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Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

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Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#61

Post by karpodiem »

notfromhere wrote: post #52
glenrivard wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poorly managed? They have now grown over 20% the last ten quarters and now over 26% the last two. Since the beginning never declined for a quarter YoY. Even though the great recession. That is pretty hard to do.

I mean you really can't argue that Google's attempts to move away from relying on ad revenue for most of its earnings have been successful

"The bulk of Google’s $110.8 billion revenue in 2017 came from its proprietary advertising service, Google AdWords."

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/020515/busin...

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#63

Post by amyjess »

_uhtu wrote: post #6

Google+ had terrible marketing and release, but it had some decent ideas that I wish other networks had carried over. The idea of "circles", where you had a circle for "acquaintances" "friends", "family" would be great on, say, Facebook, as it would allow me to filter down my feed to just the people I really care about but still have a connection to more distance acquaintances. Currently on Facebook the news feed is…

> The idea of "circles", where you had a circle for "acquaintances" "friends", "family" would be great on, say, Facebook, as it would allow me to filter down my feed to just the people I really care about but still have a connection to more distance acquaintances.

You can do that already, with lists.

Unfortunately, the UI for lists isn't great, but when you figure out how (it took me long enough), you can view a feed of just people on a certain list or post to just one list if you want.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#64

Post by notatoad »

pc86 wrote: post #40
ben174 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that was by design. Trying to sweep it under the covers to avoid outrage. I share that article with friends and they're likely to read the first half of the headline and not bother reading it.

Serious question, is anybody going to be outraged by sunsetting G+?

there's a decent sized group of people who are outraged when google shuts down any product, regardless of if they used it or had even heard about it before.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#65

Post by 8ytecoder »

evgen wrote: post #45
_uhtu wrote: post #6

Google+ had terrible marketing and release, but it had some decent ideas that I wish other networks had carried over. The idea of "circles", where you had a circle for "acquaintances" "friends", "family" would be great on, say, Facebook, as it would allow me to filter down my feed to just the people I really care about but still have a connection to more distance acquaintances. Currently on Facebook the news feed is…

There is no way Facebook would ever implement something like this. The whole point of the Facebook feed tinkering is to force you to wade through a river of shit to find the nuggets you are interested in. The feed algorithm is all about making that river just slightly short of unbearable, because the river is where they stuff all the ads. If they provided you with useful filters it would make the revenue opportunitie…

This is a very cynical view of things. I'm not a product manager - but I can't imagine one sitting in a room thinking about all the evil ways to make the feed harder for people to find relevant posts. I can, however, perfectly imagine a PM who is "extremely numbers driven" to look a bad version of the algorithm that increases the time users spend shifting through shit and assume that the algorithm is a huge success because it increased "retention" and reduced bounce-rate.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#66

Post by kenhwang »

orcdork wrote: post #15
gaius wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTA: 90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds. Their own stats seem to back this: people arrive by mistake and immediately go somewhere else

It's like following a search result to experts exchange on the age of stack overflow.

The more infuriating part is that it doesn't even work on mobile FF. So the few times I accidentally click on a G+ link from my Google assistant feed, I don't even get the benefit of seeing a post with just a link to the real content.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#67

Post by 394549 »

IshKebab wrote: post #54
evgen wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way Facebook would ever implement something like this. The whole point of the Facebook feed tinkering is to force you to wade through a river of shit to find the nuggets you are interested in. The feed algorithm is all about making that river just slightly short of unbearable, because the river is where they stuff all the ads. If they provided you with useful filters it would make the revenue opportunitie…

Erm, Facebook did implement something like this. Shortly after Google+ came out. You can still assign friends to different groups.

> Erm, Facebook did implement something like this. Shortly after Google+ came out. You can still assign friends to different groups.

IIRC, Facebook never really promoted those features or tried to make them easy and intuitive to use. Recently they've also made changes to make them less useful.

It's sort of like difference between having a well-designed and usable feature or a similar feature that only exists to check off a checkbox.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#69

Post by V-eHGsd_ »

rocqua wrote: post #11
sys_64738 wrote: post #3

They did this with Google Reader 5 years ago. I don't think you can trust the longevity of Google services beyond GMail and Google Search.

This is rather different from Google Reader. Reader was a popular service that was going strong, the discontinuation really was a hassle to a lot of people. Google+ was essentially not used at all, so this should affect very few people.

Ironically, google reader was discontinued because they wanted people to use g+ exclusively for "sharing", and reader's ability to share/surface articles to friends was seen as unnecessary competition.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#70

Post by zdragnar »

CPLX wrote: post #39

The use of the word "sunset" as a verb in posts like this is fucking infuriating. Yes, software types know what it means, but this is a consumer product with tens of millions of users, who have no familiarity with that term. It's a weasel word. The way to say this is in plain English. We're closing, shutting down, turning off, discontinuing, or something.

What? Sunsetting something is used outside of software. Hell, it's even used to describe temporary laws ("sunset law"). It's also used for brands and business policies.

And, sure, it might not make the top list of 1000 words you might hear on the street on any given day, but it's also very easy to search for. That doesn't make it a weasel word.

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