Google's Social Strategy • Hacker News Board

Re: Google's Social Strategy

#41

Post by joebadmo » Mon, Apr 11, 2011, 4:52 PM UTC

blhack wrote: post #5

rorrr wrote: post #4

> Facebook has become the primary place web users spend their time and create content, and is mostly closed to Google’s crawlers. Seriously? I'm yet to see any of my facebook friends to create anything interesting that google can't crawl. Every single artistic person I know has a blog or a website. Maybe it's just my friends, but the most creative thing they do is post a link from reddit or some crappy photo from a p…

Facebook doesn't let you input enough information to do anything creative. I would never, ever write a blog post on my facebook, then link people to it. Can you even do that? I would never, ever post anything other than cellphone snapshots into facebook, their photo UI seems to discourage it as a photograph sharing tool (snapshot sharing yes, but I don't know anybody that would ditch flickr for facebook). Can you upl…

I think the problem is deeper and more widespread. Facebook, and all of our conceptions of social networks, are inherently restrictive, reductive, and shallow in how they allow people to express themselves.

The underlying assumption is that users are lazy and want the simplest, easiest, least involved ways to communicate possible, but I think the provided tools at the very least contribute to this.

I wrote a blog post about this: http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/3112676038/the-end-of-comment...

Re: Google's Social Strategy

#42

Post by salemh » Mon, Apr 11, 2011, 8:25 PM UTC

blhack wrote: post #5

rorrr wrote: post #4

> Facebook has become the primary place web users spend their time and create content, and is mostly closed to Google’s crawlers. Seriously? I'm yet to see any of my facebook friends to create anything interesting that google can't crawl. Every single artistic person I know has a blog or a website. Maybe it's just my friends, but the most creative thing they do is post a link from reddit or some crappy photo from a p…

Facebook doesn't let you input enough information to do anything creative. I would never, ever write a blog post on my facebook, then link people to it. Can you even do that? I would never, ever post anything other than cellphone snapshots into facebook, their photo UI seems to discourage it as a photograph sharing tool (snapshot sharing yes, but I don't know anybody that would ditch flickr for facebook). Can you upl…

Though, the "Notes" can also be a boon to certain people. EG: myself, I post certain notes for my friends in FB network, which is NOT public (people from work, business, etc.)

I also use it as a dump for future "working" blogs, getting feedback from people I actually know on FB. Their are positives to keeping this "Note" behind the "wall" of FB depending on your needs.

Specific example; I lost ~80 lbs in a year, and used to be a large muscular dude (so I've tweaked my diet pretty heavily throughout 7 or so years). I get random questions frequently from friends and instead of going through every iota of information, I throw it up in a Note.

Re: Google's Social Strategy

#43

Post by rorrr » Mon, Apr 11, 2011, 8:51 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #28

rorrr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flickr is also pretty horrible if you're into photography. There's no systematic way to find good photos (e.g. top average rating). Both Flickr and Facebook are huge garbage dumps of photos. Facebook has absolutely no way to find great photos. Flick has some very limited functionality for it, but it could've been so much better. Neither were build to suit artists. They were designed to be garbage dumps.

Actually, I'm an amateur photographer, and Flickr is pretty sweet for me. First of all, they are doing rating, though it may not be obvious how -- which I think is better than some dumb rating widget that can be abused -- and if Facebook would be able to show you pictures by rating, all you'd ever see are pictures of teenage girls in tight miniskirts, which get dozens of times better ratings then the pictures uploade…

Actually, I'm a professional photographer, and Flickr absolutely blows.

Tell me how to view the highest rated photos for today, current week, current month.

Compare

http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/

with, for instance,

http://photo.net/gallery/photocritique/filter (set the filter to "last week")

and you will see how shitty Flickr is. And keep in mind that Flickr gets thousands times more traffic and number of photos uploaded.

Re: Google's Social Strategy

#44

Post by bad_user » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 12:38 PM UTC

rorrr wrote: post #43

bad_user wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I'm an amateur photographer, and Flickr is pretty sweet for me. First of all, they are doing rating, though it may not be obvious how -- which I think is better than some dumb rating widget that can be abused -- and if Facebook would be able to show you pictures by rating, all you'd ever see are pictures of teenage girls in tight miniskirts, which get dozens of times better ratings then the pictures uploade…

Actually, I'm a professional photographer, and Flickr absolutely blows. Tell me how to view the highest rated photos for today, current week, current month. Compare http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/ with, for instance, http://photo.net/gallery/photocritique/filter (set the filter to "last week") and you will see how shitty Flickr is. And keep in mind that Flickr gets thousands times more traffic and nu…

You know, I consider it a bad attitude to (1) trash a good product without a valid argument and (2) completely ignore my comment.

Here's how to search on Flickr for "flower", from date 04/01 to date 04/12 (i.e. from the beginning of the month) AND sorted by interestingness:

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=flower&m=tags&d=take...

Also consider that this does MORE than what photo.net's form you gave me does -- as Flickr doesn't have a rigid taxonomy, but a user-defined and very dynamic folksonomy, and they do need to do a full-text search for this.

     keep in mind that Flickr gets thousands times 
     more traffic and number of photos uploaded

Precisely -- Flickr cannot do dumb sorting based on metrics collected from a dumb rating widget so easily, because (a) they are bigger and (b) they have more noise, which follows from (a).