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Tom Anderson: Google+ makes Google a better, more integrated set of services

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Re: Tom Anderson: Google+ makes Google a better, more integrated set of services

#31

Post by DrCatbox »

knowtheory wrote: post #30
stevenj wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think unseating Facebook is much harder than you think. Not impossible, but very hard. I'll make a friendly $100 wager with you that Google will not have more active users on Google+ than Facebook has -- as reported by each company, a reputable publication, or measured by a public analytics firm -- 5 years from now.

I'd put you on the losing end of those odds. Google's key to driving adoption is going to be integration of all of their services into Google+, which means that they have very natural and robust funnels for acquiring a userbase, so long as their tools are integrated properly. Given the money that Google is pouring into this, and the incentive structure for engineers and teams at Google, i have no doubt that they will…

'Social' is the new 'cloud' buzzword.

What does it mean to have social products? To tap into a users social network? That is what Facebook offers to any company that wants, and that is why 2/3rds of websites now have a Like and Facebook Connect button on them, it is very easy for any service to attempt the social route by tapping into the thing that only Facebook so far has, the social network.

Google cant engineer a social network using code, a social network requires specific steps to be carried out in perfect order, it cant be done overnight, you need to build smaller networks and connect them to larger networks as time progresses. It takes a long time, years even.

Reddit is social, hackernews is social. None of them have what Facebook has, real world information about living people and their relationships. Here on HN I could have 5 or 6 accounts and no-one would notice, HN, reddit and any other "social" product does not have relationships between humans. Google mail is close to a social network, except the fact that email is mostly used for business and so is most suited for something like LinkedIn, I personally have more companies mailing me than my friends. If I tomorrow made a new google mail account and began using it instead of my old one, would google be able to tell? Facebook for sure would.

Re: Tom Anderson: Google+ makes Google a better, more integrated set of services

#32

Post by DrCatbox »

Lewisham wrote: post #20
krashidov wrote: post #19

I must say, Google's decision to make Google+ invite only was puzzling at first but its quite obvious now isn't it? It's much like how Facebook grew by restricting its service only to the top schools. This gained more hype for them as people saw that the 'elite' were using facebook and loving it. Now we have personal invites to those who have a strong voice in the tech industry generating lots of good publicity for t…

No, it's very clear why Google+ is invite only. Google+ is in field test. It needed to be tested publicly in order to start really getting a good understanding of what users are doing and what the scaling problems are. There are already a bunch of things that are essentially getting hotfixes in The only reason that Google+ was announced was that this process couldn't have been done in secret. I'm sure if there was a…

I found many bugs and lack of features, for example, there is no advance search, you can only search by names, not company or place or gender?

Have not figured out how to send messages to my friends, or do I have to share something only with them?

The "Limited"/Public link to view who you shared something with is kind of hidden, would be nice to see which circles a share is visible without clicking something.

There is actually not very much I can do right now. I click on cirlces, yeah it is a nice interface. A lot of my friends dont seem to understand how to share content with me even after they added me to a circle. Not much happens at all.

Re: Tom Anderson: Google+ makes Google a better, more integrated set of services

#33

Post by clistctrl »

stevenj wrote: post #25
andrewljohnson wrote: post #24

Most businesses can't "die" suddenly. It's very hard to turn a $850,000,000 business into a $35,000,000 in just a couple of years, unless something truly catastrophic or industry-changing occurs. The exception to this rule is social internet companies. Social companies are built in a day and can die in a day - we've seen it happen again and again, and Facebook's scale is no protection. To beat Verizon, you need a net…

I think unseating Facebook is much harder than you think. Not impossible, but very hard. I'll make a friendly $100 wager with you that Google will not have more active users on Google+ than Facebook has -- as reported by each company, a reputable publication, or measured by a public analytics firm -- 5 years from now.

do it here: http://longbets.org/

Re: Tom Anderson: Google+ makes Google a better, more integrated set of services

#34

Post by kanamekun »

kubrickslair wrote: post #26
stevenj wrote: post #6

Thus far, I've only heard industry insiders and participants praise Google+. In technical fields, like medicine, or even computer science research, I'd pay close attention to such commenters. But a product like Google+ was made for the masses. Just like Google.com was. Just like Facebook was. So until my non-tech friends start praising Google+ as if it's a must-see movie, or a song I have to hear, or a restaurant I h…

I think Google is the only big company where every major new product is met with great enthusiasm in the tech people (bar a few anti-Google fanboys and journalists). Probably my memory fails me, but that is how I recall every major launch by Google. Also a minor quibble- did any one else notice that if you make more than a few circles, you get multiple scrollbars and thing becomes less pretty and usable.

