131–140 of 157 posts
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…
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 have an email list with 304,985 contacts: 34.5% yahoo.com 24.0% other 13.9% aol.com 9.9% gmail.com 2.6% comcast.net 2.2% msn.com
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…
1. It takes 3 - 4 steps to get to your list page (depending on where you are on FB) 2. It is buried deep inside Friends page 3. List is not used anywhere on FB except Friends page, making it very useless.
Google + on the other hand -
1. Takes 1 1/2 step to put your friends in a circle. The 1/2 is the drag and drop. 2. It is right smack in front of your face. 3. Notice there is no Friends or Followers page on G+? It is the Circle page. 4. Circle is used more than just for categorizing your friends. You can use it on your stream and it is displayed on the left side of your stream. On Facebook, Groups are displayed on the left of your newsfeed, which is one of the worst mistakes Facebook has done.
Summary - To add your friends to a 'Circle' on Facebook, you can either:
1. Create a list, which takes about 3 - 4 steps and hit a dead end street 2. Create a group, which takes about 5 - 7 steps.
And you wonder why people are going gaga over Circles (1 1/2 steps)
Perhaps Facebook just understand that for a social network to be successful you need to encourage sharing at all costs; Google+'s Circles actively constrain sharing, increase complexity and raise the barrier to entry.
Unfortunately it also discourages meaningful sharing. My G+ "stream" is already home to discussions and photos the likes of which would never have popped up in my facebook feed.
We'll see. I agree that Facebook Groups is much less powerful than Circles and much less fundamental to the core Facebook experience than Circles is with G+. On the other hand, Facebook Groups takes less effort to use - each person does not need to sort their friends, a small number of curators can organize the group. More importantly, it is clearer to the user just what is going on. I have been trying to talk to as…
Circles are ok to set up at the beginning, but many people belong in more than one circle and it gets cognitively tiring to sort people appropriately into one-and-only-one circle. It's also cognitively tiring to work out the consequences of sending a message to a circle larger than what you might type into an email "to" field. You can work out the consequences of a broadcast announcement to the world/all your friends…
A person can belong to more than one circle (that's why you have a list of checkboxes, one per circle).
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 have an email list with 304,985 contacts: 34.5% yahoo.com 24.0% other 13.9% aol.com 9.9% gmail.com 2.6% comcast.net 2.2% msn.com
Didn't read the article, design was too distracting (mouse wheeling with the mouse over the left side does NOT scroll the page). But check out that scrollbar! ::-webkit-scrollbar { width: 10px; } ::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb { border-radius: 10px; background: #ddd; } Thought it must be JS but it's webkit stuff. Can't decide if silly or nice, but I think it's pretty nice.
::-webkit-scrollbar { width: 10px; } ::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb { border-radius: 10px; background: #ddd; } hi
Earlier quoted context omitted.
FB for me (and it seems, for many) is an inherently private thing. I don't want groups outside of my real-life friends. That's the fundamental break here - I'm being followed (and following) much more widely, similar to Twitter. What Google has done is made Twitter for people who don't get why 140 characters is a feature. So: FB for my friends, G+ for the digerati and my real interest groups. Frankly, the latter has…
In response to making our profiles public or not... I think a killer move from facebook would be a 'SHOUT IT FROM THE ROOFTOPS' button for each post. It would be effectively like tweeting (individual posts) and would have critical mass pretty quickly due to fb's scale. Maybe it would be a nightmare building another twitter overnight or they would be pilloried for copying so blatantly. Additionally, it's occuring to m…