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What did Google+ get right?

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Re: What did Google+ get right?

#101

Post by nl »

AndrewStephens wrote: post #70

I was an early proponent of G+ when it first opened. I loved the idea of Circles and their implementation of Groups was really good. I didn't love the UI, which I found bland, but the functionality was well thought out. For a while I used it as my primary social media site but Facebook was entrenched even back then and nobody I knew used G+. I don't really understand Google's strategy. They got rich by providing usef…

I was fairly close to some of the people at Google involved in this.

This narrative misses a lot. The most important part was the purchase of FriendFeed by Facebook and the failure of Google Buzz (the more open predecessor to Plus).

The narrative I've heard is more like this (It goes back over 10 years, so the context is much different. Google was much smaller, and there were many doubters about Facebook).

Facebook was founded in 2004

By 2007 it was clear that social networks were a thing, but there was a very strong feeling among technologists that they should be more open.

During 2007 a bunch of pretty well credentialed Googlers left to start a more open social network called FriendFeed. This aggregated open sources of content from all over the web.

This worked fairly well technically, and people at Google were generally supportive of it (there were many Googlers on the service, and they were actively working on things like PubSubHub[1] to make open aggregation services work well.

However by 2009 it was clear it FriendFeed had product issues. It was being used just as a republishing tool (primarily from Twitter) and they ended up selling to Facebook.

This upset a number of people at Google, who were relying on it to create an open alternative. These people were involved in the creation of the (mostly forgotten) Google Buzz[2], which was basically a clone of FriendFeed.

Buzz failed as a consumer product, so then Google attempted the pivot to Google Plus.

[1] https://github.com/pubsubhubbub/PubSubHubbub

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Buzz

Re: What did Google+ get right?

#102

Post by 0815test »

nl wrote: post #101
AndrewStephens wrote: post #70

I was an early proponent of G+ when it first opened. I loved the idea of Circles and their implementation of Groups was really good. I didn't love the UI, which I found bland, but the functionality was well thought out. For a while I used it as my primary social media site but Facebook was entrenched even back then and nobody I knew used G+. I don't really understand Google's strategy. They got rich by providing usef…

I was fairly close to some of the people at Google involved in this. This narrative misses a lot. The most important part was the purchase of FriendFeed by Facebook and the failure of Google Buzz (the more open predecessor to Plus). The narrative I've heard is more like this (It goes back over 10 years, so the context is much different. Google was much smaller, and there were many doubters about Facebook). Facebook w…

> It was being used just as a republishing tool

So, like Google Plus. Except that an "open" publishing tool is at least more useful than an entirely proprietary one! Let's face it, Google dropped the ball here.

Re: What did Google+ get right?

#103

Post by combatentropy »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #78
combatentropy wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean that they canned Google+ because it was making no money? Surely at any time they could add ads. They knew how many people were going there and how often. Therefore they then could make a good guess, from their other apps, at how much money it would make them if they were to add ads. It must have been that after doing the math they thought it was not worth it. Or maybe they never meant it to make money dir…

For quite a long while, Google+ was the third largest social network. It's hard to imagine it could not have made a significant amount of money on ads. It's definitely true that initially Google intended G+ to feed into the overall Google thing, and that many integrations of combining disparate Google properties together was actually done under the banner of G+. But I do wonder with Ruth Porat's more "must be profita…

I guess we're still talking past each other.

> It's hard to imagine it could not have made a significant amount of money on ads.

Yes, I agree. And Google knew this better than either of us. Therefore no one at Google ever would have said, "We need to close down Google+ because it is not making enough money." It was making zero dollars, because they chose to give it no way make money, directly. There was no sign-up fee, and there was no advertising.

Your original comment that I was replying to:

> Had they done so, I wonder if they would've considered the platform more viable long-term?

They don't need to turn on ads to know if it is viable, because they can just turn on ads in their heads. "Google+ has this many users, who use it this often per day. Therefore, if we were to turn on advertising, it would probably bring in about $___________ per year." They did the math. They thought it still wasn't worth it.

Re: What did Google+ get right?

#104

Post by mcv »

This article misses a couple of important strengths of Google+:

* The combination of Events and Hangouts was magical. This was great for planning open online meetups, games on hangouts, and tons of other things.

* Circle sharing. This really jump-started informal communities. Yes, they added more official communities later, but circle sharing was in my opinion a far more effective way to create real communities of people who get to know each other.

