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Google+ Isn’t Going Away

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Re: Google+ Isn’t Going Away

#71

Post by alextingle »

tommi wrote: post #37
joebadmo wrote: post #9

I really like G+, but I'm a bit dismayed that they seem to be addressing the concerns of brands over those of users. The nymwars was a prominent example, of course, and even the resulting promise of pseudonymity features have yet to surface, while Pages for brands are now live. The lack of an outward facing platform of APIs is also concerning. I continue to hope that the Plus project is the beginning of a way to impl…

Give it some time. Likely Pages is dead simple to implement compared to pseudonymity. Possibly it was made by "secondary" team while the main tackles the pseudonymity. G+ has not been live that long. Let it grow and evolve.

They could implement pseudonyms RIGHT NOW. All they have to do is stop paying people to harass their users. They can pay a lawyer to change the policy document later.

The reason for the delay is not because it's difficult to implement "not caring what people call themselves", but because it's difficult to implement some craptastic "you can call yourself what you like as long as we know who you are" bullshit.

Feh!

Re: Google+ Isn’t Going Away

#72

Post by dylangs1030 »

I don't think Google+ should be trying to compete with Facebook and Twitter in the traditional sense of the word. Just because a website fits into a niche of companies under the broad heading, "Social Network" doesn't mean that it has the same intentions as its other incumbents. Facebook more or less eradicated MySpace because it was a case of two websites being too similar in function, and Facebook was simply superior. Twitter and Facebook coexist without one or the other being eliminated because they don't directly compete - Twitter is useful for different functions that Facebook doesn't accomplish; but neither does Facebook or Twitter try to accomplish the other's specialties. While I agree that some competition is needed to expand user base and continually maintain attractive and trending features, it would be better for the social networks to specialize. A website like Facebook could never defeat Facebook - it has a de facto monopoly on vicarious, virtual socializing.

That said, you don't really go on Facebook to announce something to the world unless you have a really popular "Page" (as opposed to profile). You sign up for Twitter and tell your followers what the update is. It's much more professional for a working environment. Facebook is personal. I feel Google+ fits somewhere in between these two dichotomies right now, which is why it feels somewhat awkward for a lot of users. But I think it's still a very good network that has potential to specialize into something neither Facebook or Twitter quite accomplish yet. If it can create its own niche within a niche, competition won't be as important as maintaining its own superlative market share for specialized functioning. Otherwise, it will die out, because directly competing with Facebook will not work at this point in time.

Re: Google+ Isn’t Going Away

#73

Post by Aloisius »

If this was Microsoft, I'd fully expect them to keep hammering away for years and dump as much money as it took for them to own the market, but Google has institutional ADHD.

If they don't outright kill it after three years of it not making them any serious money, I fully expect them to abandon it with only minor updates for some other shiny and new product.

Re: Google+ Isn’t Going Away

#75

Post by Raphael »

joebadmo wrote: post #9

I really like G+, but I'm a bit dismayed that they seem to be addressing the concerns of brands over those of users. The nymwars was a prominent example, of course, and even the resulting promise of pseudonymity features have yet to surface, while Pages for brands are now live. The lack of an outward facing platform of APIs is also concerning. I continue to hope that the Plus project is the beginning of a way to impl…

Pages are pseudonyms!

Re: Google+ Isn’t Going Away

#76

Post by rieter »

Jd wrote: post #54
joebadmo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with your assertion is that a lot of technically inclined people know a lot of other people and want to interact with them socially. It's Facebook's most powerful and most difficult to overcome feature: all your friends are already on it. To me, the only truly viable way for Google to combat that is to create a truly open, federated collection of social networks that can interoperate, by releasing the und…

Generally speaking I agree, but Google screwed up Wave so badly that the lead developer went to work for Facebook; any developer that was in the community or building products for Wave was also so badly screwed I think they'll never work with or for Google again (Full disclosure: I was among them). I think this needs a new company. Anyone interested?

It's more like the lead developer screwed up with Wave so badly that he lost all credibility and had to leave. Google gave him all resources he asked for and he produced a shitty overhyped product.

Re: Google+ Isn’t Going Away

#77

Post by spullara »

fypomg wrote: post #24
mpclark wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! Google+ is brilliant for business use. I'm sharing stuff with colleagues far more effectively (and selectively) now.

It's not just business use alone that matters for Google, they are a complete productivity/life suite. Facebook fails miserably at this. Enter the realm of Facebook and what do you accomplish, you add friends, like something, and look at photos, essentially nothing, a closed experience that ignores much of the internet as a whole delivered through an unusable interface (does anyone else feels like facebook has a b-ra…

This is a pretty good assessment. I could see G+ gaining traction as a work network a la yammer but that probably isn't a big enough prize for Google to bet the company on.

Re: Google+ Isn’t Going Away

#78

Post by mayanksinghal »

badclient wrote: post #69
robryan wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they nailed a single group, the already fairly well connected tech and startups people. This also dragged along those interested in these people although they get less value from it as it's more of a Twitter like following medium unless lots of people are putting you in their circles. Google certainly have the resources to nail more smaller groups, it's just not the way they operate as this doesn't scale well…

I disagree that they have nailed any group. For me, nailing a group would mean that group ditching their competitor. Yet, I can't name a single Valley friend of hundreds who has ditched facebook for Google+. Now, I can name you dozens who have a G+ account and have tinkered with it. But that is hardly "nailing" it. I think you actually nailed it: google doesn't know how to scale social because social doesn't scale th…

Actually, Google+ is doing fairly well among bloggers, especially tech bloggers. Some references: [1] [2].

Also, success of a product does not mean ditching competitors (although one of the report does even suggest that!), it means gaining sufficient acceptance initially, so that later it becomes a valid option to ditch competitors.

For example: I was an Orkut user (was not happy with it) for quite a long time (1 year or so), even after joining facebook. Not because Facebook was not good or successful but because there was already some engagement at Orkut that cannot be replaced in a jiffy.

[1] http://www.blogworld.com/2011/07/13/prominent-tech-bloggers-...

[2] https://plus.google.com/113117251731252114390/posts/3wfvDJEi...

Re: Google+ Isn’t Going Away

#79

Post by moconnor »

sherwin wrote: post #68
badclient wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

facebook always had crazy engagement. From the time they had 1000 users to millions of users.

But there's another factor at play here. Many of Facebook's early users didn't have anything else to engage with -- facebook filled a hole. That's not the case with G+: most users already have facebook so they're trying to So like Kylekramer mentioned: G+ engagement might be lower (and that's why they're not releasing figures) but engagement for an early stage social network competing against a dominant product is no…

Users will choose the product all their friends use over time. That's the nature of this market. At this stage, almost any growth for G+ is impressive.

Re: Google+ Isn’t Going Away

#80

Post by FaceKicker »

Raphael wrote: post #75
joebadmo wrote: post #9

I really like G+, but I'm a bit dismayed that they seem to be addressing the concerns of brands over those of users. The nymwars was a prominent example, of course, and even the resulting promise of pseudonymity features have yet to surface, while Pages for brands are now live. The lack of an outward facing platform of APIs is also concerning. I continue to hope that the Plus project is the beginning of a way to impl…

Pages are pseudonyms!

This is true, actually. Pages seem to act exactly like regular user profiles other than the intention to have an associated brand instead of an associated person, and Google+ engineers have been posting that anyone can create a page (it just might not get the "confirmed name" checkbox by its name). So you could effectively set up a page with whatever name you want and use that as your pseudonymous profile on G+.
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