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Why Google+ Failed

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Re: Why Google+ Failed

#171

Post by Mvandenbergh »

trevize1138 wrote: post #119
imgabe wrote: post #117

I think a lot of it came down to their "invite-only" launch. I remember a lot of my friends were excited to try it. Some of us were able to get invites, some weren't. Eventually the people who couldn't get on right away just said "screw it" and went back to Facebook. The rest of us followed because that's where we could interact with everyone and not just the people who happened to get on Google+. By the time it open…

Sounds like they were trying to emulate the early days of FB some people pine for where you had to have a .edu email address to sign up. I know a few friend were hopeful that Google+ meant they would no longer see posts from their racist uncle or gullible aunt. Start out with that same kind of exclusivity and hopefully it builds this exclusive mystique so when you open it up to everybody you get a flood. Perhaps the…

Facebook had what turned out to be an accidentally brilliant way of bootstrapping networks and trust.

Fundamental problem: social networks with no-one on them are not fun and not sticky.

Fundamental problem 2: if anyone can read what you're writing, it's not a social network, it's a blog. So you can't just let anyone see what people are writing.

The way FB handled that in the early days was that by default, people in the same university network could see your status etc. I don't remember exactly what they could and couldn't do but the point is that they created a semi-privileged circle of people with some access based on a pre-made group that people would be familiar with - fellow students at the same university.

That gave people a network from day 1 in what felt like a controlled way. Also, as noted, they started with a desirable closed group that people wanted to belong to.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#172

Post by WalterSear »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #129
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…

Is there a list of Google services somewhere? I'm always astonished at how I only hear of SOO many of their services only in their obituary.

Not the list you are looking for:

https://gcemetery.co/

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#173

Post by wbl »

el_programmador wrote: post #133
x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they did that because of how well it worked for GMail. And Facebook was restricted too in the beginning. Obviously, Google+ didn't benefit from following the precedents set by other successful launches.

GMail's time was different, there was a lot less competition among web services back then.

At the time Gmail launched there were a bunch of mail services.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#174

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #146
imgabe wrote: post #117

I think a lot of it came down to their "invite-only" launch. I remember a lot of my friends were excited to try it. Some of us were able to get invites, some weren't. Eventually the people who couldn't get on right away just said "screw it" and went back to Facebook. The rest of us followed because that's where we could interact with everyone and not just the people who happened to get on Google+. By the time it open…

This is a frequently-repeated view, but I find it completely implausible. A social network's initial frowth phase is completely predicated on it being a space people want to join, and that is accomplished by its delivering value and appeal. That might be compelling content, compelling connections, or a mix of the two. A cultivated and exclusive club, as with the Haevard Facebook, or early Usenet, has appeal. It's the…

> I find it completely implausible.

I disagree and think it's 100% the reason it failed.

> A social network's initial frowth phase is completely predicated on it being a space people want to join, and that is accomplished by its delivering value and appeal.

But people did want to join Google+, but they couldn't. And since a social network is only useful if all your friends are on it, people never got into the habit of using it. Why use a social network without your friends? It's not like GMail where it's still useful even if your friends aren't on it.

I can tell you personally that I was excited to get the invite to Google+, only to lose the excitement when only 3 of my friends were on it. By the time Google+ became available to everyone, it was too late. The excitement was gone.

> A cultivated and exclusive club, as with the Haevard Facebook, or early Usenet, has appeal.

The exclusivity of Harvard Facebook succeeded because social media was still in its infancy at the time. Most people didn't have access to the WWW in their pocket yet. Early Usenet had appeal because the Internet itself was still only being used by techies and college students.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#175

Post by benburleson »

nicky0 wrote: post #90
benburleson wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example: I was invited to an event this week, and to participate, I need to RSVP on the Facebook event... I could ask how to get around that, but I'm actually not that interested. The point is, the process has put a roadblock in my participation. But to be honest, I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything.

Think of it as a useful filter. If the event isn't important enough to actually invite you in person, it probably isn't worth bothering with.

In this case, I was invited in person, but the event is part of a larger process and they wanted accurate accounting because attendance included free beer :-)

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#176

Post by sverige »

joncrane wrote: post #101
leadingthenet wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually, the story I hear from people under 35 or so is that Facebook is for old people like me (mid-50s), though I've never used it. My wife does, though. It seems awful.

