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What did Google+ get right?

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Re: What did Google+ get right?

#71

Post by delecti »

saurik wrote: post #63
rst wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah: this aspect--where the circles were essentially backwards--made the feature essentially useless. I post stuff about Android, and I post stuff about iOS, and I post stuff about abstract programming languages. Great! So I make three circles, and then... wait, users don't add themselves to my circles, they just follow my entire account and then I have to add people to the right circles somehow? ?!?

Circles are a great solution for social circles on a social network. I think most people who post like you describe would just use a mailing list, or a blog with multiple RSS feeds.

Re: What did Google+ get right?

#72

Post by Yhippa »

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.

I'm honestly shocked they still haven't figured a way to make it easier to assure me I can post stuff without it leaking as you say. This was definitely cool about Google+.

Re: What did Google+ get right?

#73

Post by combatentropy »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #42

It was actually super strange that in all the years it was there, Google never bothered to put ads in Google+. Had they done so, I wonder if they would've considered the platform more viable long-term?

Do you mean that they canned Google+ because it was making no money?

Surely at any time they could add ads. They knew how many people were going there and how often. Therefore they then could make a good guess, from their other apps, at how much money it would make them if they were to add ads.

It must have been that after doing the math they thought it was not worth it. Or maybe they never meant it to make money directly, only to feed into their other products, which make money. Either way, they knew how many people were going there and how often, and decided it wasn't doing what they wanted it to do and that it could not make enough money even if they added in ads.

Re: What did Google+ get right?

#74

Post by jyrkesh »

notatoad wrote: post #68
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.

I think Circles was a great example of what Google+ got wrong. If you are an alien species observing human interaction, you'll notice that it really is how people interact, they have different circles of friends or contacts that they might want to share things with, and a "circles" feature is a great way to organize your social network. What google missed was that nobody wants to sit down and explicitly categorize al…

> What google missed was that nobody wants to sit down and explicitly categorize all their friends into circles.

I actually found an weird satisfaction from doing this. It was beneficial for about a month until everyone I knew decided G+ was a ghost town.

I've been checking on how to simplify, gamify, or automation the categorization/labeling aspect for years. I think it would totally change the game on the flat news feed problem.

Re: What did Google+ get right?

#75

Post by finchisko »

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 ,…

talking from my heart. exactly this. all those g+ done right, are actually very geeky and IMO it actually scared people off using g+.

Re: What did Google+ get right?

#76

Post by dredmorbius »

I've yet to write a definitive post mortem (still in the thick of the Google+ Exodus, see: https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/), but most treatments I've seen miss substantial points.

G+ was endlessly frustrating, and yet still compelling.

The features many list were not part of the site for much its life: it launched without Search, Communities, or Collections. It morphed several times, significantly: May 2012 and 2013, the November 2013 YouTube forced integration, and several generally lesser ones after the site was in clear decline.

The low-friction interaction with notifications, and search capabilities, along with all-but-unlimited-length text posts, were strengths. As was underlying platorm stability.

The user cohort, yes, small, but geeky and academic, was a strength. (The SEO marketing contingent not so much.)

Noise, poor filters and organisational capabilities, and unwanted and intrusive integrations were downsides. Overall management was abysmal, likely for numerous reasons.

And yet I'd found it useful, within limits.

Re: What did Google+ get right?

#77

Post by pmarreck »

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 divide things up thusly:

Programming- or gaming-related: Twitter

"Fit for mass consumption": Facebook

Personal: Facebook (with privacy settings activated)

Re: What did Google+ get right?

#78

Post by ocdtrekkie »

combatentropy wrote: post #73
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #42

It was actually super strange that in all the years it was there, Google never bothered to put ads in Google+. Had they done so, I wonder if they would've considered the platform more viable long-term?

Do you mean that they canned Google+ because it was making no money? Surely at any time they could add ads. They knew how many people were going there and how often. Therefore they then could make a good guess, from their other apps, at how much money it would make them if they were to add ads. It must have been that after doing the math they thought it was not worth it. Or maybe they never meant it to make money dir…

For quite a long while, Google+ was the third largest social network. It's hard to imagine it could not have made a significant amount of money on ads.

It's definitely true that initially Google intended G+ to feed into the overall Google thing, and that many integrations of combining disparate Google properties together was actually done under the banner of G+.

But I do wonder with Ruth Porat's more "must be profitable" approach to Google divisions, if they had added ads a couple years ago, if it might've been considered worth maintaining.

Re: What did Google+ get right?

#80

Post by aeternus »

jyrkesh wrote: post #74
notatoad wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Circles was a great example of what Google+ got wrong. If you are an alien species observing human interaction, you'll notice that it really is how people interact, they have different circles of friends or contacts that they might want to share things with, and a "circles" feature is a great way to organize your social network. What google missed was that nobody wants to sit down and explicitly categorize al…

> What google missed was that nobody wants to sit down and explicitly categorize all their friends into circles. I actually found an weird satisfaction from doing this. It was beneficial for about a month until everyone I knew decided G+ was a ghost town. I've been checking on how to simplify, gamify, or automation the categorization/labeling aspect for years. I think it would totally change the game on the flat news…

It might be beneficial, but it is way too high-friction for most people. The group-based messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Kakao, Discord have basically achieved this same concept of pre-defined audiences using a much more familiar and low-friction concept (rich group chat).
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