Google+ is Growing Like Crazy • Hacker News Board

Re: Google+ is Growing Like Crazy

#41

Post by cryptoz » Mon, Jul 11, 2011, 2:56 AM UTC

kmavm wrote: post #40

codabrink wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google allows you to export your data through their "Google Takeout" service. This includes your contacts and circles, unlike facebook, who is now pushing harder than ever to keep your contacts in Facebook.

facebook.com -> Account settings -> Security -> 'Click here to download a copy of the data you've put on Facebook.'

Right. Export everything but internet contact info...the most useful parts they keep locked up. That button does not export email addresses. Fake export.

Re: Google+ is Growing Like Crazy

#42

Post by davros » Mon, Jul 11, 2011, 2:58 AM UTC

where are all these people getting their invites? Dropping hints with my Google contacts hasn't worked...

Re: Google+ is Growing Like Crazy

#43

Post by rwolf » Mon, Jul 11, 2011, 3:01 AM UTC

davros wrote: post #42

where are all these people getting their invites? Dropping hints with my Google contacts hasn't worked...

Invites have been open all day. I'll invite you if you don't mind being disconnected entirely from the social graph. Please add a way to contact you, or a link to a way to contact you, to your HN profile.

Re: Google+ is Growing Like Crazy

#44

Post by chc » Mon, Jul 11, 2011, 3:06 AM UTC

gaius wrote: post #32

abraham wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google won't count that as two users unless John as two Google accounts with Google+ profiles. You can verify non Gmail address with Google and they should show up as the same contact.

It's getting them from my GMail activity near as I can work out.

If both addresses are listed under the same contact in Gmail, I'm pretty sure it won't do that (I have a friend with both Google and Yahoo addresses and it identifies her correctly). I bet your Gmail contact list has duplicate Johns and that's why Google+ thinks he's two people.

Re: Google+ is Growing Like Crazy

#45

Post by davros » Mon, Jul 11, 2011, 3:09 AM UTC

rwolf wrote: post #43

davros wrote: post #42

where are all these people getting their invites? Dropping hints with my Google contacts hasn't worked...

Invites have been open all day. I'll invite you if you don't mind being disconnected entirely from the social graph. Please add a way to contact you, or a link to a way to contact you, to your HN profile.

Thanks mate : ) Gmail added to my HN profile

Re: Google+ is Growing Like Crazy

#46

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 11, 2011, 3:10 AM UTC

gaius wrote: post #23

Another problem with G+: it's not happy that people have non-GMail email addresses. Let's say I have my friend John Smith jsmith@gmail.com in a circle. G+ keeps asking me if I want to add him still. Why? Because in my GMail, I have also emailed him at john_smith@hotmail.com. There's no way for me to tell it that these are the same person. So I think G+ may be double-counting a significant number of users.

[deleted]

Re: Google+ is Growing Like Crazy

#47

Post by codabrink » Mon, Jul 11, 2011, 3:40 AM UTC

cryptoz wrote: post #41

kmavm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

facebook.com -> Account settings -> Security -> 'Click here to download a copy of the data you've put on Facebook.'

Right. Export everything but internet contact info...the most useful parts they keep locked up. That button does not export email addresses. Fake export.

I just hope that Google+ keeps the "Google Takeout" feature and doesn't close up. "Openness" was Google's selling point for Android when it first came out, and yes, it's still "open", but nothing like what it once was. This just seems like a deja vu waiting to happen.

Re: Google+ is Growing Like Crazy

#48

Post by MaysonL » Mon, Jul 11, 2011, 4:45 AM UTC

Estragon wrote: post #2

The methodology offered in the comments, of googling for http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&biw=1366&bih=653&#... and taking the number of results returned for the number of users, seems more direct. Currently that returns about 6.5 million users, which is in the same ballpark.

This returned about 6.5 million for me too. The strange, interesting tidbit I noted was that the user #s by no means conformed to Benford's law: I clicked through 5 pages of search results, and all of the user #s began with 11 or 10.

Re: Google+ is Growing Like Crazy

#49

Post by kmavm » Mon, Jul 11, 2011, 5:20 AM UTC

cryptoz wrote: post #41

kmavm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

facebook.com -> Account settings -> Security -> 'Click here to download a copy of the data you've put on Facebook.'

Right. Export everything but internet contact info...the most useful parts they keep locked up. That button does not export email addresses. Fake export.

I'll let Google explain the exact same product decision for their social network Orkut in 2009:

"Mass exportation of email is not standard on most social networks — when a user friends someone they don’t then expect that person to be easily able to send that contact information to a third party along with hundreds of other addresses with just one click. In order to protect user privacy, we now exclude email addresses from the CSV export file."

http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/26/orkut-slows-hemorraging-to-...

They're right. Programmatic export of friends' email addresses is too ripe for abuse in the world we live in.