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Ex-Wave, Ex-Plus engineer on Google Plus

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Re: Ex-Wave, Ex-Plus engineer on Google Plus

#111

Post by cjoh »

The author seems really angry at Google and clearly wants to demonstrate how much smarter he is in comparison to the rest of the organization. Nearly every sentence is drenched with this sort of stuff:

"It hits all the notes that a facebook clone merits, and adds a few points of distinctiveness that are genuinely compelling, sure--but I don't find it all that interesting, personally."

". I listened politely, all the while rolling-my-eyes in secret at their seemingly implausible naivete."

"I laughed, disbelieving. Facebook has a hacker culture, they're only a handful of engineers, and they develop with quick, adaptable tools like PHP."

This post isn't about Google+ or Facebook. This post is about "Look at me, I'm so much smarter than my old bosses"

Something clearly upset him pretty significantly at Google. I'm not sure he's got a clear point of view on this.

Re: Ex-Wave, Ex-Plus engineer on Google Plus

#112

Post by neilk »

parfe wrote: post #87

Facebook already has circles! Facebook groups is a distinct feature from facebook lists. Facebook lists are the same feature as Google circles. And the only reason you didn't know this already is that you did not care enough to look, so circles cannot be all that much of a killer feature. To utilize "Facebook Circles" first you must put categorize some friends into a list. https://www.facebook.com/friends/edit/ Click…

I did bother to look; I do care; but I found the tool to be unusable. One accidental share with the wrong people is enough to dissuade me from ever trying again.

It is often asserted that users don't care about the privacy of their communications. I don't know what rock these people are living under, but it seems pretty damn essential to human existence to me. If you've run a different service where people didn't seem to care, it might be because in order to do more private sharing, they simply created a separate account. In this new era of "real name" social networks where it's harder to have multiple accounts, custom privacy settings are even more essential.

And it's simply false that it's too complex for users. Flickr does this, with prefab and nonce user group sharing, and it works pretty well. Well enough that swingers trading naughty pictures can coexist with holiday snaps.

LiveJournal had features like this since 2002 and nearly every frequent user had custom friend groups. Enough for terabytes of teen angst to be shielded from the whole school learning about it.

I think customizing sharing is a matter of getting the UI right; there's no lack of demand for this feature. Google+ takes it one step beyond, and makes it fun to sort people into circles. Furthermore they have a help/tip system that gradually teaches you how to use it. I feel sure that their implementation will be a success, and that people will be making at least as many private/restricted sharing posts as public.

Re: Ex-Wave, Ex-Plus engineer on Google Plus

#113

Post by hackinthebochs »

cjoh wrote: post #111

The author seems really angry at Google and clearly wants to demonstrate how much smarter he is in comparison to the rest of the organization. Nearly every sentence is drenched with this sort of stuff: "It hits all the notes that a facebook clone merits, and adds a few points of distinctiveness that are genuinely compelling, sure--but I don't find it all that interesting, personally." ". I listened politely, all the…

Did you finish reading the article? Towards the end he admits that even he missed the boat. In my opinion all the snark was setting up for the fact that, even though he was so confident he had things figured out, he turned out to be completely wrong. The point is that no one can really predict how this will turn out.

Re: Ex-Wave, Ex-Plus engineer on Google Plus

#115

Post by swaits »

Angostura wrote: post #63
spullara wrote: post #5

It amazes me that this engineer appears to not know that Google+ Circles are already implemented in the core of Facebook as Friend Lists (though without a nice UI and pushed aside over time) and that Facebook Groups solve a completely different, unrelated problem.

Do you know anyone who knows how to use Friends lists?

I use it on each and every Facebook post. Not sure how people live without it.

Re: Ex-Wave, Ex-Plus engineer on Google Plus

#116

Post by ChrisArchitect »

saucetenuto wrote: post #98
edanm wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure just how "mainstream" Gmail is. I've always heard that only 5% of email users use Gmail, but I don't actually have a source. Does seem to be accurate based on my (non-techie) friends.

I got curious about this a while ago, so I polled my nontechnical friends (artists, lawyers, that kind of thing). Out of 18 respondents, 100% of them used gmail as their primary personal email client. The lawyers all used Outlook at work, of course; maybe that 5% figure is for corporate clients?

think this has gone way up in recent years with ppl with old hotmail whatever accts fed up of spam,more people on gServices etc....more exposure to gApps via android etc (not to mention being forced into using a gAccount/gMail for android things...)

Re: Ex-Wave, Ex-Plus engineer on Google Plus

#117

Post by heydenberk »

code_duck wrote: post #73
foxylad wrote: post #39

So on the one hand this guy says FB is lean and agile because they use PHP - but produced a less than compelling response to circles. And on the other hand he says Google's "toolchain is not well suited to fast, iterative development and rapid innovation" - but they produced a polished social product from scratch in a remarkably short time. I'm afraid I don't ascribe much value to his analysis. Maybe there's a good r…

I have to agree, I don't find the analysis or the train of thought particularly insightful. It seemed apparent to me that facebook being 'unable to change their core product' meant exactly what he figured out it meant 6 paragraphs later... not that they couldn't do it, technically. Also, does he understand the extent to which Facebook actually uses PHP? "quick, adaptable tools like PHP" ... um... seriously?

I stopped reading exactly there.

Re: Ex-Wave, Ex-Plus engineer on Google Plus

#118

Post by grey »

omouse wrote: post #100
sootzoo wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding to this, if I comment on FB about any other member and use the @-mention feature, but they're not authorized to see the original post, they won't be able to read what I wrote or what anybody else did either. Compare that to G+, where a +-mention actually grants access for the post to the mentioned user whether they originally had it or not . Imagine planning a surprise birthday party, where someone +-mentions…

How about don't +-mention them? Just use their name and then attach a link to their Google+ profile instead? That won't count as a mention.

Agreed, The surprise birthday party is one exact case where this would be annoying, in almost every other situation most users would prefer the current behavior (In my experience anyways)

Re: Ex-Wave, Ex-Plus engineer on Google Plus

#119

Post by orangecat »

parfe wrote: post #106
nck4222 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I had originally assumed that he meant facebook would lack the agility to make the necessary technical changes, so central to their system. But I was wrong--the real point was that they would not be willing to change direction so fundamentally. And given such a large, captivated audience you could hardly blame them." Facebook has always been about sharing every post with every person. You're right, the only differen…

Care to write up a Google+ version for the same result that is not "Multi-step"? The only reason people weren't doing this on facebook before is because they never cared to.

I'm reminded of Time Machine in Mac OS X. From a technical perspective it's inferior to dedicated backup software, but from a user perspective it's infinitely better because people actually use it.

Re: Ex-Wave, Ex-Plus engineer on Google Plus

#120

Post by nfarina »

cjoh wrote: post #111

The author seems really angry at Google and clearly wants to demonstrate how much smarter he is in comparison to the rest of the organization. Nearly every sentence is drenched with this sort of stuff: "It hits all the notes that a facebook clone merits, and adds a few points of distinctiveness that are genuinely compelling, sure--but I don't find it all that interesting, personally." ". I listened politely, all the…

Totally agree. His begrudging "It's ok, I guess" conclusion doesn't make the rest of it any more insightful. It's all the worst sort of locker-room gossip.
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