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

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

#111

Post by gfodor » Fri, Apr 25, 2014, 3:55 PM UTC

nardi wrote: post #23

gfodor wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No joining necessary, they just move your reader account into G+ and slowly people start using it for more than an RSS reader.

You clearly (somehow) haven't had Google try to convert one of your Google accounts into a G+ account before, or you've forgotten. There's a whole process involving your real name, a picture, profile, importing contacts, etc., etc.

Right I am saying strategically they should have figured out a way to skip all that and just get people using the platform for rss first

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

#112

Post by anigbrowl » Fri, Apr 25, 2014, 5:09 PM UTC

Props to the mods for changing the title - can't stand bowdlerisms.

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

#113

Post by grkvlt » Sat, Apr 26, 2014, 9:03 PM UTC

soci wrote: post #59

The biggest problem for me is all the FAKE ACTIVITY you can find in the platform. I ended up not believing google+, and not doing any effort to publish anything there. I have reasons to believe that most of the "follow" activity in google+ was managed by bots (google bots?) that took over zombie accounts just to simulate the community was alive. I have a real example. Without doing much, other than being featured in…

> managed by bots (google bots?) that took over zombie accounts just to simulate the community was alive

If you have any proof to this, please let us know - otherwise I'd suggest this is pure conspiracy-theorist idiocy.

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

#114

Post by grkvlt » Sat, Apr 26, 2014, 9:08 PM UTC

Kequc wrote: post #103

soci wrote: post #59

The biggest problem for me is all the FAKE ACTIVITY you can find in the platform. I ended up not believing google+, and not doing any effort to publish anything there. I have reasons to believe that most of the "follow" activity in google+ was managed by bots (google bots?) that took over zombie accounts just to simulate the community was alive. I have a real example. Without doing much, other than being featured in…

> All of our followers seemed to be zombie users with real names, but none of them had a real person behind them. I can explain this quote with this quote. > I ended up not believing google+, and not doing any effort to publish anything there.

Yup. And there are a lot of people who blindly click 'follow' on any featured post, or blindly reply to featured content. Have a look at some of the responses to promoted or featured articles, a lot of them are used to seeing only their friends postings, and assume the content is addressed to them personally. This leads to a lot of confused replies.

I think this shops the problem with combining a public forum with people publishing content to the world, and a social network of connected individuals talking to each other. Facebook is the latter, Twitter is the former, and Google+ seems to want to be both and is not succeeding. It may end up successful as one or the other, time will tell, it's too early to write it off, though.

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

#115

Post by fudged71 » Sat, Apr 26, 2014, 9:24 PM UTC

Leynos wrote: post #84

fudged71 wrote: post #40

People 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 really wish they had just rolled with it and allowed it to grow as a new Twitter-like product. It still is from what I can see. The majority of people I follow are people I don't know outside of G+ who share publicly or to interest-based circles.

The thing with it being a public social network is that many people want anonymity.

It's clear that from the start they wanted this platform to also serve the basis of an identity service for the rest of google, so the public aspect completely screwed them over.

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

#116

Post by oelmekki » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 7:30 AM UTC

tiziano88 wrote: post #42

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…

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

I've tried pages, but it's indeed not what I would. I can't find a mean to even just make them appear on my profile, other than making a manual link in "about" page description.

Definitely not good enough :)