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Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

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Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#101

Post by kaonashi »

pnathan wrote: post #19
aesthetics1 wrote: post #8

I imagine in the coming months (years?) we will see Google transition away from Google+ as a catchall platform, and back to standalone solutions similar to their offerings from the pre-Google+ days. A bit off-topic: I think it's the right move for them. Google+ was (and still is) a pretty cool platform. It has a lot of neat features that existing social networks lack. Facebook just somehow holds on to their userbase…

I actually have really enjoyed the UI for G+. I think it's really a technically excellent platform that has totally failed to execute well on the userbase side.

Perhaps if they allowed it to grow organically rather than trying to shove it down everyone's throats, it may be a different story.

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#102

Post by hobarrera »

extc wrote: post #60
tdicola wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can they bring Google Reader back now? I'm still bitter about it being killed to focus on Google+. Now that Google+ is dead in the water it makes the decision to kill Reader even worse.

What's obnoxious is that everyone watching from the outside knew all these forced G+ moves were annoying and not welcome. One of the worst outcomes, imo, is the addition of G+ comments on YouTube videos - you end up with comments like "Check this out" in the video's actual comments section. Those comments are completely useless and destroy any sort of conversation, if it's even possible to have one in YT comments.

Alientube (firefox plugin) might be of interest to you. It shows reddit comments for youtuve videos, which tend to be of slightly better quality (not always though).

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#103

Post by hobarrera »

ars wrote: post #77
tdicola wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can they bring Google Reader back now? I'm still bitter about it being killed to focus on Google+. Now that Google+ is dead in the water it makes the decision to kill Reader even worse.

> Now that Google+ is dead in the water Why do you say that? In my experience every single teen I know is on Google+ and not facebook, while the older parents are on facebook. Some of the teens also have facebook, but none don't have Google+. This is because of two reasons: 1: Gmail means they all have Google+ accounts almost automatically, and 2: The privacy controls are much better in Google+, and they like that.

> In my experience every single teen I know is on Google+ and not facebook, while the older parents are on facebook.

The only few people I know on Google+ are hardcore google fans who work in tech. Every teen (~15-18) I know is on facebook. And their younger siblings.

Plugin, Facebook Messenger seems to be quite dominant across those age groups too.

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#104

Post by hobarrera »

serve_yay wrote: post #13
aesthetics1 wrote: post #8

I imagine in the coming months (years?) we will see Google transition away from Google+ as a catchall platform, and back to standalone solutions similar to their offerings from the pre-Google+ days. A bit off-topic: I think it's the right move for them. Google+ was (and still is) a pretty cool platform. It has a lot of neat features that existing social networks lack. Facebook just somehow holds on to their userbase…

The number of unread Facebook messages I have is not printed on 30% of all the web pages I visit. This is what I find so irritating about Google+, it's everywhere it doesn't need to be. Comparisons to things like Twitter and FB fall flat for this reason.

> The number of unread Facebook messages I have is not printed on 30% of all the web pages I visit.

I've only seen this printed in google search and google plus, not on any other website. Maybe it's an extension of yours?

If it's google search you're complaining about, just log out, or use something like DDG.

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#105

Post by teaneedz »

eCa wrote: post #49

I have passed the point where I would use any service Google launches, where they keep data I want to keep; and it's not because of Snowden. They are acting like they are a bunch of startup teams constantly getting aqui-hired, with services getting changed, merged or canceled. I couldn't possibly recommend any of their services[1] to non-technical people, at any time something will stop working. I'm not a wall to thr…

Search is replaceable with DuckDuckGo for me.

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#106

Post by _up »

dpark wrote: post #100
_noqo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with Feedly is UI/UX. Web is.. fine, but the app have really weird interactions and is clunky. I use Digg Reader. Web is awesome, love the simplicity, the app need some love but is way more better than Feddly. The thing I don't like about Digg Reader is the Digg part, I only want my lovely curated RSS feeds. Also try NewsBlur, Feedreader, The Old Reader and Newsvibe but Digg Reader was the best for my need…

Feedly's Android app is a mess. I can fiddle with the settings to get it into a usable state, but the default behavior just makes no sense (and it's not good after the tweaking). The default, so far as I can tell, is to dump every feed together to provide an "all-up" view. That could be okay, but then they layer a terrible card UI on top of it that's completely unintuitive. The top cards are big and generally pixelat…

Have you enabled "Auto Mark as Read" in Settings? You can change the "ALL" View in the Sidemenu.

I am actualy working on a Feedly alternative. That's sorts articles by popularity. And can import Popularty counts from Sites that offer it. I hope the 70k Hacker News Readers on Feedly would like that. My Idea is to make search free and instead offer "Sort by Time" and "Compact View" as a Pro feature. Would anyone here be interested?