My daughter and her friends all use Instagram and Snapchat, or probably something else now. They have dormant Facebook accounts they made when they were teens / early 20s that they've purged of all meaningful content.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#177

Post by Nagyman »

the-rc wrote: post #118
tannhaeuser wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

It's not static content. It would have been expensive to keep the services running. Not just in terms of computing and storage, but also for the headcount. Speaking of the latter, who would want to work on maintaining a read-only version of a project frozen in time? (The enterprise version will evolve, etc.) I am not even going into the legal implications.

> who would want to work on maintaining a read-only version of a project

For money? Lots of people.

Does Google have a fascination with only hiring people that want to write dissertations about their project of the month?

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#178

Post by feral »

I am completely convinced the problem was the invite-only launch, as others have said; let me explain why I think this:

Facebook used its invite-only (campus-only, .edu only) natural to build status.

However, a college campus is a dense subgraph of the overall human social network. People in college are socially interacting with mostly other people in their college.

Google+ was invite only, but the invites were not clustered in the network. The subgraph induced by the invites were a fairly random slice through the overall human social network. Not actually random, there were dense subgraphs of Google employees, and of certain tech communities in there. And indeed, within these subgraphs G+ got some traction.

But most early users joined and found none of the people they wanted to communicate with could get on. I viscerally remember being in this position as a user. You sent invites to your friends, and you waited. In the meantime, you went back to Facebook.

This makes almost everyones' first use experience suck. A B2C product where everyones first use experience sucks is dead on arrival.

I remember discussing this at the time. It seemed like madness to me. (I was doing a PhD studying social graphs.)

My first tweet on twitter, from 2010, is about Google Buzz (a preceding social product): https://twitter.com/fergal_reid/status/8974231887 "No beta to build up hype for Buzz. They realised that social apps that need a critical mass of users have to happen all at once."

When it turned out they had not in fact realized this for Google+ I was dumbfounded. I still believe this one decision likely cost Google tens of billions of dollars. Many many users would have preferred G+ to work - I'm reminded of this XKCD: https://xkcd.com/918/

I would love to hear the inside story here and learn how this was actually weighed up, or that I was wrong.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#179

Post by imgabe »

dredmorbius wrote: post #146
imgabe wrote: post #117

I think a lot of it came down to their "invite-only" launch. I remember a lot of my friends were excited to try it. Some of us were able to get invites, some weren't. Eventually the people who couldn't get on right away just said "screw it" and went back to Facebook. The rest of us followed because that's where we could interact with everyone and not just the people who happened to get on Google+. By the time it open…

This is a frequently-repeated view, but I find it completely implausible. A social network's initial frowth phase is completely predicated on it being a space people want to join, and that is accomplished by its delivering value and appeal. That might be compelling content, compelling connections, or a mix of the two. A cultivated and exclusive club, as with the Haevard Facebook, or early Usenet, has appeal. It's the…

The thing with Harvard Facebook is that it's a predefined social circle that came online as a unit. If you go to Harvard, most of your friends and people you regularly interact with are also going to Harvard, so you have a cohesive group altogether.

With Google+, invites were more or less random, so in a group of 5 friends maybe 3 got one and 2 didn't. Were the 3 people who got invites supposed to just drop their other 2 friends? Obviously people aren't going to do that.

People do like things that are exclusive, but they want to exclude outsiders, not their friends.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#180

Post by dekhn »

gist wrote: post #152
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with much of what Yegge said in the post, I think it's extremely far fetched to say that Google+ failed because it was lacking an API when there are 50 other more likely reasons you could point to. Forget understanding platforms, at the time Google fundamentally didn't understand social .

The saying 'camel is a horse made by a committee' applies to this situation. There was almost certainly no base creative drive when creating the actual product. Most things that end up being good are driven by someone who is viewed as somewhat crazy but has enough power or force to get what they want and/or steam roll others. Not to mention I am sure they are confusing smarts with luck. The decision makers think of t…

camels are amazing creatures that are more useful than horses in a wide range of situations.
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