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Why Twitter Should be Very Worried about Google+

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Re: Why Twitter Should be Very Worried about Google+

#41

Post by drivebyacct2 »

aristidb wrote: post #30

Well. I added Markus Persson (aka Notch, of Minecraft fame) to my Following circle, and... his posts are always bumped to the top of the stream because so many people comment on them. Posts can also take up a lot of space when there are attached pictures/videos and comments. So Twitter has these huge advantages that everything is streamlined and kept short. Google+ does not; and it's not really necessary if you don't…

Which is why there are features to solve this problem already baked in. You have a variety of ways of dismissing that content. (Are the people downvoting unaware of this or upset that they had to come to complain before noticing or what? Jesus, what a stupid post to downvote)

Re: Why Twitter Should be Very Worried about Google+

#42

Post by drivebyacct2 »

ender7 wrote: post #13

There is one thing that Google+ currently lacks that both Twitter and Facebook have: Like us on Facebook! facebook.com/ProductFoo Follow us on Twitter! @ProductFoo In G+'s (hypothetical, since they haven't done it yet) case, neither the phrase nor the url are as catchy or memorable: +1 us on Google! plus.google.com/ProductFoo

google.com/+productfoo

Why not? It's not like the namespace +{whatever} is likely to be in use at google already.

Better yet, Google is much more used as a verb than any other site I can think of. "Just Google +ProductFoo", etc.

Re: Why Twitter Should be Very Worried about Google+

#43

Post by Goronmon »

groks wrote: post #34
Goronmon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny because the same exact thing happened to me. Notch now dominates my Stream, to the point I might just remove him from my circles.

At the top right of each post is a tiny arrow in a circle. It's a menu -- choose 'Mute this post' and it will no longer float to the top.

The problem is that Notch tends to post stuff all the time. Right now I have 6 of his posts on the first page of my stream. And they are all from the last 12 hours or so. If he keeps up that rate, I'll be muting a dozen posts a day, heh.

Re: Why Twitter Should be Very Worried about Google+

#44

Post by [deleted] »

macrael wrote: post #39
mcrittenden wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is something similar available on Google+? Yes, you can add someone to your circles without them doing the same to you. There's even a default circle called "Following" for "People that you don't know but find their posts interesting" (i.e., basically the same thing as following famous people on Twitter). > Are your posts required to be directed toward a specific circle? Sort of. They can be directed at any combina…

So by adding someone to one of my circles, I'm automatically added to their "Following" circle? It seems like you mean the opposite, that I would put someone I don't know really well into my "Following" circle, but that still means that I don't get a feed of their postings, right? Unless, as someone else mentioned, they set their post to "public", does that post then show up for everyone who has the poster in their c…

[deleted]

Re: Why Twitter Should be Very Worried about Google+

#45

Post by mark_l_watson »

As much as I like Twitter, I basically agree with most of the points in the article. G+ will attract developers, it does have a clear path to monitization, and for people who already use GMail+Calendar+Picasa+etc it is a natural since it is always available.

Re: Why Twitter Should be Very Worried about Google+

#46

Post by telcodud »

Goronmon wrote: post #43
groks wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the top right of each post is a tiny arrow in a circle. It's a menu -- choose 'Mute this post' and it will no longer float to the top.

The problem is that Notch tends to post stuff all the time. Right now I have 6 of his posts on the first page of my stream. And they are all from the last 12 hours or so. If he keeps up that rate, I'll be muting a dozen posts a day, heh.

Check out this post from a Google+ engineer: https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/GTESUy4y... (sorry, Google+ users only) This was identified as an issue that's planned to be fixed in the next few days.

Re: Why Twitter Should be Very Worried about Google+

#47

Post by msbarnett »

> For a long time now, Twitter’s proponents have argued that Twitter’s 140 character limit was an advantage. It keeps posts brief and to the point. Once you use Google+ for a bit, though, you come to realize that those constraints are really just annoying at the end – and likely hard to explain to a mainstream user anyway.

I have to say, I really disagree with that one. I didn't truly appreciate the value of the 140 character limit until I spent some time using Buzz. Once people are free to dump an entire essay into your timeline, it ceases to feel like a quick visit that I can pull 20 or 30 bite-sized nuggets of interaction out of, and more like as RSS feed -- an enormous backlog of reading I can never hope to catch up on and stop caring about.

Re: Why Twitter Should be Very Worried about Google+

#48

Post by Sapient »

timmyd wrote: post #26
nprincigalli wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tried with this workaround: Create a circle, add a person to it, then share some content in the circle. Everyone who isn't yet member of Google+ gets an invite. Let us know if it's still working.

thanks - haven't got an invite yet however ? will let you know if I get one :) [otherwise won't update] thanks ;)

I got an invite two days ago and had the same problem. However when I installed the Android Google+ app, it allowed me to register start using it immediately.

Re: Why Twitter Should be Very Worried about Google+

#49

Post by akavi »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #41
aristidb wrote: post #30

Well. I added Markus Persson (aka Notch, of Minecraft fame) to my Following circle, and... his posts are always bumped to the top of the stream because so many people comment on them. Posts can also take up a lot of space when there are attached pictures/videos and comments. So Twitter has these huge advantages that everything is streamlined and kept short. Google+ does not; and it's not really necessary if you don't…

Which is why there are features to solve this problem already baked in. You have a variety of ways of dismissing that content. (Are the people downvoting unaware of this or upset that they had to come to complain before noticing or what? Jesus, what a stupid post to downvote)

"Available" and "Easy enough to actually be worth using" are two very different things, and the former isn't worth anything without the latter (Note that g+'s most lauded feature, circles, has been in Facebook forever in the form of lists; they're just too tedious to actually be used)

Requiring someone to individually mute every single popular post is hardly a real solution to the problem aristidb describes.

Re: Why Twitter Should be Very Worried about Google+

#50

Post by maxwell »

ender7 wrote: post #13

There is one thing that Google+ currently lacks that both Twitter and Facebook have: Like us on Facebook! facebook.com/ProductFoo Follow us on Twitter! @ProductFoo In G+'s (hypothetical, since they haven't done it yet) case, neither the phrase nor the url are as catchy or memorable: +1 us on Google! plus.google.com/ProductFoo

Follow means "subscribe to our feed", Like means "subscribe and upvote", +1 just means "upvote". Google's had similar verbs in terms of interface (stars/bookmarks, SearchWiki voting, likes, etc.), but they weren't public. The SearchWiki announcement emphasized, "The changes you make only affect your own searches." [0]

reddit, HN, and StackOverflow have only scratched the surface of can be done with upvoting. I would very much like to see Google add a prominent "+ Average", like HN's comment score average. As we've seen here on HN, focusing on total upvotes (i.e. the now hidden Leaderboard) seems to encourage quantity of comments, while displaying one's average may encourage quality. Facebook and Twitter are clearly optimized for quantity; the best hope for Google+, hopelessly behind in terms of sheer content, may be to push users to generate/share more interesting content, rather than more.

[0] http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/searchwiki-make-searc...

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