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The Mounting Minuses at Google+

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Re: The Mounting Minuses at Google+

#21

Post by untog »

citricsquid wrote: post #13

If I want to post publicly to my "followers" (people I don't know) I use Twitter, if I want to post to my friends I use Facebook, for me and almost everyone else I've spoken to Google+ offers no value. I still don't understand what Google was thinking with +, it offers nothing to most people. The only good feature is hangouts which could easily be a separate product. I have around 150 friends on Facebook and I see a…

If I want to post publicly to my "followers" (people I don't know) I use Twitter, [...] I still don't understand what Google was thinking with +

How about publicly post long form content to your followers? Because G+ excels in that, and both Facebook and Twitter fail at it. There's a network effect problem, for sure, but it does have a purpose in the situation you outline.

Re: The Mounting Minuses at Google+

#22

Post by zalew »

leeoniya wrote: post #18

the problem is simple: no one wants to maintain multiple social accounts. if all my friends migrated exclusively to G+, it would be fine, i would as well. but for that to happen, all of their friends would need to migrate...and so on. i deleted my g+ account a week ago because no one has only a g+ account, everyone on g+ is ALSO on FB. as long as there continues to be a significant majority of content posted to FB (i…

> the problem is simple: no one wants to maintain multiple social accounts.

I'm a FB refugee and G+ is the first social network I don't have to maintain. It's just there. I use other G products anyway so I don't think about using or not using it, if having the account is really worth it. And circles are so damn easy I don't care about adding even whole public circles I wouldn't normally friend/follow on any other network - they are there, I don't share with them, I can read them once per month and their existence doesn't bother me, if I realize I don't read them, I can drop a whole circle 4000 people at once with two clicks. And it's usability is disobliging, especially comparing to FB.

Re: The Mounting Minuses at Google+

#24

Post by leeoniya »

zalew wrote: post #22
leeoniya wrote: post #18

the problem is simple: no one wants to maintain multiple social accounts. if all my friends migrated exclusively to G+, it would be fine, i would as well. but for that to happen, all of their friends would need to migrate...and so on. i deleted my g+ account a week ago because no one has only a g+ account, everyone on g+ is ALSO on FB. as long as there continues to be a significant majority of content posted to FB (i…

> the problem is simple: no one wants to maintain multiple social accounts. I'm a FB refugee and G+ is the first social network I don't have to maintain. It's just there. I use other G products anyway so I don't think about using or not using it, if having the account is really worth it. And circles are so damn easy I don't care about adding even whole public circles I wouldn't normally friend/follow on any other net…

if G+ has 90 million users, and FB has 900 million users. statistically, only 1/10th of your FB contacts would be on G+ without the help of warm-market recruitment.

if you happen to find yourself in a situation where 95% of your friends are either exclusively or primarily on G+, you are likely a rare exception and don't need to weigh a choice between following 95% of what your friends share and the freedom from "maintaining" a social account.

i am very specific about what i want to share and what i dont. for that to happen, yes you need to explicitly post and not post. i hate the whole "share everything implicitly" concept. to be honest, beyond the FB feed of my tight circle of friends, i don't use it for anything else.

Re: The Mounting Minuses at Google+

#26

Post by zalew »

leeoniya wrote: post #24
zalew wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the problem is simple: no one wants to maintain multiple social accounts. I'm a FB refugee and G+ is the first social network I don't have to maintain. It's just there. I use other G products anyway so I don't think about using or not using it, if having the account is really worth it. And circles are so damn easy I don't care about adding even whole public circles I wouldn't normally friend/follow on any other net…

if G+ has 90 million users, and FB has 900 million users. statistically, only 1/10th of your FB contacts would be on G+ without the help of warm-market recruitment. if you happen to find yourself in a situation where 95% of your friends are either exclusively or primarily on G+, you are likely a rare exception and don't need to weigh a choice between following 95% of what your friends share and the freedom from "main…

Not following 95% of what my "friends" share was a decision I made way earlier. So I really don't mind that on G+ I have 10-15 daily posts from people I know IRL, not 650. And if facebookers came to G+, certainly over half of them would land in a separate circle of IRL people I'm not interested in reading for various reasons. Most of the mentioned problems with G+ are problems I don't have.

Re: The Mounting Minuses at Google+

#27

Post by k-mcgrady »

bcantrill wrote: post #17

I was initially very excited about G+ because Twitter continues to be such a disappointment, but I find that I'm using Twitter more than ever (and, it should be said, disliking it more than ever). It has become clear to me that -- like the transition from black-and-white to color television -- the winning replacement for Twitter will be the one that doesn't force the world to choose overnight. To that end (and apolog…

1. Why do you use Twitter if you dislike it so much? (I'm actually curious) 2. Syndicating your tweets across multiple networks would annoy people - and you would probably lose followers. The most annoying thing I see on Facebook is a stream of someones tweets. People tend to tweet a lot. They also tend to update their Facebook status a lot. But G+ is different. People post less and their is more discussion. Allowing tweet syndication would ruin that. You can however easily share your G+ posts to twitter (although not automatically) using one of several Chrome extensions.

Re: The Mounting Minuses at Google+

#28

Post by yason »

A marking difference is that Facebook asks "What's on your mind?" and Google+ asks "Share what's new...".

G+ isn't really a social network, it's an extension to my Google profile and Google account. I would like to use it as my social network but it's lacking a couple of crucial things.

The reason it's suited for almost sharing news only and as an ad-hoc blogging service is because it doesn't allow you to actually be in touch with people like Facebook does. Unlike in Facebook, in G+ you can't post to the equivalent of people's wall and you can't send short messages such as on Facebook. There's email but it's not available with all my contacts, and G+ chat only works with a select few people, and there's always a barrier in writing an ordinary email.

Surprisingly, addressing a single person privately or publically is the only thing that I need from Facebook. I don't use anything else on Facebook so I could probably switch to G+ with most of my friend base if G+ had those. Surely the user interface is much better on Google side, Facebook is absolutely horrific.

Re: The Mounting Minuses at Google+

#30

Post by samstave »

DarkShikari wrote: post #10
lomegor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, you are comparing apple to oranges. Google+ is not a direct competition to Facebook and there are many ways all three (including Twitter) can coexist. Lastly, the Facebook user experience is really horrible. That's one of the top reasons I don't use it. Menus are not ordered, options are hidden, many parts are not explained nor documented, top search works different depending which page you are one, etc…

First of all, you are comparing apple to oranges. Google+ is not a direct competition to Facebook No matter how much they are claimed to solve different problems, they work in the same way and occupy a similar brain space. Facebook is already well above and beyond the level of time sink that many people are willing to accept. Their user numbers are already starting to drop in many countries because many people -- eve…

I have never had a facebook account. I never will. I have had a G+ account for many months and I dont use it at all. Literally zero time per week.

There are too many distractions online, I don't watch TV at all either, but I just don't have the brain space for the following peoples feeds.

I had scoble on my follow list on G+ when I first joined, and I had to drop him because he just produced way too much crap I didnt have time or interest to read.

Between my family, friends, reddit and HN, I have way too much content than I know what to do with.

Aside from this - it detracts from my attempts to dedicate time to learning new things.

I am very close to dropping reddit and HN and only watching Kahn and other online trainings.

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