Google Reveals Its Stealth Social Project, Google+ • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Reveals Its Stealth Social Project, Google+

#291

Post by alttab » Wed, Jun 29, 2011, 12:40 AM UTC

klipt wrote: post #287

bmj wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was FB's initial college roll out? Tens of thousands of users? I suspect Google would have several times that many in the few minutes of a full roll out.

FB's initial roll out was to people in the same (real life) social circles. You can't do social networking with a bunch of random people across the world.

This hits a nail on the head. Facebook knew the primary target for it's initial growth. Who is Google+ targeting first for early adoption?

Google does so many things for many different people. Opening it up to the world outright is technically dangerous, but Facebook had a very natural progression for rolling out because they had identified and located their market. Google isn't so lucky. + is designed at the Facebook user base, but isnt considering the history or the trajectory of Facebook users.

I'd imagine the only reason google cares about social at all is because it is a significant source of revenue in an industry they want to own (advertising).

All that said I'm going to set up an account when it's my turn.

Re: Google Reveals Its Stealth Social Project, Google+

#292

Post by scheibo » Wed, Jun 29, 2011, 12:45 AM UTC

simonw wrote: post #178

""" Oops... you need a Google profile to use this feature. Google Profiles is not available for your organization. """ Grr. Google /really/ need to fix their authentication scheme.

There is actually a hack to get around this - I don't know if its still there but I did it a couple of hours ago and it worked:

1) Copy the link from the email (right click on the red button in the email and save link location) 2) Open another browser or incognito tab that you're not logged into. 3) Create an @gmail.com account or use an existing one if you have it and paste the link in the address bar once you're logged in.

It seems like the invite is just the token in the link, it's not specifically linked to a given email.

Re: Google Reveals Its Stealth Social Project, Google+

#293

Post by tapp » Wed, Jun 29, 2011, 12:47 AM UTC

stanmancan wrote: post #159

darrenkopp wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet again I'll be in a situation where I (potentially, hopefully) get invited but everyone else I know won't be, so I won't be able to use it. I think having this be invite only, especially where _Google_ is the entity doing the invites is a recipe for disaster. Now, if they make it so that invited users can invite a good amount of other users (say, 100), then I think they _may_ be able to salvage this. If not, I'm n…

Exactly. This is the same mistake they made with Wave, and it turned out horribly. I actually enjoyed the idea/concept of Wave, but I never had any reason to login and actually use it since I only had one other person I knew with an account. The same will happen to Google+.

This. The product description is extremely appealing to me - it tackles exactly what I find to be most wrong with current social network software. If I could, I would begin using it immediately and would probably get 60-80 people in my network to do the same and try it with me.

If this product gets any traction, it seems like a near certainty that Facebook will launch a "Circles" UI for their groups feature, very quickly, no?

I understand why Google is taking it slow, but if the idea sounds like old news by the time Google lets me invite people, I suspect they're going to seriously compromise their odds of user adoption.

Re: Google Reveals Its Stealth Social Project, Google+

#294

Post by metageek » Wed, Jun 29, 2011, 12:48 AM UTC

tonfa wrote: post #188

fedd wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's like removing a guy from the circle in real life. not always easy

I don't think he knows when you remove him from a circle, I don't think he knows the name of the circle too.

Correct.

Re: Google Reveals Its Stealth Social Project, Google+

#295

Post by groby_b » Wed, Jun 29, 2011, 12:50 AM UTC

daralthus wrote: post #166

msbarnett wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Buzz is a good example of how forcing an active account on everyone at the same time led to a large backlash. There's a pretty wide gulf between opening up and forcing it on people. You can't build a social networking sites if it isn't open to people in your users' social networks. But you also can't build a site people trust and want to use by forcing it on them.

Still I am curious, what circles would I get based on all the data google has ever collected from me.

As far as I can tell, none. See here: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/06/inside-google-plus-so...

Page 6, specifically: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/06/inside-google-plus-so...

Re: Google Reveals Its Stealth Social Project, Google+

#296

Post by tonfa » Wed, Jun 29, 2011, 12:53 AM UTC

joebadmo wrote: post #282

tonfa wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google+ works in the way you describe (when you comment you know who can view the post).

Well, that's encouraging, but I think part of the problem is that I didn't know that. And I think part of why I didn't know that is because "Circles" isn't actually a metaphor that helps me understand how it works. Places, OTOH, is, and I think the metaphor is flexible enough to add other interesting functionality, too. Edit: Also, can you elaborate on how that works? Is there a list of names attached to each shared…

See the help here (hopefully it works for people not in the trial): http://www.google.com/support/+/bin/static.py?page=guide.cs&...

I'll quote the relevant part:

> If a post was shared with a limited group of people, you can click Limited at the top of the post to see the profile pics of up to 21 other people who can also see that content, as well as the total number of people on the post.

Re: Google Reveals Its Stealth Social Project, Google+

#297

Post by skeletonjelly » Wed, Jun 29, 2011, 1:05 AM UTC

njl wrote: post #31

frisco wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, Facebook did the same thing.

No. Facebook created a collection of small social networks centered around existing real-world communities, then finally linked up all of those small social networks into a single, larger social network. This allowed them to reach saturation on a campus-by-campus basis, until they had finally progressed far enough to reach a tipping point in society at large.

But you can't make the same development with Google's demographic. People you know with a Google account are disparate - friends, online colleagues, family? Filtering down through the geeky to the end user makes sense for them I think.

Re: Google Reveals Its Stealth Social Project, Google+

#298

Post by joeguilmette » Wed, Jun 29, 2011, 1:06 AM UTC

DrCatbox wrote: post #233

joeguilmette wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

Yea I dislike Picasa as well. I was disapointed to see Google+ integrating with it. Although there really isn't an alternative...

Re: Google Reveals Its Stealth Social Project, Google+

#299

Post by rapind » Wed, Jun 29, 2011, 1:23 AM UTC

kristiandupont wrote: post #96

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…

You make a really good point about the fear / miss-conception people will have about having search tied to their profile.

I really hope Google realizes that and draws a big fat line between searches and social profiles, and then makes it really apparent to their users.

Making people think they're sharing their everyday searches with their social circle is enough to completely kill this before it even gets started.

Re: Google Reveals Its Stealth Social Project, Google+

#300

Post by icebraining » Wed, Jun 29, 2011, 1:26 AM UTC

nikolaplejic wrote: post #227

icebraining wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Facebook does allow you to download your profile[1], so Google could just write an importer for that. [1]: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/10/07/1250242/Facebook-Imp...

Last time I checked, you could only see the names of your friends in Facebook's profile export archive -- there were no metadata whatsoever (e.g. IDs or profile links). I don't think names themselves are enough to port your social graph.

Well, for Gmail users, it shouldn't be hard to match names with specific people, if they have them in their contacts.

I don't know exactly what's the file format from FB backup, but it might be possible to identify linked users based on similar content (as long as both users have already uploaded their profile to Google+).