Google+ is shaping up to be Google’s greatest foray into the social media landscape.

This bold move into social networking has shaken up the web, attracting 20 million user sign-ups in 3 weeks, dwarfing previous attempts at cracking socializing their brand. Google+ centralizes other Google products, including +1, Gchat, and even Buzz into a single, highly flexible and quick performing interface.

Many are celebrating G+ for its upgraded 21st century privacy and information-sharing practices:

• Allows users to group contacts into circles (and control information by circle), whereas with Facebook, it is harder to create groups and organize contacts as the interface encourages sharing content with all contacts.
• Transparency and clarity on how to control one’s search visibility, whereas Facebook’s visibility settings are buried deep in account settings.
• Enables users to track news about personal interests through the “Sparks” function

You can learn more about G+’s privacy advancements by reading this infographic. As we monitor the growth of G+, here are some audience dynamics to keep in mind:

• Advertisers: Google is likely to become more hands on in managing profiles; in order to compete with Facebook, they have to spice up its offerings to agencies and brands they work with. This includes having people use their real names and publishing their print magazine Think Quarterly, which overtly caters to agencies and is put together by Google’s Trends and Insights department. G+’s impact on the SEO expertise will be impacted as the algorithm behind Google’s search results has changed. Google will continue to tweak how it ranks results based on a user’s network and location.
• User Expansion: Unlike Facebook, the demographics on G+ lack diversity. Less than 10% of G+ users are women; age-wise, it skews older.
• Global Markets: India is positioned to be the second largest popular of G+ users after the USA, according to Comscore .

Next week we will cover some of Google’s challenges and emerging criticisms. Follow us on Twitter @ppl_are_amazing as we keep our pulse on how users and the world is responding to the latest cultural developments on the Internet and beyond!

Cities are gearing up for the future. With current projections estimating that 80% of the world’s population will be living in urban areas by 2030, cities such as New York, Paris are hatching lofty urban development plans.  But are governments paying enough attention to aligning people’s behavior with their plans? How are they working to shape collective urban behavior?

PlaNYC is New York’s own program, launched in 2007 under Mayor Bloomberg. It includes targeted developments in 6 areas:

- Land: More effective usage of space by providing quality housing, creating open space, and care for green spaces.

- Water: NYC’s water system has suffered tremendously from industrial treatment. The program aims to ensure the purity of water in the system and the safety of bodies of water surrounding the city.

- Transportation: goals include the improvement of travel times, reducing the occurrence of gridlocks on the road.

- Energy: Aims to increase supply of clean energy sources, promoting upgrades, and reduce the demand of large energy consumers by forming NYC’s Energy Planning Board.

- Air: This issue is closely tied to transportation, which counts for 50% of NYC’s air pollution.

In line with increased transparency for taxpayers, you can download the original 2007 report or track progress to date in the 2010 Progress Report (2010).  Progress reports contain many statistics showcasing annual developments in the city-wide program.

Initiatives like OpeNYC, MaintaiNYC, and GreeNYC have noble principles. But plans alone do not a city make, and the success of these initiatives requires another essential component- the willingness of residents to evolve their behavior and culture.

For example, an area the report excludes, but has been top-of-mind for the government, is the development of how NYC residents interact with the government. Leveraging NYC’s tech savvy community, they hired NYC’s first Chief Digital Officer, Rachael Sterne, to develop digital tech connecting the public to the government. As founder of civic-journalism platform Groundreport she is insightful when it comes to leveraging social media to disperse news and organize real-time data. She sees social networks as a content creation and documentation platform. It will be interesting to see how her perspective will impact the NYC government’s initiatives.

In a statement, she said “My goal in this role is to help the world’s greatest city become the world’s most innovative city through online and mobile technologies that help citizens and enhance the quality of services.” Rachael Sterne plays up the role of technology, but again, what goes missing is the clarity in how the tools her team is developing will be adopted. How does the city plans to influence behavior? Through advertising campaigns and cute bird mascots? Something tells us New York can come up with a smarter, more culturally resonant solution.

Even with the introduction of new tools and initiatives, human behavior is not easy to change, and it will be interesting to see if the government is able to shift consumption and living habits to align its residents with the City’s larger goals.

Some are easy, some…not so much. Nice to see fonts are getting interesting!

While some in their 20s are busy creating the memories they will fondly think of in the years to come, others are already reminiscing of the ‘days of yore’. According to a NYT article titled “Harry Potter is their Peter Pan,” Generation Y (known by some as Millennials) are experiencing an early onset of nostalgia. Even though some Millennials haven’t even reached the double decade checkpoint, they are pining for souvenirs of the past. One indicator of this phenomenon is the current music scene. 90s tween music sensations Backstreet Boys and New Kids on the Block are back in action and hitting the stage for a summer tour. At the same time, queen of 90s pop, Britney Spears, has been killing it with a new best-selling album, Femme Fatale, a well-received performance on ABC’s Good Morning America, and highly anticipated upcoming summer tour.

But it’s not just music—many TV networks are bringing back an all-star line of hit shows that debuted during the 90s. Nickelodeon recently announced their plan to launch “The 90s Are All That, ” which will air reruns of 90s classics such as Pete and Pete, Clarissa Explains It All, and All That during a late night slot. “At the time, we were completely devoted to that audience ages 9, 10, and 11,” Keith Dawkins, senior VP and general manager of TeenNick, tells EW. “It was ground-breaking and for the young viewers, a powerful and pivotal time in their lives. Those kids who are now 22, 23 and 24 want to bring that back.” Rolling Stones magazine reported that MTV will be resurrecting their hit show Beavis and Butthead with fresh new episodes featuring modern day pop-culture references. “They’ll watch Jersey Shore, UFC matches and user-generated videos from YouTube, in addition to music videos.” Last year, late night talk show host, Jimmy Fallon, received over 80,000 petitions on his website to get the cast of “Saved By the Bell” to reunite (I am still waiting for it to happen…).

