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Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?

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Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?

#201

Post by davemel37 »

jmillikin wrote: post #30

Internally, G+ is marketed as a unified login/account system. Management's stated reasoning goes something like: * It's silly to force users to have separate accounts for Google services because most users would prefer to have Gmail, Docs/Drive, YouTube, Calendar, and so on under the same account/identity. * Users who want to have separate public identities will create pseudonymous "Pages" for each of their identitie…

this is a classic branding failure. Once something is associated with a category (i.e. G+ = Social Network) every time you try to associate it with another product or service (i.e. Universal Login) the messaging gets fuddled, and people get confused and it hurts the perception of both products.

This is the same reason Google+ was a poor brand name choice since Google is already associated with Search, making a new product with a line extension name just hurts both products ability to differentiate themselves...

This is why DuckDuckGo, and other new search engines are able to grow market share... Because Google started believing their own lore, and fail to accept that they simply don't understand why their initial branding of Google was successful, but all their future products they fail to establish strong brands with...

This is why Google Wave died, and many other google products.

Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?

#202

Post by teaneedz »

magicalist wrote: post #148
teaneedz wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They care, it just takes a little longer at times. One day, a person wakes up and realizes that the technophiles are someplace else, all of those blogs, videos and snippets they've been seeing hit home, and they have been personally affected by a real name policy. It starts someplace.

or the technophiles look up and everyone's using whatsapp while we're asking why google isn't using XMPP anymore. This meme needs to die. Sure, gmail rode the wave of the tech-in-crowd to success, but there are far more examples that didn't, or did but went nowhere. If we were actually a good crystal ball it would be a whole lot easier to invest in the market.

What examples might those be? When I look at many products that had the tech-in-crowd blessing and yet failed, often it appeared to be because of lapses in user experience and some humility.

It doesn't require a crystal ball to know when a product solves a problem for users in a way that leaves a good taste in one's mouth.

However, I'm still discovering great products and apps from technophiles who have found solutions to problems that impact me. I've also left detritus behind, not because the awesome folks of HN said it was time, but because of well reasoned thoughts that start here (I tend to favor here) and in other technology springboards.

At the end of the day, I believe that mainstream ultimately wakes up. The kernals for change start small though.

Personally, I don't follow a compass held by just the tech pundits or mainstream - I head toward the smell of good user experience.

Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?

#203

Post by eonil »

voyou wrote: post #139
eonil wrote: post #126

DISCLAIMER: I'm not a Google employee. This is my guess. Users doesn't make money for Google. Users are valuable only when they're in sellable state. Ad companies don't want to buy fully anonymous, bogus or false profiles. They want real personal information from real human. To increase efficiency of target reaching / marketing cost. Until now, Google didn't need to worry about quality of their product - I mean their…

"They want real personal information from real human." I don't understand why they would want that. The kind of analytics data you can get from a Google profile is much more useful to advertisers than vague demographic categories like age or location (I mean, you can guess at these categories from Google's data, but if you know that someone acts like a 23 year old woman from Austin, that's more useful for marketing p…

You're right. Nobody want approximated, imitated, false, or empty data.

And you're wrong. Facebook data is not vague. People use Facebook to write about themselves. And to announce it to their friends. People don't lie to their friends. And that's the miracle of Facebook to marketers. People write truth on Facebook. Sheryl Sandberg knew it, so she didn't hesitate to get aboard.

Unlike Facebook, Google data is poor. They have only approximation and best-guess. People don't want to leave any personal stuff on Google. Google is a device for work, not a personal entertainment. They sometimes leave bogus data to avoid Google's tracking. Actually many people do. I had over 5 Gmail accounts for spam mailers and crappy web-service membership. That's the vague data. They can't even dream some relationship data between users.

I don't understand your story about 23yo woman. What marketers want to know is the only thing - how can I find a person would like to buy my product?. Everything else is just a clue and device to track them down. Age, sex, location, taste, marriage… All are just parameters. But Google has only that stripped down parameters. No more. Those parameters are better than nothing, but completely useless when compared to what Facebook offers.

Facebook offers: (1) whether the woman actually married or not (2) who's' husband (3) what's their jobs = income level (4) whether they have children and how old are the children (5) when did she moved recently. She don't need to write about her children. Because Facebook will analyze photos and will recognize children's age, race, sex, and current living location. In addition, Facebook also let you know how many friends she have, and how are their children… recursively.

If you're in a diaper company, which profile would you prefer? I won't even consider Google data. That's just a crap when compared to Facebook profiles.

Of course, those data won't be offered as is. That's illegal. But each companies know how to deliver those data to their customers. And obviously, Facebook is expected to have much more fine gained control on choosing advertising target. Marketers also know the difference of that methodology. "You can pin-point bombing on Facebook."

Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?

#204

Post by nisa »

IanCal wrote: post #187
chilldream wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it you missed this: https://plus.google.com/u/0/115668950429167517685/posts/hTe4...

I'm entirely confused by this. I have my G+ account linked with youtube. Just now I unlinked them, and changed the visible name from one that was obviously mine to a more anonymous name and posted a comment with absolutely no issue. No picture, no name, no link to me. And this is from after linking the accounts and then unlinking them (which took under a minute to do and was pretty easy to find).

This option is not available for me. I can't disconnect my Youtube account without deleting Google+.

I also found no way to create a pseudonymous page for my Youtube Account.

And I've found no way to delete my Youtube account.

After searching and looking around in the user forums for some time I've gave up.

Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?

#205

Post by nisa »

jmillikin wrote: post #84
yabatopia wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never heard of "Pages" in the context of pseudonyms, only as a way to create Google+ profiles for (small) businesses. It's a bit confusing and ironically a search for it on Google isn't really helpful. How is a "Page" as a separate public identity treated differently compared to a pseudonym? How reliable is it to protect your real identity?

> How is a "Page" as a separate public identity treated > differently compared to a pseudonym? If I remember correctly there's some anti-spam restrictions on interaction with people not in your circles, but that was a few months ago and they may have been lifted. The current documentation[1][2] doesn't mention any restrictions. [1] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2848323 [2] https://support.google.com/plus/…

But it is impossible to create a page if you already linked your Youtube account with a Google+ profile. I did so because I just did not understood what that page was all about. There is no way back. At least I could not find a way.

Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?

#206

Post by dspeyer »

jrockway wrote: post #133
dizzystar wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> While I know a lot of people by their online handles, I also know their real name, This can't possibly be true. I easily interact with 100+ people on various platforms. I don't know any of their names. I consider them "friends" in a way, but their real names are wholly irrelevant to me. >> if you're talking to your friends via YouTube No... You are having a discussion about the video. This is certainly not your fr…

I define friend as someone I'd invite over to my house. Those are the people I interact with on social networking sites and send YouTube links to. Discussion forums are, socially, a very different thing than hanging out with friends, even though they both involve people and saying things. That's what I think HN collectively misses when talking about Google+ or Facebook; they think those are Internet Discussion Forums…

Check the stats on reddit. There are a ton of people who want topic-focused discussion with strangers on the internet.

G+ seems to be trying to be both a public discussion forum and a hangout for existing friends at the same time. This is part of what makes it often unpleasant.

Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?

#207

Post by dspeyer »

minwcnt5 wrote: post #60
alayne wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes thought leaders need to light the way when issues are not apparent to the masses. I have been saying for a long time that having companies own our identities is a bad idea.

What evidence is there that HN commenters are actually "thought leaders"? That sounds like just the sort of hubris the 4chan thread makes fun of.

Are you saying your less technical relatives don't ask you for advice on internet matters? And take it?

Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?

#208

Post by IanCal »

nisa wrote: post #204
IanCal wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm entirely confused by this. I have my G+ account linked with youtube. Just now I unlinked them, and changed the visible name from one that was obviously mine to a more anonymous name and posted a comment with absolutely no issue. No picture, no name, no link to me. And this is from after linking the accounts and then unlinking them (which took under a minute to do and was pretty easy to find).

This option is not available for me. I can't disconnect my Youtube account without deleting Google+. I also found no way to create a pseudonymous page for my Youtube Account. And I've found no way to delete my Youtube account. After searching and looking around in the user forums for some time I've gave up.

Does this link not work for you: http://www.youtube.com/account_revert

For me this link appears under the general account settings on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/account

This is what my account settings page looks like:

http://i.imgur.com/NrEnfyY.png

I changed from my real name to somenamefortestingpurposes, and seem to be able to change this to anything else. I've also tested posting comments with this, and they don't appear with my real name.

I also have the option of deleting my "channel" which I think is pretty much the same as deleting my youtube presence.

Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?

#210

Post by dewiz »

Something that Google fails to understand, is that the company unifying the authentication experience cannot be the same company unifying the web experience.

I like having one authentication service provider, but I cannot have this provider holding hostage my services, my data, my history etc.

In this sense Microsoft is better, because they focus more on the product and less on the identity (since the business model is around licenses this makes sense). However this could change soon... Bing, Office365 etc.

If Google wants to win this battle they need to allow users to expose themselves with nicknames at least, different names per service even. Internally they will have their unique ID to which they can attach their marketing business model. However, I will still feel something is wrong about one company knowing so much about me.

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