* Ultimately, of course, the most important part were the people themselves. It attracted a lot of interesting people. Geeks, early adopters, people with a passion for a wide variety of topics. People weren't using it to connect with families and friends they already know in the real world, they connected to new people with similar interests that didn't always fit a specific formal Community. Friendships were made, several businesses were launched based primarily on interaction on Google+.

I'm sad to see it go. I'm sadder still that Google mismanaged it into the ground. They had something great, but seemed determined to destroy it by forcing low quality content onto it, and removing popular features.

Re: What did Google+ get right?

#105

Post by nl »

0815test wrote: post #102
nl wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was fairly close to some of the people at Google involved in this. This narrative misses a lot. The most important part was the purchase of FriendFeed by Facebook and the failure of Google Buzz (the more open predecessor to Plus). The narrative I've heard is more like this (It goes back over 10 years, so the context is much different. Google was much smaller, and there were many doubters about Facebook). Facebook w…

> It was being used just as a republishing tool So, like Google Plus. Except that an "open" publishing tool is at least more useful than an entirely proprietary one! Let's face it, Google dropped the ball here.

No.

Google Plus never had an API for incoming content.

Buzz allowed one-click connection to Twitter. Great idea, but people would use it to publish straight from Twitter, and wouldn't engage on the Buzz platform.

This was a terrible experience - you'd miss the conversational aspect of Twitter, and be ignored if you tried to have conversations on Buzz.

Google dropped the ball here.

Maybe, but it isn't clear to me what they should have done differently.

Re: What did Google+ get right?

#106

Post by GordonS »

AndrewStephens wrote: post #70

I was an early proponent of G+ when it first opened. I loved the idea of Circles and their implementation of Groups was really good. I didn't love the UI, which I found bland, but the functionality was well thought out. For a while I used it as my primary social media site but Facebook was entrenched even back then and nobody I knew used G+. I don't really understand Google's strategy. They got rich by providing usef…

I totally agree about the bland UI - when Google+ first became a thing, I tried to get into it, but bejesus it was just so bland and uninspiring. I found it difficult to discover functionality, and honestly it just completely lost my interest.

Re: What did Google+ get right?

#108

Post by CodeCube »

naravara wrote: post #89
CodeCube wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 100% agree, however I really didn't like manually curating those circles ... I share a relatively diverse set of things/interests, so would have loved to leave it up to the other party which facet of my "feed" they could have subscribed to. This isn't my use case, but a perfect example is people with kids. They're gonna share pictures and stuff of their kids, but as I'm sure you've seen, tons of people make comment…

The formality around making a discrete group of "Circles" was the problem. If they just let you have multiple feeds and you can add and remove people from those feeds it would have been fine. In those circumstances, the issue isn't you sitting there categorizing how close you are with each of your friends. You're just deciding who you want to share things with, it's not unlike a group chat you might have with a bunch…

This is a fantastic point! Over time, the number of group chats in FB Messenger has grown, and it totally meets this usage.

Re: What did Google+ get right?

#109

Post by Kye »

nl wrote: post #105
0815test wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was being used just as a republishing tool So, like Google Plus. Except that an "open" publishing tool is at least more useful than an entirely proprietary one! Let's face it, Google dropped the ball here.

No. Google Plus never had an API for incoming content. Buzz allowed one-click connection to Twitter. Great idea, but people would use it to publish straight from Twitter, and wouldn't engage on the Buzz platform. This was a terrible experience - you'd miss the conversational aspect of Twitter, and be ignored if you tried to have conversations on Buzz. Google dropped the ball here. Maybe, but it isn't clear to me what…

>> "Buzz allowed one-click connection to Twitter. Great idea, but people would use it to publish straight from Twitter, and wouldn't engage on the Buzz platform."

This almost became a problem on Mastodon with Twitter crossposters. Enough people pushed back hard to keep them from taking over timelines. People still use them, but they generally engage on both sides now.

Re: What did Google+ get right?

#110

Post by eitland »

0815test wrote: post #102
nl wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was fairly close to some of the people at Google involved in this. This narrative misses a lot. The most important part was the purchase of FriendFeed by Facebook and the failure of Google Buzz (the more open predecessor to Plus). The narrative I've heard is more like this (It goes back over 10 years, so the context is much different. Google was much smaller, and there were many doubters about Facebook). Facebook w…

> It was being used just as a republishing tool So, like Google Plus. Except that an "open" publishing tool is at least more useful than an entirely proprietary one! Let's face it, Google dropped the ball here.

Buzz had some horrible privacy problems and was too smart for its own good if I remember correctly.
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