Google is starting to collapse under its own weight, as all behemoths eventually do.
Their first mistake was going public.
My god, how could you not?
"Billionaire or footnote, billionaire or footnote? Think. Think."
Nonplussed
171–180 of 250 posts
Re: Nonplussed
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's very hard for me to imagine someone who wants to try so very hard to maintain a serious public image that they won't be caught liking a silly cat video on YouTube. That seems hilariously self-important.
>It's very hard for me to imagine someone who wants to try so very hard to maintain a serious public image that they won't be caught liking a silly cat video on YouTube. That seems hilariously self-important. Eh, I think this idea that we must live our whole life in public (to the /same/ public using the /same/ identity) is a bit insidious. Especially in these days of "cultural fit" - it leads to this idea that you n…
That's still one of the primary ways Google+ tries to differentiate itself as a social network. In fact I remember some of their commercials describing an almost identical situation. 'Circles' let you share things with only the people you know who care about them. I don't know how this works with YouTube, I don't use it very much. But it's implemented pretty well on Google+.
Re: Nonplussed
#173Experiences like this led me to leave Facebook, then LinkedIn, a while ago. I haven't deleted my Google+ account only because laziness and fear of an experience like the article's author prevent me from going to the site. People describe leaving as trendy, as if leaving had something to do with other people as opposed to the sites' own repellent behavior. For me leaving was easy and fun -- http://joshuaspodek.com/lea…
I found that unsubscribing from friends feeds and only following certain publications that are in tune with my personal interests has allowed me to stay with Facebook longer. More recently however I have been moving towards twitter / hn for my news intake and conversation, and Facebook has remained in my routine only as a 'bad habit'
Re: Nonplussed
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm probably in the minority here, but I'm all for this change, largely because of the crappy anonymous comments you see out there on YouTube, which was the point of this transition in the first place. Up the number of characters you can have in a comment then and put some proper thread organisation in place. Regardless of what they hook it up to, there are limits to the depth of the conversations you can have in s…
I think it should be restrictive. There's no reason for youtube comments to have the depth of threaded forums. They're comments - they're supposed to refer to the video.
If they don't, that's hardly the end of the world. Topics evolve in real world conversation all the time, that's how people think and make connections. The question's really how you organise things - how you filter attention, and what tools there are for that to allow people interested in certain aspects of the discussion to see the bits they're likely to be interested in. Not every video needs a full blown forum underneath it, but I honestly doubt that one would occur even if you made the threads groupable at arbitrary levels - there just wouldn't be the static central point of contact with multiple people checking back that a forum seems to need, (i.e. I can't imagine people would keep on and on reloading the video,) and some sort of decent threading seems strongly indicated.
If you lack such tools, it seems to me that the only things people are liable to post if you take the length restriction off is the full text of books to try and crash the browser, ASCII art of male genitalia, and links to some of the more ewww corners of the internet. In the time it takes someone to post something well thought out someone can post twenty ASCII penises after all. The low-effort to high-lols expressions seem likely to dominate over the high-effort high-meaning expressions.
Sort of like how Reddit decayed, but with a somewhat darker tone since the existing community in the comments is less well developed than they started off with, there'd be even fewer tools, less effective moderation and you won't be able to hide niche communities behind unknown lookup names as well.
Re: Nonplussed
#175Experiences like this led me to leave Facebook, then LinkedIn, a while ago. I haven't deleted my Google+ account only because laziness and fear of an experience like the article's author prevent me from going to the site. People describe leaving as trendy, as if leaving had something to do with other people as opposed to the sites' own repellent behavior. For me leaving was easy and fun -- http://joshuaspodek.com/lea…
"Experiences like this led me to leave Facebook" I would go on a tangent to this, that I never got any actionable information or other life improvement from facebook. I tried, really hard, for six months, to participate and get something out of it, but it was just a huge time waster so I wiped it. Although supposedly youtube is only (or mostly) used for trash talking comments on kitten videos, I have occasionally got…
Not everyone wants the stuff they do online completely public. I don't want a potential employer to read a stupid comment I left 7 years ago, or my family to read something I said about atheism, or my friends to read my political comments. Let alone having to explain why I just watched or liked some video, not even leaving a comment. Just because you use a website only for professional stuff doesn't mean everyone does.
