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Poll: What do you think of Google+?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: What do you think of Google+?

#131

Post by Hisoka »

xd wrote: post #8

With all the hype surrounding google+ it's a crying shame it's not openly available. Within a couple of days my interest will have subsided and it will be nothing but a distant memory .. which I can imagine will be the case for a lot of people. Hopefully if it is any good, it will claw it's way back into the media spotlight, but how many people will try for a second time to sign up. IMHO the invite only plan will kil…

I definitely agree. Google+ isn't that revolutionary that people will continue talking about it months from now when it's open to the public. They should've made it open to anyone and capitalized on all the press happening.

And I don't think Google+ will come anywhere close to overthrowing Facebook. Yes, the circles thing sounds cool and all, but it sounds cool to us rationalized hackers. For normal people, they just want a place to see what others are up to, to showcase their narcissistic profile, and to make witty comments. That's all. We don't need Circles. We don't even care about privacy.. it's just something us geeks cry about. The one thing Google probably didn't give as much thought to is how the user profile will look like. They probably put too much effort on the Circles feature.. well the Circles feature ain't gonna help make you look good to other people.. a fancy profile page will though, so there goes your traction.

Re: Poll: What do you think of Google+?

#132

Post by ducuboy »

davidw wrote: post #40

I think the circles thing is a bit stressful. Making me sort my friends out is "making me think" and not fun.

They tried to make it "fun" with the drag'n'drop UI.

Personally I think circles is the biggest part of the +. I can finally interact properly with my Family, Buddies, Coworkers and so on.

Re: Poll: What do you think of Google+?

#133

Post by nopinsight »

revorad wrote: post #128
nopinsight wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we're not building another social network. This will be an app to help people follow their favorite topics. Think RSS, but filter by topics instead of websites. Or think Reddit, but with only links on your favorite topics. (The topics can be more fine-grained and flexible than putting existing subreddits together.) Of course, there will be social components on it, but the key functionality is the links to interes…

Can I try it? If there was something good like this, I would probably use it. Sparks doesn't do anything interesting right now. It's like Google search results but from a tiny subset of the web, so at least right now, you need not worry about it.

Thanks for the interest and the reply. :-) When the product is more ready, I'll definitely let you know.

Re: Poll: What do you think of Google+?

#134

Post by brudgers »

>"Google+ will succeed"

>"Google+ will fail"

This is a bit incoherent because success and failure for Google is radically different than success and failure for people who consume Google's services. If after six months Google+ provides an important data set which enhances ad revenues, they can shut it down or let it die off (which would be more likely) and still claim success even though this would constitute a failure for people who consume Google's services.

Likewise, if the implementation favors Android over iOS this increases the odds of success for Google while increasing the odds of Google+'s failure among people who consume Google's services.

Perhaps nothing better illustrates this divergence of interests more clearly that the current hype surrounding Google+ coupled with the lack of widespread availability among people who consume Google's services.

Re: Poll: What do you think of Google+?

#135

Post by ollerac »

nopinsight wrote: post #117
colinplamondon wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be concerned because Google is competing. Be concerned because everyone I've talked to agrees that Sparks sucks, and is by far the weakest part of Google+.

Can you please elaborate on this? How does Sparks suck? It's gonna be great to know some more details so we can avoid bad design decisions and possible product failure. Your comment would be appreciated.

I haven't used Sparks, but I can say this: my primary use for a social network isn't discovering new content. There are already so many awesome ways of doing that. Google Reader or StumbleUpon or Reddit or Delicious seem like better ways of discovering new and interesting content about a certain topic. But maybe Sparks will succeed because it will be a lot simpler to use than these other options and it will be built into some people's primary social network.

Here's a quote about Sparks from the Wired article on Google+: The signals that Google looks for in determining Sparks content is freshness, a visual component (videos will rank highly), and the degree to which the content is virally spreading on the net. http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/06/inside-google-plus-so...

Re: Poll: What do you think of Google+?

#136

Post by minikomi »

deekrish wrote: post #76
curiousfiddler wrote: post #39

I feel hangout is gonna be the dark horse feature. Imagine coming back from a hard day's work, logging in to plus, and finding 3 of your best friends hanging out over a beer ;)

While hangout does sound, I think people will still prefer to actually "hangout" with their buddies over beer than watching their buddies drinking beer over g+.....

Depends which buddies!

(Aussie expat in Japan)

Re: Poll: What do you think of Google+?

#138

Post by sunchild »

colinplamondon wrote: post #110
nopinsight wrote: post #11

We're working on a startup with an app that functions very similarly to the Sparks feature of Google+. The app will recommend new things for you to read and watch based on your interests (which are stored long-term, but can be ordered, edited, removed). Now that Google+ has a very similar feature in Sparks, I need to think long and hard on whether to continue with the idea. (We are a small team with three developers…

Don't be concerned because Google is competing. Be concerned because everyone I've talked to agrees that Sparks sucks, and is by far the weakest part of Google+.

I'd be a little bit concerned if I were building a web content recommendation system, and my competitor is the world's largest and best index of web content.

Re: Poll: What do you think of Google+?

#139

Post by JonnieCache »

JonnieCache wrote: post #34
xd wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the UK the BBC news, daily mail, the sun etc to name a few are running the story.

Yeah, add the guardian to that. I think most outlets are talking about it. Suspense is all very well, but Google really need to let us in soon or they're going to miss out on the wave of free hype. Anyone who fancies sending me an invite, my email is jonnie at cleverna dot me

I've been sent an invite, thanks to whoever sent that, but it turns out I can't use the damn thing because I have a google apps account set up for my domain, just like everyone else here probably does.

Plus requires a google profile in order to use it, and Apps accounts can't have profiles. Apparently someone from google has said this will be coming "soon."

WTF google? Hasn't it occurred to you that the set of power users/evangelists/early adopters and the set of people who have their own apps account on their domain might overlap a bit?

This isn't so much dropping the ball, it's bordering on an own goal.

Any googlers reading this: sort it out. Or go and bother the nearest person responsible for sorting it out, lest my disappointment spill over into murderous rage.

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