Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded? • Hacker News Board

Re: Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded?

#21

Post by camtarn » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 3:33 PM UTC

"Each of us on average has hundreds of friends on Facebook. When you share things on Facebook, you have to share it with all of them! How stupid is that?"

It would be stupid ... if it were actually true. Facebook's privacy controls are actually pretty sophisticated now: by default I have anything I post shown to friends of friends, but excluding certain people. For potentially controversial status updates I restrict visibility to a couple of lists. If I wanted I could target a photo or status to an individual person.

So, Facebook already has all of this control baked into its architecture. In theory, all it needs to do is make it more easily discoverable and easily used. Of course this is easier said than done, but it's certainly not a 'major architectural overhaul'.

I do wish that, when people slate a platform for not having certain features, they would actually do a little research instead of assuming.

Re: Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded?

#22

Post by ern » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 3:34 PM UTC

pmichaud wrote: post #20

raganwald wrote: post #15

The Google+ circles concept is powerful and easy to use. It represents the defining, foundational difference between Google´s and Facebook´s vision for social networking. If this new model takes off with users, then Facebook will find itself in the uncomfortable position of having to replicate these features within its own platform. Unfortunately for Facebook, moving to this new paradigm will not be possible overnigh…

Facebook has "circles" but they are called "groups." I have sources that say, unofficially that: 1) They were not blindsided at all. They worked hard to compete on major features before g+ ever came out. 2) "Groups" has more or less similar functionality, and the feature is known to have a poor UI right now. The point though is that FB thought about this and even though they aren't up to the same polish with that fea…

Facebook has "circles" but they are called "groups."

I think Friend Lists is what you may be referring to.

They need to make the feature easier to use/find, and they need to make the News Feed more sensitive to these.

Re: Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded?

#23

Post by jimbokun » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 3:39 PM UTC

pmichaud wrote: post #20

raganwald wrote: post #15

The Google+ circles concept is powerful and easy to use. It represents the defining, foundational difference between Google´s and Facebook´s vision for social networking. If this new model takes off with users, then Facebook will find itself in the uncomfortable position of having to replicate these features within its own platform. Unfortunately for Facebook, moving to this new paradigm will not be possible overnigh…

Facebook has "circles" but they are called "groups." I have sources that say, unofficially that: 1) They were not blindsided at all. They worked hard to compete on major features before g+ ever came out. 2) "Groups" has more or less similar functionality, and the feature is known to have a poor UI right now. The point though is that FB thought about this and even though they aren't up to the same polish with that fea…

"Just UI polish."

If Apple's success has taught us anything, it's that "UI polish" trumps pretty much everything else when it comes to making money from software, and it is hard to get right (or else everyone's UIs would be just as polished as Apple's).

So if Facebook is behind Google in "Just UI polish" they may have very much to fear, indeed.

Re: Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded?

#24

Post by boredguy8 » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 3:42 PM UTC

camtarn wrote: post #21

"Each of us on average has hundreds of friends on Facebook. When you share things on Facebook, you have to share it with all of them! How stupid is that?" It would be stupid ... if it were actually true. Facebook's privacy controls are actually pretty sophisticated now: by default I have anything I post shown to friends of friends, but excluding certain people. For potentially controversial status updates I restrict…

I actually like Facebook's privacy better. Except for chat's online/offline status, it seems to follow a 'most restrictive permission applies" policy, which is nice.

Using Google's example: If I have a biking group and a work group, there's probably someone in the intersection of those two groups. I might want to share something with my biking group but not share it with my work group. There's not a mechanism to do that, that I can find, in Google+.

On the other hand, in Facebook, if I post something but restrict it from my work group, people that are in my work group won't see the post even if they're also in another group that does have permission.

This is a vastly superior approach, it seems to me.

Re: Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded?

#25

Post by mrshoe » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 3:44 PM UTC

raganwald wrote: post #15

The Google+ circles concept is powerful and easy to use. It represents the defining, foundational difference between Google´s and Facebook´s vision for social networking. If this new model takes off with users, then Facebook will find itself in the uncomfortable position of having to replicate these features within its own platform. Unfortunately for Facebook, moving to this new paradigm will not be possible overnigh…

In fact, Facebook lists already do everything he praises Circles for in this article. They might even do a little more (e.g. share with List A, excluding anyone in List B).

As he correctly notes later in the article, the lists feature is not prominent on Facebook, and therefore few use it (or maybe few people actually want it?). But it definitely will not require a major architectural overhaul by Facebook.

Re: Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded?

