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Introducing the new Google+

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Re: Introducing the new Google+

#101

Post by sevensor »

hackuser wrote: post #47

How good are the discussions on Google+? I hesitate to share my identity and data with Google, but I'm also on a never-ending (that might turn out to be literally true) quest to find sophisticated, intelligent discussion of politics and policy.

You can't escape trolls entirely, but they're pretty rare in my feed. I don't go in for politics and policy, though. Many long-time linux kernel and userland developers are on G+, including Linus himself. Linus usually posts scuba-diving pictures. Lennart Poettering is also on G+, so I had a front seat when all of the major distros were debating systemd.

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#102

Post by Osiris »

I really don't like multi-column layouts. It's impossible to read. arstechnica is a really good example. There are three columns, each with blocks that are different sizes.

So, I end up reading all the headlines from the left column, scrolling back to the stop, reading the second column, then scrolling back up for the third column.

I've tried to use Google+ on my Android device and the experience is awful. You get a few words and a huge picture that doesn't tell you anything about the post.

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#103

Post by jmspring »

toyg wrote: post #33
rogerbinns wrote: post #16

Google seem to keep making worse the thing that matters most to me. What I want is to conveniently read. I want to see content, from a variety of sources. I want density. I want to catch up and be aware. It was like that in the earlier days. Every update kept reducing the amount of visible content, and severe reductions in density. Here is a screenshot of my screen - http://i.imgur.com/fM2WIVf.png (1920x1200) - almos…

It's not just a Google thing. Recently there was a HN thread on devmag.io -- they have the same problem. I measured it: in the same space HN gives me 18 stories, Devmag.io gives me barely 2. Unfortunately, I think Google people know and they just don't care. They don't want people who know what RSS is, people who care about information density; they are going after the Pinterest crowd, the sort of people who read Cos…

Same goes for the Skype Client. These apps seem to want to treat PCs like mobile devices where the app owns the whole screen.

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#104

Post by rottyguy »

I may be in the minority here but Reddit is MUCH more interesting to me than fb these days. My friends' content is simply not that interesting to me whereas I can find a SIG on Reddit that has what I want.

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#105

Post by erikpukinskis »

I wonder why Google is unable to do what Microsoft has always done. MS generally never leads markets, but they usually can put together a passable product that gets at least double digit share on their third try.

Google seems to lead some charges (i.e. Android) but definitely don't have the third-time's-the-charm luck. Maybe these are mutually exclusive properties of different organizational principles.

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#106

Post by izacus »

vijayr wrote: post #78
toyg wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just a Google thing. Recently there was a HN thread on devmag.io -- they have the same problem. I measured it: in the same space HN gives me 18 stories, Devmag.io gives me barely 2. Unfortunately, I think Google people know and they just don't care. They don't want people who know what RSS is, people who care about information density; they are going after the Pinterest crowd, the sort of people who read Cos…

Pinterest crowd, the sort of people who read Cosmopolitan, watch reality shows That crowd is way bigger than the crowd that hangs out at places like HN. So it would make sense for G+ to go after them, no? This is a numbers game.

That crowd is already camping out on Facebook, while G+ was being adopted by more techy people.

Companies running for the same average Joe and forgetting about other groups of people leads to quick deaths of services.

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#107

Post by viraptor »

kin wrote: post #57

Collections is kind of like Pinterest. Communities is kind of like Reddit. Plus was kind of like Facebook. Buzz was kind of like Twitter. They really need to stop imitating and start innovating. At this point I don't even think they know who they're targeting they're just trying to do a little bit of everything but they don't do it well enough for me to want to use it.

Pinterest is kind of like delicious, reddit is kind of like forums, facebook is kind of like myspace, twitter is kind of like irc. There's nothing new. Iteration on a good idea is not a bad thing.

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#108

Post by rogerbinns »

yitchelle wrote: post #96
toyg wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just a Google thing. Recently there was a HN thread on devmag.io -- they have the same problem. I measured it: in the same space HN gives me 18 stories, Devmag.io gives me barely 2. Unfortunately, I think Google people know and they just don't care. They don't want people who know what RSS is, people who care about information density; they are going after the Pinterest crowd, the sort of people who read Cos…

If there is a service that converts your G+ feed into a rss feed, would you use it?

There were a few, but none worked reliably at all. I do use a external service that converts twitter to RSS (something they dropped a while back), but also have to redo those every year or so as the various services break or stop functioning.

The thing about RSS is that it is a good match for providing a feed. By Google not providing that sort of thing, you have to use their user interface. Others can't try experiments, cater to certain usage styles, or introduce new ways of using the service. You'll note that twitter had that vibrant experimentation and growth, until they decided to cut that possibility in 2011 - http://fortune.com/2015/10/21/twitter-jack-dorsey-apology/

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#109

Post by jnpatel »

izzydata wrote: post #28

I'm confused as to why my google+ has almost 200,000 views, but it has zero posts and basically nobody in my circles. Is this counter broken for anyone else?

Are you really active in Gmail? It could be lots of people you correspond with clicking through to your profile, from the link that typically shows up in the right sidebar.

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#110

Post by erodingvar »

I was trying it, and clicking the sidebar Profile link caused Firefox to go "Not responding", and I had to use "End task" to kill the browser.

One of my main complaints about the Google+ interface is how heavy it is. It feels like it was designed by a huge corporation, under many thick layers.

I like fast baremetal sites, not heavy JS apps that feel like running an emulated Adobe Photoshop in a web browser.

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