After reading about this 90s pop-culture renaissance, I started to notice subtle things my friends, fashion, and New York at large were sporting that were straight up 90s. Colored jean shorts and tacky, stripped sweaters were just the beginning. Some started sporting sparkly blue nail posh color that looked uncomfortably similar to the one I wore for my sixth grade dance party. Childhood snacks such as Gushers, Fruit Roll Ups, Spaghetti-Os, Dunk-a-Roos were all making a culinary comeback on the “late-night” scene. Someone even brought out a “Skip It” at a party a year ago (which in theory was awesome, but more exercise then I was willing to exert at the hour).

As silly and innocent as these throwbacks seem, it is curious why nostalgia is hitting a generation at such a young age. According to the NYT’s article, authors writing on generational identity credit this early onset to the traumatic events of September 11th. If trauma is the culprit, the list shouldn’t end there. Natural disasters from Katrina to Japan are becoming more of a norm than not, wars in the Middle East are still carrying on, and the Great Recession of 2008 left the nation with a dismal unemployment rate, jump in home foreclosures, and overall weakening of morale. On the opposite side of the spectrum, “the political and economic climate of the late ’90s had been as soothing as a Backstreet Boys ballad: no wars, unemployment as low as 4 percent, a $120 billion federal surplus.”

Compared to the sunshine and roses that was the 90s, it’s no wonder why Millennials are longing for the innocence and care-freeness that defined their childhood. The American “freak outs” in the 90s don’t hold a candle to what’s going on now. I can only imagine what a poker game between the two decades would look like: “Yes, 1990s, I see your Avian Flu Virus and Y2K bug scare and raise you the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry and on going wars (plural) in the Middle East”. I think 2000s just won that hand.

In times of crisis, it’s always comforting to resort back what has worked in the past to lift the spirits. As stated by Gen X author and expert Jeff Gordinier, “Nostalgia comforts people and the Millennials are probably craving comfort right now”. If it’s the comfort of 90s pop culture you are craving, then you’re in luck because that’s what’s going down. So go to the local music store, buy the Compact Disc of Mrs. Spears new album, grab your Kraft Ham and Cheese Lunchable and Capri Sun, and camp out on your beanbag for the witty banter of Kenan and Kel– we’ll let it slide this time.

We recently acquired out newest member to the F+H team, Aziz Ali. Check out his bio below!

+Aziz Ali is Senior Trends Analyst at FATHOM+HATCH. +Aziz (Yes, he has a ‘Plus’ sign in front of his name) is known to have a patient approach in dealing with business problems, preferring careful dialectical discussion with a hint of instinctive thinking and collaborative problem solving.

He prides himself on having a “pretty good” attention span, balanced between fierce RSS-speed reading (which he gets from his journalist father) and an immaculate ability to read deeply (which he gets from his bookworm mother). Prior to joining Edelman, +Aziz obtained his MS from the University of Illinois in Advertising. He focused on research, strategic planning, and social media with clients including BMW, Walmart, Pepsi, Bosch, Hyundai, and Samsung. He is also a contributing editor to trend-forecasting consultancy PSFK.

A peak at his Twitter feed @plusaziz will reveal his avid interest of trends and developments in Africa and Asia. He loves taking platforms beyond basic their utility by finding new ways to leverage RSS technology, blogging platforms, social bookmarking, and an endless array of other sites to crack a business problem, create resources, and communities.

Well, dear readers, this goes down as one of the most peculiar things we have come across so far this year. In late January a Baby Grand piano was found stranded on a sand bar in Biscayne Bay, Miami. Residents, local authorities and our F+H team had no clue how the piano got there, who put it there and why they did so. But we did know one thing: it was entirely awesome.

It was later revealed that 16 year-old Nicholas Harrington was the man behind the mystery with a little help from some friends and family. Nicholas, with the aid of his father, retrieved the piano from his grandmother’s home and stationed it as his house in Miami. After lighting the piano on fire at a party (yes, you read that correctly), Nicholas and Co decided to dispense the Baby Grand in the middle of the bay. Why you ask? As stated in a CNN article covering the story, “I liked the idea of an anonymous piano out there, no explanation to it,” he said, adding that he viewed it as art for a portfolio in a future college application.” I would love to be the admissions officer reviewing that college application.

October is an exciting month for us. Workmates John and Alycia will both be on stage performing at local Manhattan venues. As a classically trained pianist with a background in Jazz piano, Alycia has been described as having the biting technique of a performance pro wrapped in the laid-back feel of a blues lounge. Alycia will be singing and playing the piano Thursday night, October 27th, at Wicked Willy’s on Bleecker Street around 7:30 p.m.

John will be reading some of his brilliant short fiction Friday, October 29th, at KGB in the East Village as part of Paragraph’s monthly series showcasing the work of their members, 7-8 p.m.

On a more outdoorsy note, the team went hiking for the day in Mohonk Preserve around New Paltz, New York. After a beautiful hike in perfect fall weather, we dined on schnitzel and spaetzle at the Mountain Brauhaus. It was lecker!