#26

Post by lhnz » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 3:44 PM UTC

pmichaud wrote: post #20

raganwald wrote: post #15

The Google+ circles concept is powerful and easy to use. It represents the defining, foundational difference between Google´s and Facebook´s vision for social networking. If this new model takes off with users, then Facebook will find itself in the uncomfortable position of having to replicate these features within its own platform. Unfortunately for Facebook, moving to this new paradigm will not be possible overnigh…

Facebook has "circles" but they are called "groups." I have sources that say, unofficially that: 1) They were not blindsided at all. They worked hard to compete on major features before g+ ever came out. 2) "Groups" has more or less similar functionality, and the feature is known to have a poor UI right now. The point though is that FB thought about this and even though they aren't up to the same polish with that fea…

"Just UI polish" is a hilarious way of stating this. It's not just the UI that needs to change, more importantly it's the UX. It's disappointing if they are willing to ignore the importance of something like this. It's not just a "lick of paint" that's needed. They need to rework the whole concept and this is time-consuming and difficult to do right.

The super embarrassing thing for Facebook is that Google already told them what they were going to do. Take a look at this slideshow by Google's UX team a whole year ago [1]. That's right it's Circles!

Google has really done their homework on what makes a social network work and Facebook has no excuse for executing their own version of Circles so poorly with Groups and Lists. They've wasted valuable time pandering to advertisers when it was blatantly obvious what was coming. Google's vision wasn't secret.

[1] http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-networ...

Re: Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded?

#27

Post by smackfu » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 3:44 PM UTC

ern wrote: post #22

pmichaud wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook has "circles" but they are called "groups." I have sources that say, unofficially that: 1) They were not blindsided at all. They worked hard to compete on major features before g+ ever came out. 2) "Groups" has more or less similar functionality, and the feature is known to have a poor UI right now. The point though is that FB thought about this and even though they aren't up to the same polish with that fea…

Facebook has "circles" but they are called "groups." I think Friend Lists is what you may be referring to. They need to make the feature easier to use/find, and they need to make the News Feed more sensitive to these.

Yeah, they have been pushing Groups (like including it in the sidebar) but it's not very useful for privacy filtering since it tells the group members they are in the groups.

Given that, Friends Lists aren't especially hidden either. Account > Edit Friends > Add a list. But using them for privacy is hard: you need to select custom privacy, then say show to specific people, then type in the friend list name in a box that looks like it only expects a person's name. Kludgy. (The iPhone app is actually much better here: it just includes the friends lists in the privacy dropdown.)

Re: Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded?

#28

Post by gonehome » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 3:45 PM UTC

pmichaud wrote: post #20

raganwald wrote: post #15

The Google+ circles concept is powerful and easy to use. It represents the defining, foundational difference between Google´s and Facebook´s vision for social networking. If this new model takes off with users, then Facebook will find itself in the uncomfortable position of having to replicate these features within its own platform. Unfortunately for Facebook, moving to this new paradigm will not be possible overnigh…

Facebook has "circles" but they are called "groups." I have sources that say, unofficially that: 1) They were not blindsided at all. They worked hard to compete on major features before g+ ever came out. 2) "Groups" has more or less similar functionality, and the feature is known to have a poor UI right now. The point though is that FB thought about this and even though they aren't up to the same polish with that fea…

The groups are still a bit different when it comes to how they're actually used in the site. First of all they still require a mutual friendship and they're also separate from the main sharing area of the site. Google+ has the idea more integrated into the site's actual foundation. Whether or not that is something that the casual user will want still remains to be determined.

Re: Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded?

#29

Post by jethroalias97 » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 3:46 PM UTC

raganwald wrote: post #15

The Google+ circles concept is powerful and easy to use. It represents the defining, foundational difference between Google´s and Facebook´s vision for social networking. If this new model takes off with users, then Facebook will find itself in the uncomfortable position of having to replicate these features within its own platform. Unfortunately for Facebook, moving to this new paradigm will not be possible overnigh…

I don't think the issue is as much technical as it is about the nature of the community. digg, reddit, hacker news, etc. all have similar features, but quite different communities. these communities are generally molded by where they exist in the mind of the user, which can be influenced by the UI. HN only allows up-arrows to create a positive slant, reddit has a functional looking UI for a technical slant, and digg aims for a mainstream look. This is why facebook, twitter, and google+ aren't necessarily direct competitors, because they are all designed to scratch a slightly different itch.

Re: Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded?

#30

Post by smackfu » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 3:46 PM UTC

camtarn wrote: post #21

"Each of us on average has hundreds of friends on Facebook. When you share things on Facebook, you have to share it with all of them! How stupid is that?" It would be stupid ... if it were actually true. Facebook's privacy controls are actually pretty sophisticated now: by default I have anything I post shown to friends of friends, but excluding certain people. For potentially controversial status updates I restrict…

What really baffles me in Facebook is that you can't change the privacy on existing entries. Delete and recreate is the only option.