New role – Google Profiles

I’m excited to share the news that I’ve taken on the additional responsibility of becoming product manager on Google Profiles. Last year’s announcement about Profiles was the first step towards making it easier to find people on Google; my job will be to build out the next steps.

What about Blogger? I’m not leaving Blogger behind; I will continue to keep in touch with the Blogger team and help as needed. Blogger remains in the very capable hands of Chang and Siobhan, and we continue to add engineers to the team (most importantly, outside of the US – giving Blogger much-needed perspective from outside North America, where more than half of our users/traffic comes from). As I’ve mentioned in the past few months, I’m particularly excited about what this year has in store for Blogger. Last month’s template designer is but one of many big developments planned – stay tuned!

All that said, the opportunity on Profiles was too good to pass up. I’d love to hear what you’d like to see from Profiles… leave a comment here or hit me on Twitter (I’m @rklau). I’m busy ramping up, but will start sharing some thoughts here in a week or so.

Oh, and my profile is here.

10 responses to “New role – Google Profiles”

  1. Congratulations! I have been waiting for “something amazing” to happen with Google Profiles since I first found them (and got some sweet business cards) now I am excited to see just that. In the past I put some recommendations/ideas for GP on the GFC help forums but I think most of all I would like to be able to see and manage my connections from there. Sites I follow or subscribe to, friends from GFC, people I follow on Reader & Buzz. I think it would be helpful to see that data and be able to manage it from there. I also would like to see the Google profile be an option for my Blogger Profile. I say option because I know, as I have in the past, people like to maintain separate online identities.Again congratulations Rick, looking forward to what you do.

  2. Congrats! I've admired your work for some time, and I am sure much of what you brought to Blogger will come to Profiles in time. Two things I'd love to see in Google Profiles. One, I'd like my photo stream to work. For reasons beyond my, my Picassa stream won't show up on my profile. Flickr works just fine, but not Picassa. I'm guessing its something that's easy to fix. Now the hard one. I agree with the previous post that it would be great to have the option to have one nig giant all encompassing profile to use across all Google services, and perhaps others as well. My Blogger profile is OK, but I'd rather let people see my main Google Profile. That would also make it more important to keep the Google profile up to date at all times. Just a couple of random items to put in your to do list. Again, kudos and best of luck!

  3. Hi Rick,Congratulation on the new position. I have seen the increase of Google Profile usage in the past months. Google Profile simplicity is the one of the main reason people are using it.I look forward on the upcoming features and updates on Google Profile. I foresee that Google Profile will become the next leading social platform under your leadership.Cheers

  4. Congrats! Google profiles got interesting to me when I saw Social Search and the Social Graph. I do have an odd related bug; my pal Anthony Citrano seems to have so much Google juice at his blog, it transfers ownership to everything it touches, even when he's just grabbing an image from elsewhere! I showed him in private but I'm sure the bug is evident publicly. FWIW.

  5. I want to mirror the congratulations. For Google Profiles: make my profile my default Google Contact for myself and make it the universal profile for all google services. When that happens, then the Pofile has real importance.

  6. Congratulations Rick. I can't wait to see what you bring to the table for Google Profiles. They're such a valuable tool, personally and professionally for business development, marketing and PR. Keep up the great work! – Gina Rubel, Owner, Furia Rubel Public Relations and Marketing

  7. Congratulations, Rick. Considering the work you've overseen with the Blogger team I'm sure Profiles will be doing lots of cool stuff in the future.

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