Last year I announced I’d moved over to the Google Profiles team, and then went all but radio silent as we put our heads down to upgrade the product. Hilariously, last weekend someone not-so-subtly teased me by leaving an anonymous comment on that post: “11 months and counting…” (It’s nice to know people are paying attention, I guess!)
Well, the wait’s over. Over at the Social Web Blog, you can read the blog post that outlines what’s new. Most notable, from my point of view:
- bigger profile pic – go update yours now!
- “scrapbook” lets you pick 5 thumbnails to show on your About page (clicking through will open the pics in full-screen lightbox mode)
- overall update to the look & feel
- “About” tab is the default tab (whether you use Buzz or not)
- Buzz users can choose to hide the tab (if, for instance, you don’t use it or just don’t want it shown)
- several fields have auto-complete (e.g., schools, employers)
- search visibility is controllable: you can choose to prevent your profile page from being indexed
And here’s what it looked like before:
There’s more (hint: upload multiple profile pics, see if you can figure it out), and a lot more to come in the weeks and months ahead. I’m really proud of the team – this represents a complete rewrite of the profile, and will serve as a great foundation for more fun stuff down the road.
That said, the opportunity at YouTube was simply too good to pass up. I’ll have more to share about the new gig soon. In the meantime, go update your profile (or create one)!
14 responses to “The New Google Profile is here!”
How many more positions do you need to have at Google before you unlock the “Only Brin Knows More About This Company Than Me” achievement?
Love the new look and functionality! Nice job!! Oddly, it does not appear to be working in the dev version of Chrome yet though.
> “About” tab is the default tabYAY!
It looks great, can't wait to see it on mine. I am really looking forward to more and new functionality though. Google Profiles has been my favourite Profile page on the web for a while, and hopefully this new look will convince many other people of its greatness, too. My only wish is for it to be better incorporated into all the various Google services.
I didn't know you moved over to YT. Congratulations and good luck!Is your blog title a riff on The Jerk? It seems perfect.”This is the kind of spontaneous publicity – your name in print – that makes people. I'm in print! Things are going to start happening to me now.”
I'm trying to figure out the “flip” feature on profile pics that others are talking about.
Great work Rick. Expecting more from Google social projects.
I use a Google Apps account (contact@myname.com) and the Google profiles does not work: “This service is not available.”Do you intend to extend Google Profiles to Google APPS accounts?
You get to play with all the cool toys… >I'm now a PM at YouTube
Congrats on the new gig!(And how do I activate the updated Profile?:)
Thanks for the kind words, everyone!Dave: you can see your profile by going to https://profiles.google.com/me; within the very near future, all requests for profiles will redirect to the new profile. (Team's just making sure that there are no gotchas now that things are launched.)
This is an excellent update. I just got through fiddling with the new fields, please let the Buzzers know if a contest for “new values” ever comes up. Nothing really missing, it would just be a lot of fun.
Thanks, Rick.The new Profile look very sharp. But is there any place we can report bugs to the team? I'm having an issue with the profile pic cropping. It seems to work in the editor, but once the image is live the section visible isn't the one I selected. This is true in Safari, Firefox, and Chrome on OS X. Yes, I tested them all. I'm thorough like that. 🙂 (Although I didn't reboot.)Let us know how we can help with your YouTube social strategy!
Rick – Looks great. Now tell us more about your alter ego, “Simon Haskell – urban planner, foodie, and tech-geek”!