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Why Google+ Failed

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Re: Why Google+ Failed

#161

Post by cesarb »

GeekyBear wrote: post #109
salad77 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real names AND the instant account lock with no hope of reversal if your name failed the opaque real name check. I lost access to a gmail account and everything associated with it because g+ didn't like my name. Account totally locked. Gone. Forever.

Reading about other people being locked out of their Gmail account (with no recourse) was exactly what prevented me from even trying Google+.

For me, it's gone further: reading about other people being locked out of their gmail account with no recourse, because of that real names policy, is the reason I've never logged into Youtube (since, as far as I understood, to log into Youtube you had to have a Google+ account). I still watch videos, but never while logged into gmail (and as a consequence, I've never commented on any Youtube video, or posted any videos I might have recorded).

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#162

Post by habosa »

How about asking the other question: what made anyone think it would succeed?

Facebook was already dominant and Google+ offered nothing really compelling besides a half baked circles/groups thing that took forever to manage.

Google had no special social insight, just big-company confidence and a lot of engineers and dollars.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#163

Post by zepto »

gist wrote: post #152
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with much of what Yegge said in the post, I think it's extremely far fetched to say that Google+ failed because it was lacking an API when there are 50 other more likely reasons you could point to. Forget understanding platforms, at the time Google fundamentally didn't understand social .

The saying 'camel is a horse made by a committee' applies to this situation. There was almost certainly no base creative drive when creating the actual product. Most things that end up being good are driven by someone who is viewed as somewhat crazy but has enough power or force to get what they want and/or steam roll others. Not to mention I am sure they are confusing smarts with luck. The decision makers think of t…

Camels are much more robust than horses.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#164

Post by pessimizer »

usr1106 wrote: post #33

I don't think it's important whether Google+ failed or whether Facebook declines or not. The fundamental failure is by computer science or the IETF that there is no open standard for federated social networking. Some might say social networking is out of scope for academic research. But why was SMTP not out of scope when it was invented?

> Some might say social networking is out of scope for academic research.

And you wouldn't even say that at this point, with the open-access movement and academics trying to think of alternative ways to do peer review and curation openly.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#167

Post by scotty79 »

My experience of Google plus was following HN circle or sth only to have birthdays of a lot of people I don't know littering my calendar. I never bothered to clean it up. I think they are no longer there.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#168

Post by zepto »

ablation wrote: post #138
GarrisonPrime wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you in school or training? And/or do you work with members of your social circle? And/or does family live close? If any of these are true, I can see how Facebook offers little value. But the older you get, the fewer people you tend to have around. My social life is easily 30 times harder to maintain now than it was when I was in college. Work was also an easy place to find friends and kindred spirits. At first. B…

I don't have Facebook, and all of these needs for connectivity are taken care of by WhatsApp group chats, essentially. It feels far more intimate and immediate than Facebook ever did too.

WhatsApp is Facebook

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#169

Post by tannhaeuser »

the-rc wrote: post #118
tannhaeuser wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it's a fair post-mortem for G+ the product, but I'm personally more interested in what happens to content on G+. For example, Linus Torvalds blogged on it (eg. dead link https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/1vyfmNCY... about why he switched away from Suse), and many others as well. The content is why I occasionally went there, and why people outside Google posted there (assuming a big name won'…

It's not static content. It would have been expensive to keep the services running. Not just in terms of computing and storage, but also for the headcount. Speaking of the latter, who would want to work on maintaining a read-only version of a project frozen in time? (The enterprise version will evolve, etc.) I am not even going into the legal implications.

As dredmorbius posted, the content is going to live on at the Internet Archive just fine (Google could maybe redirect to them, don't they?).

Your post begs the question, though, why it had to be served as dynamic content in the first place (if it actually was which I'm not sure it was) when it would've been the obvious thing to use just plain HTML. I'm thinking about authors putting in considerable effort into publishing content on G+ (or other platform for that matter). Why would they use an authoring tool that is exclusive to that platform when we have HTML? Why wouldn't they care about their docs being inaccessible if the platform dies?

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#170

Post by sverige »

rchaud wrote: post #131

The "Non-organic growth" section covers Google+'s biggest sin for me. They unilaterally created G+ profiles for everybody with a Gmail account with no prior warning, and with no opt out. Because of this, my Gmail contacts could see the comments I'd made on Youtube videos because it was front and center of their G+ profile page, which I recall popping up when you logged into Gmail. Prior to this, there would have been…

This was the moment that I ditched Gmail and made my first vanity domain for email. I have a few Gmail accounts now, but they are separated: one for Maps, one for YouTube, etc. I don't use any of them for actual email.
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