Again with the "it's their right to do whatever they want with it, so you can't complain". First of all it's perfectly fair for people to complain or criticize a service. Especially if they use it a lot or depend on it. It's certainly frustrating to use a website for years and be forced to leave it or deal with the changes.
Second YouTube is basically a monopoly. There are not many other video sharing sites, especially with lots of viewers, to post videos on. And for viewers almost all the videos on the internet are hosted on YouTube and most content creators. It's not like we have much of a choice to just go somewhere else if we don't like it.
Re: Nonplussed
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
but you have option. like that fancy pants academic video? nice. thumbed up a silly cat video just to show someone later on your phone? too bad. its there now too.
It's very hard for me to imagine someone who wants to try so very hard to maintain a serious public image that they won't be caught liking a silly cat video on YouTube. That seems hilariously self-important.
Replace silly cat video with some video about a medical condition (I know I've gone to YouTube to check something relevant and medical before). And you can see how people start to feel uncomfortable when their identity is plastered all over the relevant page.
Re: Nonplussed
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
What can be done to reverse this trend? Or to create something altogether different from the current "internet"?
Personally I think it can't be reversed. Its too profitable and there are too many sheeple out there. As for something "altogether different". I don't see it happening. There are just too many powerful vested interest at work. e.g. We can't even get a HTML standard pushed through without DRM. This might sound cynical, but personally I feel its the end of an era. The internet used to be the wild west where anything is…
> Personally I think it can't be reversed. Its too profitable and there are too many sheeple out there.
The "internet," i.e. TCP/IP, is still there pretty much as it always was. Google's interface is almost all web on top of the internet, Facebook too.
Anyone is free to use anything else implemented on the internet. Fastmail makes a handy living at implementing smtp and imap on top of TCP/IP; their value is excellent implementation along with service.
It's always possible to sell good service.
You don't have to use the DRM parts.
And I agree, it is the end of an era, a really good era. But it's not the end.
Re: Nonplussed
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with this. Whether it matters if this good will is gone I don't know, but it might - I know my opinion of google has gone from extremely high to really low, and it is partially so low because of their importance, I believe they have a responsibility to act properly. I truly believe they are opening a gap that others could exploit. Microsoft, so late to this party, with their userbase and technical know-how, w…
reddit is an echo chamber even worse than here. i dread depending on its platform for any content
Reddit is actually the most powerful facebook-alternative in existence today. And I mean alternative in the sense of "community for online conversations" and not necessarily, "place to post baby pictures".
The sort of political and organizing power reddit has shown recently (say, with the SOPA campaign) is not thinkable on facebook or google+. An AMA on reddit has also become a required stop for actors/directors/authors etc. for promoting their latest projects. G+ can only dream of such reach and power and facebook is by design (and branding) not suitable for such "interactive-broadcasting" type of usage.
Re: Nonplussed
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I can't even favourite nor like a video on YouTube anymore without being subjected to the whole carrousel of signing up for G+. But you can bookmark. Or does that not make sense on a phone? My galaxy has been in my sock drawer for a couple years now, I forget.
After I signed up on Pinboard, I've taken to save my bookmarks there instead. Still, an IFTTT script that saves to Pinboard, whenever I favourite on YouTube would be less annoying and also allow me to have my favourites on YouTube.
I use pinboard too, great service.
Re: Nonplussed
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with this. Whether it matters if this good will is gone I don't know, but it might - I know my opinion of google has gone from extremely high to really low, and it is partially so low because of their importance, I believe they have a responsibility to act properly. I truly believe they are opening a gap that others could exploit. Microsoft, so late to this party, with their userbase and technical know-how, w…
reddit is an echo chamber even worse than here. i dread depending on its platform for any content
More to the point, it's a nasty community. (Second in nastiness only to Wikipedia)
The tone of reddit is set more by downvoting rather than upvoting. Any post on proggit about any language people actually use gets voted down by an army of bots written in languages that people don't use. Also, they're a bunch of communists because they'll vote you down if you drop any hint that (1) you're in it for the money or (2) you care about business in any way.
Reddit's negativity might make it spam resistant, but it will repell mainstream audiences and prevent their expansion.