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Why Google+ Failed

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Re: Why Google+ Failed

#101

Post by joncrane »

leadingthenet wrote: post #85
hateful wrote: post #61

While I do (mostly) agree with this article, it fails to mention the #1 reason why I never used it. I couldn't post something on someone else's page. I could post something to my "feed" and they could happen to see it. But I couldn't post something into their "feed" (wall, timeline) where all their friends could see it and then comment on it. It was more like Twitter than Facebook. Maybe I'm wrong, but too me they we…

I never understood why you would want to do that. I also never see people do that on Facebook, is it an American thing?

Well Happy Birthday wishes is the big one.

Other times there's like maybe an inside joke or a picture or an anecdote that you think that their friends would enjoy more than your friends.

It's used way more by younger people, though.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#102

Post by icebraining »

jrockway wrote: post #35

The ranking system did kind of annoy me. We used G+ heavily inside of Google, and lots of interesting people posted interesting things. As time wore on, I felt like I got less and less of that stuff. A coworker would say "did you see so and so's G+ post" and I would go look for it and not be able to find it until I begged someone a link. I followed them. They followed me. The post had 300 +1s. But I could never see i…

Medium is disagreeable, but there are many blogging sites still around, and people still follow them.

A good example is Syonyk's Project Blog (https://syonyk.blogspot.com/). It's hosted on Blogspot, and despite being relatively recent - started in 2015, long past the peak of blogging - he already has over 2.3 million views (total), just writing interesting detailed logs of his tech and home projects.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#103

Post by hawski »

fyoving wrote: post #66

I always thought the name had something to do with it, "google plus" doesn't sound right specially for a social network, also "Hangouts" is a terrible name, it doesn't internationalize well nor does it work for an enterprise setting, and "keep" is a good app but it should be called "google notes" nevermind they already used that name on a now defunct product. Google has been worse at naming products than they have a…

They changed Keep's name a few times, I don't think they are done. When I pull the app drawer in my phone I always wonder where will things be in a couple of months. Some apps have Google prefix, some don't. Some had, but now they don't. When they have the prefix, I can see only bunch of icons with the same label "Google...". It seems that now they are at no-Google-prefix phase, but I expect to see it changed a couple of times.

Keep naming history went somewhere like this: Keep, Google Keep, Notatki Keep (Notatki for Notes in Polish). So I had to relearn a couple of times where they were.

Chromecast app had it even worse, because at one time it merged or became Home. Of course it had it's Google-prefix phase AFAIR. It probably went something like this: Chromecast, Google Cast, Google Home, Home.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#104

Post by dredmorbius »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #51
jrockway wrote: post #35

The ranking system did kind of annoy me. We used G+ heavily inside of Google, and lots of interesting people posted interesting things. As time wore on, I felt like I got less and less of that stuff. A coworker would say "did you see so and so's G+ post" and I would go look for it and not be able to find it until I begged someone a link. I followed them. They followed me. The post had 300 +1s. But I could never see i…

I guess it's a fair post-mortem for G+ the product, but I'm personally more interested in what happens to content on G+. For example, Linus Torvalds blogged on it (eg. dead link https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/1vyfmNCY... about why he switched away from Suse), and many others as well. The content is why I occasionally went there, and why people outside Google posted there (assuming a big name won'…

98%+ of all Google+ public content was archived and was / will be posted to the Internet Archive.

https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Google%2B

You'll need to know, or track down, the user or content page to find it. E.g.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190102053619/https://plus.goog...

Raw archive dumps:

https://archive.org/details/archiveteam_googleplus

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#105

Post by mrbanks »

Totally missing from that blog post: People won't want to use something if Google tries to cram it down their neck. I lost count of the various dirty tactics they used to try force me onto it.

That is the number 1 reason why it failed.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#106

Post by SamBam »

mattkevan wrote: post #94

The problem with Google+ is that using it felt like work . It had some nice ideas, and was in many ways better than Facebook. But it wasn't fun, and it wasn't somewhere that was pleasant to hang out for long. It also felt like it was solving a problem for Google, but not for its users. I could see how it would be strategic for Google to counter Facebook, and how tying searches into my social graph would result in muc…

They learned the wrong lesson from the Gmail invites. The artificial scarcity of Gmail invites worked better than their wildest dreams. People were selling invites on eBay, trading then, etc. It worked really well to generate buzz. So of course they tried to replicate it. But if you're the only Gmail user among your friends, you can still email them. As you say, if you're the only Google+ user, you have no one to talk to.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#107

Post by dredmorbius »

Already__Taken wrote: post #43
eitland wrote: post #24

Worst part is they refused to keep and improve the parts that actually worked well. I wrote about this a while ago and submitted it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19515513

> Google plus had circles The problem was it relied on people self-categorizing their own content. So just some person in the reddit web design circle thinks sharing their dogs or kids photos is fine and at that point G+ was worthless to me. IT's just subreddits without the moderation.

No, Circles required users to self-categorise other people's content.

Leading to the inevitable "you're holding it wrong" accusations agaist the poster that they weren't posting correctly.

Collections, a late feature addition, helped this markedly.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#108

Post by conductr »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #89
duxup wrote: post #73

I feel dumb for saying it, but I didn't understand "circles". I think I actually did but I found it a bit confusing and assumed I didn't understand. Actually generally I didn't understand what Google thought the workflow for Google+ was "supposed to be." This actually is something I find hard to understand about a lot of their products. There will be a heartwarming video, or some announcment showing a gee wiz feature…

I understood circles. I spent two hours carefully categorizing everyone I added into the perfect Venn diagram. And then I realized that this was bonkers, and that I never wanted to do it again.

Ya I never used it but assumed that was their way of trying to be Facebook LinkedIn and Twitter all at once. Problem being the world already had those services and by being separated the circle management is done for you.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#109

Post by GeekyBear »

salad77 wrote: post #87
Marazan wrote: post #70

Realnames. It was entirely Realnames on launch. Realnames Realnames Realnames. Realnames stopped people joining just at a point where Facebook was being incredibly shitty.

Real names AND the instant account lock with no hope of reversal if your name failed the opaque real name check. I lost access to a gmail account and everything associated with it because g+ didn't like my name. Account totally locked. Gone. Forever.

Reading about other people being locked out of their Gmail account (with no recourse) was exactly what prevented me from even trying Google+.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#110

Post by underdown »

fyoving wrote: post #100
mattkevan wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feels like the same people responsible for Mircrosoft's product decisions in the 2000s have now all moved to Google, with a slight twist in strategy. When a Microsoft product didn't do well they called it something different and relaunched, hoping no-one realised it was the same old thing – e.g. Zune Music/Xbox Music/MSN Music/Groove Music/Microsoft Store etc. Google now* just kills it and launches something else, so…

I don't mind the killing off of stuff that doesn't catches on it's a mark of dynamism.

After a while it starts looking like a bloodbath
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