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What did Google+ get right?

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Re: What did Google+ get right?

#51

Post by eitland »

smacktoward wrote: post #48
eitland wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't like to think that users are too stupid for good solutions. I think it is a way to avoid admitting that we fail at ux innso many ways and in even more spectacular ways when we try to be smart and remove options.

My point wasn't that general users are stupid -- far from it! It's that they think about these things differently than programmers do, and so when we build solutions that are optimized for the way we think, we do them a disservice. In other words, dividing the world into "smart people" (e.g. us) and "dumb people" (e.g. everybody who isn't us) isn't productive. Realizing that there are people out there who think about…

> My point wasn't that general users are stupid -- far from it!

Thanks for clarifying. I guess we more or less agree somehow then.

Re: What did Google+ get right?

#53

Post by mjevans »

smacktoward wrote: post #17
arkitaip wrote: post #3

It's only now that I use Twitter on a daily basis that I realize the problem of having a single feed for your private life, work, hobbies, etc. It just doesn't work and is one of the main reasons why I unfollow people. I think the underlying functionality of circles and collections are a must but maybe they can be implemented in a better and easier to use way.

I think of the underlying problem as "the metadata delusion." We programmers look at difficulties users have dealing with large volumes of data and think, aha! I can solve this by giving them ways to add metadata to those data, so it can be more easily browsed/filtered/faceted/whatever. (We think that because programmers have an analytical cast of mind, which we then extrapolate from -- this would be useful for me ,…

Thank you; this explains why Google's photo thing keeps trying to create albums for me.

They're already attempting to optimize out the broken part of the working system. End users that just literally can't or can't be bothered.

Re: What did Google+ get right?

#54

Post by agumonkey »

ken wrote: post #44

Each of the individual features of Google+ sounded great on paper. I never used it so I can't comment on the implementation. What killed it for me is that it came from Google. They'd already showed they're terrible at customer service, and terrible at service longevity/continuity, and it just seems creepy for the same company to want to do my web browser, my phone, my search engine, my social media, my web hosting, m…

Google unification didn't not work. It forced so many things brutally .. even with cool ideas it would remove value from the whole Google brand. (a tiny barely significant example: I lost my youtube channel due to g+ real name policy)

That said, Google+ had a good bunch of interesting people discussing things nicely (vintage computing, craftmanship). There was a lot to enjoy and way less of the social network usual noise and chit chat drama.

Re: What did Google+ get right?

#55

Post by LanceH »

AlanSE wrote: post #47
CodeCube wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 100% agree, however I really didn't like manually curating those circles ... I share a relatively diverse set of things/interests, so would have loved to leave it up to the other party which facet of my "feed" they could have subscribed to. This isn't my use case, but a perfect example is people with kids. They're gonna share pictures and stuff of their kids, but as I'm sure you've seen, tons of people make comment…

Any system that requires manual curating of these things by the user is doomed to fail. I'm probably the demographic most prone to try features, so I'll try to make some circles, but I have to admit failure. Even whatever you called it in livejournal where you had specific sharing groups of friends - that was a burden to maintain. I eventually lost track of my organization. It just wasn't worth it.

All the automated systems fail as well. I don't see any way the overlaps can be automated without some people either missing out, or other people getting a bit much.

Re: What did Google+ get right?

#56

Post by rst »

erikig wrote: post #30

Circles Peoples relationships and interests tend to be grouped by their circles. Whatsapp and Facebook groups seem to understand this which is why they are soo sticky.

Unfortunately, when last I looked, there was no way to add yourself to a particular circle of some other user -- so if you wanted, say, Jennifer 8 Lee's articles, but didn't want your feed cluttered up with her pictures of dishes from restaurants, you had to ask her to do something individually. For people with diverse interests and large follower counts, this really doesn't scale.

Re: What did Google+ get right?

#57

Post by rak00n »

hateful wrote: post #50

The reason I used Facebook (emphasis on the past tense here) and not Google+ is for one reason only: I could not post something on my wife's "wall/timeline" in Google+. This is different than "tagging" someone in that it goes on their page, not yours so their friends can see it. I closed it and never used it again.

When you tag someone their friends can see it on her wall if she chooses to.

Re: What did Google+ get right?

#58

Post by eitland »

LanceH wrote: post #37
erikig wrote: post #30

Circles Peoples relationships and interests tend to be grouped by their circles. Whatsapp and Facebook groups seem to understand this which is why they are soo sticky.

This. I have family, military friends and recruiters and I don't want those conversations crossing over. With facebook, I have no idea what will leak across various groups of friends.

Actually to be honest, Circles wouldn't always preventing them from learning that they were both connected to you.

After messing up badly in the nymwars, forcibly joining together YouTube accounts with Gmail accounts they actually made a heavyweight but working solution:

It was given the name Pages which was more or less meaningless IMO (in this context).

What it felt like at the time however was a powerful solution for switching between pseudonyms connected to your account.

That said: Given a large reason for why Google+ is shutting down was that they had a couple of huge data leaks maybe we should all be glad kt wasn't too widely used :-]

Re: What did Google+ get right?

#59

Post by dragonwriter »

eitland wrote: post #58
LanceH wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I have family, military friends and recruiters and I don't want those conversations crossing over. With facebook, I have no idea what will leak across various groups of friends.

Actually to be honest, Circles wouldn't always preventing them from learning that they were both connected to you. After messing up badly in the nymwars, forcibly joining together YouTube accounts with Gmail accounts they actually made a heavyweight but working solution: It was given the name Pages which was more or less meaningless IMO (in this context). What it felt like at the time however was a powerful solution…

> Given a large reason for why Google+ is shutting down was that they had a couple of huge data leaks maybe we should all be glad kt wasn't too widely used

That's the reason it's already planned shutdown was accelerated, but the leaks occurred after it was essentially abandoned to palliative care.

Had it been sufficiently used, and therefore actively maintained, they may not have occurred.

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