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Google Reveals Its Stealth Social Project, Google+

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Re: Google Reveals Its Stealth Social Project, Google+

#232

This is exciting and all -- and much as I would love to see a serious competitor to Facebook, I still don't know how I would convince any of my non-techie friends that they should switch to this. Circles? Actually I think that many people like the idea of their posts are being read by as many people as possible and not just the ones with similar interests. Although it looks like a big discussion group, the news feed…

"Circles? Actually I think that many people like the idea of their posts are being read by as many people as possible and not just the ones with similar interests." I totally disagree with that. Facebook sorely lacks such a feature, and the lack of it has led to "spammy" messages from so called "friends" you barely even know, or care about in your list. Google+ seems to solve a lot of issues with Facebook. And I thin…

I think Facebook's biggest failure is that they've never educated people on how to use Facebook well, and honestly, they have likely inadvertently encouraged bad practices with their emphasis on growth.

For example, why do you have friends on FB you barely know in reality? You should only have your genuine friends on Facebook. This simple rule solves the "annoying status update from someone I don't care about" problem, which is the most frequent complaint I hear about Facebook. I actively delete people a few times a year who I don't expect to see again.

Re: Google Reveals Its Stealth Social Project, Google+

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I distrust Facebook so much that I dont have a news feed, I dont have a way to share my pictures (because who wants to share 1024x768 resolution pictures with their friends? ffs why do I then have a 15mp camera?) and I have skype to chat with friends. Google+ is refreshing, it shows social networking can be better.

as a camera buff, why dont you just use flickr? also, if you distrust facebook, what makes you trust google? they've had plenty of privacy issues in the past in regards to social networking (buzz, etc). Google+ launched an hour ago in private beta, isn't it a bit early to call it refreshing and better? :)

Its refreshing with competition, perhaps even on the privacy parts different actors could make each other respect their users more.

I dont like the UI of flickr (cant even use it, and Im a comp-sci major) and it doesnt integrate well with Facebook (tagging), where most of my friends are, sadly. I guess flickr might have improved since I last gave it a chance, but still something doesnt feel good about it. The same for picasa.

Re: Google Reveals Its Stealth Social Project, Google+

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but that still leaves me not having any idea who can see my comments. Which is fine in Google Reader because I don't expect any level of privacy there, but in Google+, esp. after having explicitly set up Circles, I might expect some level of privacy which doesn't include people outside of the Circle I'm commenting in being able to see my comments. With a "Place" metaphor, if you have a private place, nothing w…

If it works like advertised only people in your circle can see the comment. Which leads to a weird experience for the commenter. To them they're essentially talking to just you while you're talking to your own circle. I'd be interesting in seeing a breakdown on how the circles intertwine. For example perhaps you have Jill in your coworkers circle and I have her in my friends circle. So presumable our communications a…

Yes, that is another great illustration of how complex and unclear this system of individual lists is.

Now imagine the same scenario under the Places metaphor. You go to the "Work Friends" place and share an item. Jill, who is also in that place has access to the exact same list of people that are in the place and so knows exactly who she is talking to when she comments on that shared item. No confusion.

Re: Google Reveals Its Stealth Social Project, Google+

#236
post #2

From plus.google.com: > Google+ is in limited Field Trial Right now, we're testing with a small number of people, but it won't be long before the Google+ project is ready for everyone. Leave us your email address and we'll make sure you're the first to know when we're ready to invite more people. WHY?! WHY are they doing this again? They did this with Wave. Google, you cannot launch a social network while explicitly…

Facebook sort of did that too, by allowing only college kids at first. I think it's the right idea. It only became stupid with Wave when they started giving out millions and millions of "invites". At that point they should've simply made it public.

But really, Wave was a fundamentally flawed project for multiple reasons: bad market fit, clumsy/complex UI, bad marketing, etc. I had a bad gut feeling about it since I saw the demo (which took 1 hour! That should've been a sign)

Google+ looks very exciting and it seems like they've addressed many issues social networks have had through out the years, including Facebook. The lack of a Circles like feature was a design flaw of all social networks so far, and I believe it led them to ultimately become irrelevant because of the sheer number of people that became your "friends" on those social networks, which ended up spamming you. Circles seems to fix this, and the other Google+ products looks awesome, too.

Re: Google Reveals Its Stealth Social Project, Google+

#237
post #27

(cross posted from http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2706219 ) I'm very excited to try this out. Context (AKA "Circles") is the biggest feature Facebook still hasn't gotten right. By mirroring the way we think about our social graph in real life, Google is making a huge step toward converging Online and Offline identity. It will be very interesting to see how Facebook responds to this... they might finally have a c…

The problem I see with user-defined groups implementation is conversations. If I share an item with my "work friends" group, and someone replies to it, who can see the reply? Is it only my work friends, or can the replier choose others to expose her reply to? What about people in my work friends list that she doesn't know or follow or is followed by? This already sort of happens in Google Reader. Sometimes I comment…

I'm in the Field Trial. My understanding is that anything in a post can only be seen by the people who can see the post. Thus, if you share with a circle, people who do not know each other can see each others replies. It is all about who you chose to share to in the first place, they are the people you are trusting the information to.

I would need to test this more fully, but that is my understanding of it.

Re: Google Reveals Its Stealth Social Project, Google+

#238
post #2

From plus.google.com: > Google+ is in limited Field Trial Right now, we're testing with a small number of people, but it won't be long before the Google+ project is ready for everyone. Leave us your email address and we'll make sure you're the first to know when we're ready to invite more people. WHY?! WHY are they doing this again? They did this with Wave. Google, you cannot launch a social network while explicitly…

I totally agree. Wave died partially because when I got it, my friends didn't have it. And by the time the last of them got it, the rest of us didn't care any more. Had we been able to all get on at once, we might have found a killer app for it and never given it up.

That's exactly what happened with Wave for me as well, but I wonder if the same will happen to Google+? I didn't really see a use for Google Wave... it was just so awkward...

Re: Google Reveals Its Stealth Social Project, Google+

#239
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Circles is not well thought out if the demo is accurate in only allowing one circle per friend.

I haven't seen the demo, but the indications from the press is that circles can (and should) include groups of people.

Why is Gormo's comment dead? He was right, mshron misunderstands his parent's comment. The concern is that people can only be a part of one circle.

Re: Google Reveals Its Stealth Social Project, Google+

#240
post #198

Circles would make great sense if we can push some circles into other circles. Close friends into friends and friends into general connections.

Well yea. Sounds good in the UI. But I wonder if that is even implementable in their current data model.
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