A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+ • Hacker News Board

Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+

#11

Post by oelmekki » Fri, Apr 25, 2014, 6:33 AM UTC

That's not the biggest problem, to me. Google+ maybe has not hit the target usage stats google wanted, but even when you love google+, it's awkward to use.

I'm a daily google+ user and quite like the product. But when it comes to publishing, it always feels a bit off.

I don't have a single public identity. I'm a rails developer, a news addict, a french citizen and since recently, a 3d printer user. Recently, I decided to open a french blog about 3d printing, since I felt it was lacking.

Now, each time I want to publish something in one of those topics, I always hesitate. How many posts about that subject did I wrote recently ? May I publish an other one without annoying people that are following me for something else ? It's especially a problem with my french articles, since most of people following me won't understand french.

As for now, here are my options :

- publishing my french articles to a selected group of french people, hiding the content to anyone that might be interested and I don't know of

- publishing my french articles as public post, and annoying everyone that does not read french or are not interested in 3d printing

- not publishing anything

Sadly, it often comes to that last option.

Being able to place people in circles is a great thing. But it's half backed : we should be able to publish circles and let people subscribe to them, so we can write content without fearing to be annoying.

Having a product making your users feel they are annoying is probably not a good thing.

Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+

#12

Post by bratsche » Fri, Apr 25, 2014, 6:41 AM UTC

If 100% of Google Reader users enthusiastically adopted Google+, would that have even come close to what they were hoping to ultimately get? That's probably a rounding error by Facebook's usage numbers.

Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+

#13

Post by wpietri » Fri, Apr 25, 2014, 6:41 AM UTC

oelmekki wrote: post #11

That's not the biggest problem, to me. Google+ maybe has not hit the target usage stats google wanted, but even when you love google+, it's awkward to use. I'm a daily google+ user and quite like the product. But when it comes to publishing, it always feels a bit off. I don't have a single public identity. I'm a rails developer, a news addict, a french citizen and since recently, a 3d printer user. Recently, I decide…

Yeah. For precisely this reason, I maintain two Twitter accounts: business me and personal me. It kills me that Google+'s Circles were only about privacy control, not targeted sharing.

Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+

#14

Post by pekk » Fri, Apr 25, 2014, 6:41 AM UTC

oelmekki wrote: post #11

That's not the biggest problem, to me. Google+ maybe has not hit the target usage stats google wanted, but even when you love google+, it's awkward to use. I'm a daily google+ user and quite like the product. But when it comes to publishing, it always feels a bit off. I don't have a single public identity. I'm a rails developer, a news addict, a french citizen and since recently, a 3d printer user. Recently, I decide…

This has always been the top problem with Google+ for me. Maybe I want to hear about your code or your religion but I really really don't have the time and energy to wade through your cats, politics, etc.

Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+

#15

Post by stormbrew » Fri, Apr 25, 2014, 6:41 AM UTC

I don't really think this would have helped much, but I do think that it highlights a part of why G+ has not been a very big success. It just lacks a compelling use case to make you come back to it after you discover that it doesn't have Facebook's network effect. There's nothing it does that Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook don't do better, aside from look kind of googly and force you to pick which one of your 5 gmail/apps account identities you want to really use.

Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+

#16

Post by charlesism » Fri, Apr 25, 2014, 6:42 AM UTC

eitland wrote: post #3

This makes the assumption that Google haters wouldn't have found some reason to hate Google anyway. Which is overly optimistic in my opinion.

As a Google-hater, I can confirm that. They could have invented an RSS reader that cures cancer, and I'd still hate them. The only thing they can do with Google+ that would make me happy is cave in its metaphorical skull with a falling piano.

Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+

#17

Post by onion2k » Fri, Apr 25, 2014, 6:42 AM UTC

It was actually a really good product, but the thing has had zero traction with real people.

If no one uses a product then it's clearly providing no value. That's pretty much the definition of a bad product.

Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+

#18

Post by bostik » Fri, Apr 25, 2014, 6:42 AM UTC

scottporad wrote: post #10

001sky wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author seems to think gmail would have had a seamless integration as well. http://www.scottporad.com/2013/03/15/why-is-gmail-not-part-o... There seems to be cognitive dissonance on people's aversion to strategic opportunism.

ha! i forgot that i wrote that blog post. you'd think that between that post and this one that i have some reason for caring that google+ succeed. i don't...i have no vested interest. i just annoys me when big companies with massive amounts of resources bungle stuff. it seems like with so much talent and money it would be easier to get stuff right.

All companies bungle stuff, regardless of their size.

The main difference is that small companies go down when their bold attempt backfires or fails. Large companies usually have financial buffers in place to stomach the blow.

[Insert classic Dilbert strip about only doing the 10% of projects that will succeed.]

Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+

#19

Post by pekk » Fri, Apr 25, 2014, 6:43 AM UTC

stormbrew wrote: post #15

I don't really think this would have helped much, but I do think that it highlights a part of why G+ has not been a very big success. It just lacks a compelling use case to make you come back to it after you discover that it doesn't have Facebook's network effect. There's nothing it does that Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook don't do better, aside from look kind of googly and force you to pick which one of your 5 gmail…

If I had been able to selectively subscribe to technical content of posters rather than also hearing about their cats, there is no reason I would not be using it over Twitter and Facebook to catch up on people's microblogging/thoughts.

I never had a use for Facebook-style surveillance, I don't want it and I don't care how many annoying people it has who I don't want to hear from, this was for me always a ludicrous argument.

But Plus is ultimately still a failure

Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+

#20

Post by anonymoushn » Fri, Apr 25, 2014, 6:44 AM UTC

roryhughes wrote: post #5

YouTubers got really pissed off with Google+ comments, but that has calmed down now because really it's still just comments below a video. What that did though was it made people (who may never have even tried +) really annoyed with it. But for RSS, imagine if they forced people to read it on +, there would be uproar.

Having to open a new tab with an auto-playing video to see the comment someone replied to is not okay. Having to do it for every comment in a long thread is not okay. The only reason people have stopped talking about it is that talking about it accomplishes nothing; Google just wants their site to be shit.