No matter how awesome Hangout is (and I thinks it's very cool), I can't use it yet with a lot of people I talk to. Skype is more ubiquitous and thus I can call "normal" people. If this guys prediction is true, and Google+ won't have widespread adoption outside of geeky communities, then it will fail. I need something like Skype that can bridge from geeks -> non-geeks.
Why yo momma won’t use Google+ (and why that thrills me to no end)
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Re: Why yo momma won’t use Google+ (and why that thrills me to no end)
#12Honestly, while the UI looks nice, I don't see any major advanage in switching. Facebook: Proprietary network without federation Google Plus: Proprietary network without federation So great, I can now jump from one locked-in network into another locked-in network. Personally I think that Google Plus was the worst thing that can happen to networking in general, as it pretty much killed the chance of an open XMPP-based…
I think that your data in Google+ will be (at least slightly) less locked-in than data you add to Facebook: http://www.google.com/takeout
Re: Why yo momma won’t use Google+ (and why that thrills me to no end)
#13My Mom is already on it. The first thing I thought when I saw hangouts is "My Mom will be on this a lot chatting with relatives." She wanted the group video chat on Skype but it only works if everyone else pays for it. No barrier with Google+
Re: Why yo momma won’t use Google+ (and why that thrills me to no end)
#14Nobody in my family uses Facebook. We all have the same sort of privacy concerns. For us, there is no switching cost. At the same time, all of us use gmail. From what I've seen, Google+ looks like it has better privacy features built in (although it's privacy from the public, not private to teh Google). So, I hope my momma will use Google+ because it make sharing things with family a lot easier.
>From what I've seen, Google+ looks like it has better privacy features built in (although it's privacy from the public, not private to teh Google). So, I hope my momma will use Google+ because it make sharing things with family a lot easier.
// Can you expand on that please. What privacy features does G+ have that FB does not (now) have? How did Google make sharing easier?
Re: Why yo momma won’t use Google+ (and why that thrills me to no end)
#15I think he's trying to make his wife what she isn't: an early adopter. The mainstream wants something that their other mainstream (not early adopter) friends are also using. The early adopters are revolutionaries. The mainstream likes status quo. But that's true about every single technology. Facebook has gone through this, too. Twitter, as well. Would your mom or wife use Twitter in the first year after Twitter laun…
You raise some good points about Facebook and Twitter going through the same cycle. I can't think of a service that people adopted immediatelyl; strangely, I can think of a few devices.
it's just a matter of ... get[ting] everyone to hear about it.
That's very true as well, but Google+ has something Facebook (and Twitter et al) didn't -- google.com integration and exposure [1].
[1] http://www.allfacebook.com/the-one-google-plus-feature-faceb...
Re: Why yo momma won’t use Google+ (and why that thrills me to no end)
#16> Oh, and that’s not even considering the new "Hangout" videochat feature I've just realized that lots of "normal" FB users browse it from work, where chances are close to 0 that they'd use any videochat service whatsoever (you don't want your boss overhearing your discussion with your best friend about how stupid Rihanna is or about how Mark fucked up his entire life because he married Sue, just to give a few exampl…
Since everyone in my department at work managed to get invitations to Google+, we've been using the hangout feature between our offices in different cities.
I can honestly say it just revolutionized the way we connect as a distributed group. We just leave a hangout open, and anytime someone feels like dropping in, they do. It's like a virtual lounge that everyone has access to.
Re: Why yo momma won’t use Google+ (and why that thrills me to no end)
#17Why not? Give it time and soon enough, everybody will be in Google+. The video conferencing is a huge attraction. If you want a social network non-geeky types will not go, you go to rstatus.com or identi.ca where they don't have features for mass consumption.
Re: Why yo momma won’t use Google+ (and why that thrills me to no end)
#18Nobody in my family uses Facebook. We all have the same sort of privacy concerns. For us, there is no switching cost. At the same time, all of us use gmail. From what I've seen, Google+ looks like it has better privacy features built in (although it's privacy from the public, not private to teh Google). So, I hope my momma will use Google+ because it make sharing things with family a lot easier.
> From what I've seen, Google+ looks like it has better privacy features built in (although it's privacy from the public, not private to teh Google). So, I hope my momma will use Google+ because it make sharing things with family a lot easier. // Can you expand on that please. What privacy features does G+ have that FB does not (now) have? How did Google make sharing easier?
G+ asks you to decide who is going to see all your posts by default. It begins from an assumption that you want privacy, and lets you affirmatively remove it, rather than the other way around.
You can go to your profile at any time and easily see what you're sharing with others by typing in the name of any person or circle, and see how you appear to them, so there's never any question about what you're sharing.
Sharing on G+ is asynchronous, meaning that you can follow unilaterally like Twitter if you want to.
Google makes its privacy policies much easier to find and read than Facebook, and works from the default position that you want your data to be private, making it up to you to share, rather than the other way around, which is what Facebook does.
Perhaps most important of all is that Facebook has a history of being a bad actor, changing their policies without notice and always defaulting to exposing personal data. Google has had its stumbles in the past, but their history shows them to be a more trustworthy custodian of your data.
They might not always adhere as well as they should to their motto of "don't be evil," but at least they have that starting point to go from.
I believe the quote Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg is best known for is "They trust me — dumb fucks."
Re: Why yo momma won’t use Google+ (and why that thrills me to no end)
#19Nobody in my family uses Facebook. We all have the same sort of privacy concerns. For us, there is no switching cost. At the same time, all of us use gmail. From what I've seen, Google+ looks like it has better privacy features built in (although it's privacy from the public, not private to teh Google). So, I hope my momma will use Google+ because it make sharing things with family a lot easier.
> From what I've seen, Google+ looks like it has better privacy features built in (although it's privacy from the public, not private to teh Google). So, I hope my momma will use Google+ because it make sharing things with family a lot easier. // Can you expand on that please. What privacy features does G+ have that FB does not (now) have? How did Google make sharing easier?
Google appears to have learned from the Buzz backlash. G+ pushes privacy by default from the first person you put into a circle. You can't 'friend' someone without first thinking about who they are, what they mean to you, and what you want them to see. This alone is a big step up from FB where groups are a hidden, not often used feature.
Re: Why yo momma won’t use Google+ (and why that thrills me to no end)
#20Honestly, while the UI looks nice, I don't see any major advanage in switching. Facebook: Proprietary network without federation Google Plus: Proprietary network without federation So great, I can now jump from one locked-in network into another locked-in network. Personally I think that Google Plus was the worst thing that can happen to networking in general, as it pretty much killed the chance of an open XMPP-based…
I think that your data in Google+ will be (at least slightly) less locked-in than data you add to Facebook: http://www.google.com/takeout
I agree with you that Google is pretty good about letting you export data. I just exported my Picasa pictures a few days ago. I use POP3 to keep a local copy of GMail. I also periodically take a local snapshot of my Blogger based blog.markwatson.com.
All that said, I also used Facebook's export facility several weeks ago. It worked fine, but then I realized that I didn't care about backing up my Facebook data and deleted it :-)
Earlier this morning I sent a review of Google+ to my customers as a FYI. I made the same point that Scoble did: techies will like the fine grained control, most people will not care.