I think the opposite has generally been true for Google's more social products. Google Buzz went down in flames fairly quickly. Knol was widely perceived to be a failure. Orkut did not receive a positive reception in the US.

The generally accepted version of Google's history with social products is summed up well in this recent AdWeek article:

Has Google Learned From Social Failure? Why Google+ might succeed where Buzz failed http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/has-google-learned-soc...

Re: Tom Anderson: Google+ makes Google a better, more integrated set of services

#35

Post by adamokane »

StavrosK wrote: post #5
nextparadigms wrote: post #2

Notice how people are starting to use Google+ as blog posts? It even looks like a blog post. If only the URL's looked a little bit better, it would be perfect. And I agree with him. So far I love Google's unifying strategy, not only through deeper integration but through having similar, more streamlined design as well. And I feel this is just the beginning. I think we'll see a lot more of it this year.

I thought of using it as a blog, but the fact that the "posts" are in the same stream as the "tweets" and generally everything else makes it less useful than a dedicated blog. It could definitely replace tumblr, though.

Maybe it could replace Tumblr for you, but my impression of them is that they're building a platform for "creative" people... I don't think Google will touch that anytime soon.

Re: Tom Anderson: Google+ makes Google a better, more integrated set of services

#36

Post by Nemisis7654 »

Lewisham wrote: post #29
krashidov wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm perhaps, but were google+ invites completely random? If so, then I probably am wrong and it truly was a technical field test with no marketing gimmicks. Either way, having a closed invitation has genuinely made me more interested in the product.

Invites were not random. Google chose those to invite.

Would you happen to know how they chose? I am just curious.

Re: Tom Anderson: Google+ makes Google a better, more integrated set of services

#37

Post by jamesbritt »

icebraining wrote: post #21
jamesbritt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notice how people are starting to use Google+ as blog posts? It even looks like a blog post. If only the URL's looked a little bit better, it would be perfect. I just did that, then found that "public" didn't really mean public; the post was still only visible to people with Google+ accounts. Oh well. I then copied over to my actual blog. But I would like to have a true public option even if it only meant read-only o…

I don't have a Google+ account and it's visible to me.

Very interesting. Whatever link I initially grabbed to test in another browser gave me a page that said a Google+ account was needed.

But just now I looked at the post and noticed a dropdown-arrow next to it which revealed an option to get a link. That link is indeed publicly visible. Also insanely long and ugly, but whatever, it works.

Re: Tom Anderson: Google+ makes Google a better, more integrated set of services

#38

Post by btilly »

jellicle wrote: post #8
stevenj wrote: post #6

Thus far, I've only heard industry insiders and participants praise Google+. In technical fields, like medicine, or even computer science research, I'd pay close attention to such commenters. But a product like Google+ was made for the masses. Just like Google.com was. Just like Facebook was. So until my non-tech friends start praising Google+ as if it's a must-see movie, or a song I have to hear, or a restaurant I h…

Well, considering that even if you were invited within a few hours of the product launch, you've still never been able to actually log on to Google+ and use it, I'm afraid it's not really possible for the unwashed masses to chime in at this point. Unless you want them to talk about how great the screenshots look.

Uh, not true.

I am not inside of Google, and multiple people in my social network who are also not in Google have been using Google+ in the last few days. The product has been very usable.

Re: Tom Anderson: Google+ makes Google a better, more integrated set of services

#39

Post by rbright »

andrewljohnson wrote: post #24

Most businesses can't "die" suddenly. It's very hard to turn a $850,000,000 business into a $35,000,000 in just a couple of years, unless something truly catastrophic or industry-changing occurs. The exception to this rule is social internet companies. Social companies are built in a day and can die in a day - we've seen it happen again and again, and Facebook's scale is no protection. To beat Verizon, you need a net…

To beat Facebook, you also need data centers.

Re: Tom Anderson: Google+ makes Google a better, more integrated set of services

#40

Post by murz »

DrCatbox wrote: post #31
knowtheory wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd put you on the losing end of those odds. Google's key to driving adoption is going to be integration of all of their services into Google+, which means that they have very natural and robust funnels for acquiring a userbase, so long as their tools are integrated properly. Given the money that Google is pouring into this, and the incentive structure for engineers and teams at Google, i have no doubt that they will…

'Social' is the new 'cloud' buzzword. What does it mean to have social products? To tap into a users social network? That is what Facebook offers to any company that wants, and that is why 2/3rds of websites now have a Like and Facebook Connect button on them, it is very easy for any service to attempt the social route by tapping into the thing that only Facebook so far has, the social network. Google cant engineer a…

> 'Social' is the new 'cloud' buzzword.

New? What rock have you been hiding under?

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