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#107

Post by Lazare »

newscracker wrote: post #99
Lazare wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook has turned into a pretty strange place compared to its early years. Yep. At least among my friends, family, and acquaintances, nobody posts on their wall anymore; it's a wasteland of weird automated posts and the rare half-hearted re-share of a funny story about a cat. Where the action is in the groups . Groups for friends, patient support groups, guild groups for MMOs, groups about crafts or hobbies. Whic…

Apart from the privacy issues, one thing I really despise in Facebook is search. It literally sucks! Unlike Gmail, Facebook is built as a platform where information goes to die a quick death. In groups, as on web forums, a big drag is people asking the same questions again and again. Searching for information even by admins who would like to help people out is cumbersome and difficult due to the way Facebook search w…

Yep. I mean...

We've got newsgroups, hosted blog comments (like disqus), normal blog comments, email lists, usenet, forums (in all their infinite variety from oldschool phpBB to newer offerings like muut), reddit (and similar sites like hnews), google groups, RSS feeds, pingbacks, Stackoverflow and friends, Facebook groups, whatever G+ has, and probably two dozen other related products, clones, variants and crossbreeds I'm not even thinking of.

...all in an attempt to solve the same basic problem, ie, me and some other people I don't really know and who won't be online at the same time would like to chat, post stuff, and maybe find stuff that has been posted before, hopefully with the ability to build a sense of community, low barriers to entry, good usability, and decent filtering, moderating, and admin tools.

I admit, it's a hard problem. But it seems like one in an unusually unsolved state, given the sheer amount of interest and work that's gone into it over the many many years we've been trying. Newsgroups date back to 1979-1980, and looking at the Facebook groups my girlfriend happily participates in, I'm not 100% sure we're any closer to solving the underlying issue. In fact, I'm afraid we might be further. It's weird.

Edit: To be clear, I'm not suggesting we should have—or will ever have—one product that solves every use case. I'm wondering why we don't seem to have a product that really solves even one use case yet. Disqus or Facebook are widely used, but hardly perfect or loved. And then there's stuff like the Wikipedia project, which uses aggressively unfriendly tools for internal discussion and organisation; I have no idea how that ever seemed like a good choice.

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#108

Post by arturhoo »

jonursenbach wrote: post #29
tdicola wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can they bring Google Reader back now? I'm still bitter about it being killed to focus on Google+. Now that Google+ is dead in the water it makes the decision to kill Reader even worse.

Why? Reader was in maintenance mode for years, and companies that appeared when it disappeared have gone above and beyond what they offered. See: Feedly.com

Give AOL Reader a try. Feels very familiar to G Reader and the search functionality is competent enough.

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#109

Post by junto »

chimeracoder wrote: post #4

I really don't understand Google products sometimes. Google+ Photos is different from Google Photos? Google Docs, Google Drive, and Google Sheets[0] are all separate things, though somehow interconnected? And I'm a technical user. I literally don't understand how (or if) non-technical users are expected to be able to understand how these work. But seriously, this has to take the cake. "Google Photos" is replacing "Go…

I concur. I don't understand why they didn't just announce that they had improved Google+ Photos. As in this is the next big version of the same product. Oh, and we dropped the '+'.

Saying that we now have a new product that does the same as the old one, and then migrating people to the new one is just confusing to the user.

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#110

Post by dpark »

_up wrote: post #106
dpark wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feedly's Android app is a mess. I can fiddle with the settings to get it into a usable state, but the default behavior just makes no sense (and it's not good after the tweaking). The default, so far as I can tell, is to dump every feed together to provide an "all-up" view. That could be okay, but then they layer a terrible card UI on top of it that's completely unintuitive. The top cards are big and generally pixelat…

Have you enabled "Auto Mark as Read" in Settings? You can change the "ALL" View in the Sidemenu. I am actualy working on a Feedly alternative. That's sorts articles by popularity. And can import Popularty counts from Sites that offer it. I hope the 70k Hacker News Readers on Feedly would like that. My Idea is to make search free and instead offer "Sort by Time" and "Compact View" as a Pro feature. Would anyone here b…

No, I apparently don't have that enabled. I could do that, but I'm pretty much ready to move to something else. The Feedly web app is pretty nice, though it has quirks and obvious bugs. But I shouldn't have to change half the settings on the Android app just to make it usable. I can't understand how they built this and never said, "Oh, this is really awkward." It's awkward enough that I pretty much just never use it. I only used the Android app again recently because I got a new phone and decided to give it another try.

Of course, maybe everyone else loves the interaction model and I'm the oddball. That's entirely possible, but regardless I want to find something else at this point. (Trying Digg reader as of last night.)

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