Paul Adams of Google has put together one of the best social media presentations I have come across. This excellent presentation discusses a number of key points of social media and the new way of connecting online. His point that people have many interests and sometimes they should be kept separate is very valid and something I think about when connecting online.

So my name is Paul Adams and I work in the UX team at Google. Iʼm the user research lead for social, and work on things like Buzz and YouTube. I spend a lot of my time doing research with people on how they use social media. I sit down with people, and have them map out their social network for me, and we look at how they use tools like email, Facebook, Twitter, their phone, and so on. One of the things we talk about is the differences between their social network online, and their social network offline. Today, Iʼm going to talk about some of the things weʼve learned over the past few years, what it means for the future of the web, and some tips for design. Before I get down into some detail about social networks, I want to start by telling you a story from our research.

A note from Paul’s comments:

…the story is because the story is *real*, it’s not fictional. It’s a story from my research. I changed the names to protect the identity of our research participant but left all other details exactly as they were.

Visit Paul’s website: ThinkOutsideIn