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Google is making a huge and annoying mistake

wilwheaton.typepad.com

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Re: Google is making a huge and annoying mistake

#51

Post by TomGullen »

iamgilesbowkett wrote: post #12
lysol wrote: post #3

While I appreciate the sentiment and agree with his point of view, his simply telling Google 'go fuck yourself' doesn't really offer an in-depth critique of why these changes or wrong -- it just smacks of the same old 'Everything that's new sucks' sentiment that I can and do find on IRC every day already. Leave the analyses to the real UX folks.

"While I appreciate the sentiment and agree with his point of view, his simply telling Google 'go fuck yourself' doesn't really offer an in-depth critique of why these changes [are] wrong" what you said is literally false. here's his in-depth critique: "I’m going to lose a crapton of potential upvotes for Tabletop, because the core of my audience is tech-savvy and may not want to “upgrade” to yet another fucking soci…

> translation: "we might lose the ability to do our show, because this G+ +1 button introduces friction and a sign-up process we don't expect our users will bother to complete."

Yeah, but he misses the next step in logical thinking which is that the changes will apply to everyone. This new button is for everyone, which means everyone will get less votes which means less are needed for him to continue to run the show.

Re: Google is making a huge and annoying mistake

#52

Post by ajross »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #35
joejohnson wrote: post #34

This is annoying, but how is it a huge mistake on Google's part? Sure, they're going to annoy a few people, but I think that these tactics forcing people to use G+ will probably work. People will be forced onto this G+ platform whether they like it or not; the mass exodus threats about any social networking platform never materialize into anything more than a few users deactivating their accounts.

How much does Google gain from having a bunch of people who technically have G+ accounts, but don't actually use them for anything aside from liking/disliking videos?

They gain a bunch of people with an easy and painless upgrade path to G+ usage if/when their friends start using it. It reduces the technical friction, which is always the biggest blocker for early adopters.

Like most people, all of my friends use Facebook more or less exclusively. But I know if I have a photo in my G+ account (the Android app syncs all photos to the G+ cloud by default) I can send people a link and have a pretty reasonable assurance they can see it.

Re: Google is making a huge and annoying mistake

#53

Post by javajosh »

Google thinks it will die in the long run without social. They realize that all the tech-savvy software product in the world can be reproduced eventually, but secondary, human-savvy products, can never be reproduced. Furthermore, they see the power in adding ever more context to search - see Bret Victor's talk about how 'interaction' is bad, and inferring context is everything. There's no better context than social.

While my visceral reaction is basically the same as Wil's, I actually think that this is something Google needs to do if they believe in this vision. Time will tell if it's justified: when they removed social features from Reader I basically stopped using it. I probably won't stop using YouTube, but this may be annoying enough for me to stop giving feedback (apart from the navigation event itself, of course).

Also on the plus side, since Google insists on real identities on G+ then we can at least look forward to more civil comments on YouTube, which I think we all agree would be a net benefit.

Re: Google is making a huge and annoying mistake

#54

Post by erichocean »

TomGullen wrote: post #51
iamgilesbowkett wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"While I appreciate the sentiment and agree with his point of view, his simply telling Google 'go fuck yourself' doesn't really offer an in-depth critique of why these changes [are] wrong" what you said is literally false. here's his in-depth critique: "I’m going to lose a crapton of potential upvotes for Tabletop, because the core of my audience is tech-savvy and may not want to “upgrade” to yet another fucking soci…

> translation: "we might lose the ability to do our show, because this G+ +1 button introduces friction and a sign-up process we don't expect our users will bother to complete." Yeah, but he misses the next step in logical thinking which is that the changes will apply to everyone. This new button is for everyone, which means everyone will get less votes which means less are needed for him to continue to run the show.

Everyone will get less votes in different proportions, based on their audience.

It's not a linear adjustment for everyone.

Re: Google is making a huge and annoying mistake

#56

Post by SkyMarshal »

nextparadigms wrote: post #45

In the beginning people complained that Google has like a dozen different "Like" buttons on the Reader, Youtube and so on. Now they complain that they want to use just one everywhere? I think it's a great move. Personally, I even want them to integrate their G+ commenting system into all their services. It's one of the best commenting systems out there, and certainly much better than the Youtube one. It might even en…

Agreed. Anedotal - I've been using Youtube since it was released, and I just found out a month or so ago that you don't have to dig through the annoyingly short paginated comments below videos to find replies to yours, there's a page in your dashboard that shows all that.

I'm not a heavy Youtube user and don't care that much, but it was not intuitive or apparent.

Further, I mostly like G+ (except for one complaint [1]), and I'm all for better integration of their properties with it.

1. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3828010

Re: Google is making a huge and annoying mistake

#57

Post by RobAtticus »

mattmanser wrote: post #9
thekungfuman wrote: post #4

It's perfectly reasonable that Google would try to consolidate their properties. You used to need a YouTube account to do anything, and they own YouTube and don't feel like managing disparate databases about their users. It may be a minor inconvenience because it's a change from what people are used to, but it makes sense logistically and serves their business interests. They ARE a business after all...

YouTube is not Google. Google is not YouTube. They just happen to own it. Google should start remembering that before YouTube gets myspaced. Which imo is looking increasingly likely. Vimeo is one competitor which seems to already be growing like crazy for example.

Man, people really like to make ridiculous predictions about which big site is going to be "the next Myspace." Youtube has DAYS worth of video uploaded every single minute. When people talk about online video they always mention Youtube, not Vimeo, not some other site. You really think that it looks increasingly likely that Youtube is going to somehow go under? Sorry but that's just bogus.

Re: Google is making a huge and annoying mistake

#59

Post by jack-r-abbit »

alfbolide wrote: post #28

It's just funny that people want google to fuck herself while they are perfectly fine to be forced to sign in to comment either on the original article or here.

or that a bazillion other sites only give you the option to log in with your Facebook account. Haters gonna hate.

Re: Google is making a huge and annoying mistake

#60

Post by jentulman »

NickPollard wrote: post #20

This is where I show my complete lack of understanding about Social Media, but really, what is the point of a 'like' button? The web is built on URLs. If you like something and want to share it with people, send them a URL. That's what they're for.

Because the sharing is usually implied by the action of liking. Clicking a like or +1 button causes your network on the associated social site to see a link to what you liked in their stream. In theory it's made it far easier to share cool things with people.

as an aside, I say 'in theory' because with the millions of 'me too' buttons scattered around the web, in even my modestly small socially networked connections, the S/N ratio has made them near enough useless.

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