Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Hats […] would be a great addition to Google+. Are you working at Valve?
No. Why?
It's a Team Fortress2 reference.
Novel in-game aesthetic that turned into a huge money spinner.
A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+
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Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+
#92People don't seem to understand that Google+ was used internally before launch as though it were Facebook; people only shared with their friends and family. But when the product was launched to the public, it was given a limited release, biasing it to the tech crowd, and they gave the ability to give posts "public" visibility. Well these two things quickly turned Google+ into Twitter rather than Facebook. Then they s…
I was just thinking this. Google+ is much more like twitter, where you can follow people to see what they're saying, and there's not necessarily a reciprocal relationship. I also post publicly to Google+, like Twitter, and unlike Facebook where everything I post is private (and generally aimed towards family and RL friends).
I think Google+ in general is totally fine. In general it's better than Facebook or Twitter.... I'm not sure why so many people seem to dislike it. The integration with other Google products doesn't bother me at all. I don't comment on youtube pretty much ever, and I don't mind the auto-cross posting when I post to my blogger blog.
Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+
#93Keep it simple. There's no reason to overanalyze the failure. Ask someone why they're not on Google+. There response: "What's Google+?" If they know what it is: "Why would I use Google+? No one is on there. All my friends use x y or z." Google+ has a huge public perception and identity problem -- who is it for exactly? Why use it when there's other social media?
Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can share with only a specific circle.. - just set the To to the specific Circle....
The point isn't to limit the viewership, but to target the people you annoy with your notifications. Sharing to a specific circle only implements privacy control, but it's much too heavy handed - nobody else can see it. Also, you can't change sharing options after the fact, so choosing the right options becomes particularly important.
I think the problem is more that just because random person X "has me in their circles", I've no idea whether they're interested in my posts about cheese or my posts about Latvian clog dancing or my posts about C++, so I can't assign them to my topic-specific circles for targetted notifications.
Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+
#95Google+ came in a time when social network fatigue was setting in (Facebook usage was declining in the US) but there still wasn't a clear sense of what people wanted in a social networking site.
It was an uphill battle, and nearly unwinnable the way Google chose to take it on.
Google Hangouts was, in my view, one of their biggest assets. It's a solid piece of technology. It was way better than its competitors. The problem is that they couldn't come up with a viable way to make it part of Google+, rather than a great standalone project. The vision was that people would spend time in Google+ and "hang out" with others who were available. I knew, off the bat, that that wouldn't happen without (at first) a context around which to structure a hangout. Board games are a great starting social context for early adopters, but since they're a cognitively upscale group, you need quality games, not Zyngarbage like Farmville.
I thought that a focus on game quality (Real Games Initiative) could, even though it'd piss off counterparties like Zynga wanting to throw us our crap (because they didn't expect us to succeed) and still get preferential treatment, give people a context in which they'd actually get comfortable in G+, and then want to use it. Games were an area in which (circa 2011) Facebook was shitting the bed-- low-quality games and game spam were a primary driver of social network fatigue-- and I thought it was a great way to distinguish ourselves as cognitively upscale and attract early adopters and the more charismatic elements of the early majority.
Maybe a quality Games product wouldn't have saved G+. It's too late to know for sure, and I'd guess that RNCH was a bigger problem, but I feel like that was a key battle that has been lost.
Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+
#96That'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…
What is lacking is 'channel negotiation' between the sender and the receiver. The sender knows what he sends - the receiver knows what he wants to receive - neither of them has the full information and they need to collaborate on defining the channel connecting them. For example the sender can sort their messages into out-channels (as it is partially implemented in Google+ via circles) and the receiver can chose what…
Yeah this is why I don't use it. I added a ton of randomers to a web desgin circle from here and reddit etc.
I must trust they suck me into a web design circle also AND then; Trust they share related content only to that circle.
What actually happens is I have a random stream of peoples kids and dogs etc as they all seem the "share with all" by default.
Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You can share with only a specific circle.. - just set the To to the specific Circle....
The people in your Circles have no idea which Circle they're in.
And you have no way of knowing which of your post topics they're interested in.
Google failed to grasp the distinction between author and content.
This was pointed out by many, many people very early on (myself included), and remained one of the huge failings of the services from day one. Certainly one of my own frustrations.
"Pages" and "Communities" were bolted on later to try to address this, but were both poorly designed and communicated (I still can't tell you what "Pages" are supposed to be). UI/UX on many of these features was also poor.
Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+
#98Reader and Blogger integration weren't the biggest failings of G+, but tying those particular products into the service could have helped it along. In particular, giving easier ways to follow specific items or topics of interest (via Reader) and allowing for more expressive and focused content (via Blogger).
Truth is, G+ was mis-architected from the ground up, starting with Circles. Numerous abortive directions were taken (anyone remember "sparks"?).
The real blunders, though, were in utterly mismanaging and misunderstanding what real community is, and how it is formed and fostered. Real Names, Nymwars, the War on Words, and the YouTube Anschluss were all massive (and entirely avoidable) blunders.
A large part of it was that Google had a very clear idea of what it wanted, but didn't much care for what its users' interests were. And when the users told them, they basically said "la la la la la, I can't hear you!".
The underlying technology is solid. I wish the sites I use instead of G+ had the clusters, search depth, breadth, and speed, the reliability, and the performance of Google. They don't. But what they've got are much better UI, often other features which exceed G+, and above and beyond all else, VASTLY healthier communities and relations between the sites and those communities.
Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+
#99That'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…
You can easily create Google+ "pages" to solve exactly this problem. They have the added bonus of not requiring "real names", so you could be using a pseudonym or something if you wanted
"Pages" were never (and still aren't) communicated well. The name, for starters, sucks.
They seem to have been created for marketing purposes. Using them to topically divide my posts ... never occurred. Literally, until the past day or so.
Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+
#100That'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…
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. Yup, that's a killer. I have people who follow me for personal stuff, a few people who follow me for kayaking stuff, a couple hundred people who apparently follow me for tech/entrepreneurial stuff and some people who…
That's really interesting... I wouldn't object to starting a blog on the stranger points of financial valuation, but there is no way I would tie my real identity to it.
I want to be able to forget the stuff I do now, in the future.