less successful with social sites and apps. With this in mind, does this mean that this is all just an attempted revamp for the unsuccessful Google+? Or does this idea actually hold more merit? Being able to search for links without having to switch apps is certainly useful, but app switching is more of an annoyance than a problem that needs to be solved, though perhaps users will feel differently. If Spaces takes off then it will prove Google’s risk that users are willing to install a whole new app just to bypass a simple annoyance, which will open doors for whole new projects encompassing this idea.