Why Google+ Failed • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#61

Post by hateful » Thu, Jun 20, 2019, 12:51 PM UTC

While I do (mostly) agree with this article, it fails to mention the #1 reason why I never used it. I couldn't post something on someone else's page. I could post something to my "feed" and they could happen to see it. But I couldn't post something into their "feed" (wall, timeline) where all their friends could see it and then comment on it.

It was more like Twitter than Facebook. Maybe I'm wrong, but too me they were marketing "Twitter with pictures" as "Facebook", and they fell short.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#62

Post by TomMasz » Thu, Jun 20, 2019, 12:52 PM UTC

Almost all of my posts on G+ were autoposted from my blog. This was true for most of the people I followed as well. It was just another checkbox for promoting content hosted elsewhere. Interaction occurred in comments on my blog or on Facebook but almost never in G+.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#63

Post by revskill » Thu, Jun 20, 2019, 12:52 PM UTC

I think G+ failed because of design system. The effect of auto popup when you hover the + button is annoying, at least to me.

The overall design is "circle", which i think is annoying for most of people, too.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#64

Post by memling » Thu, Jun 20, 2019, 12:53 PM UTC

cycrutchfield wrote: post #19

f055 wrote: post #10

Turns out "engineered social interactions" is indeed an oxymoron. Also, Google's work structure where most product leads don't have dedicated tech teams but instead have to win over tech groups to work on their projects result in too much technocracy and too little empathy in projects like this. Can't say I feels sorry for them though. Google masqueraded itself as an idealistic company and a champion of the internet…

It’s “don’t be evil”, not “do no evil”. There’s a subtle but important difference.

> It’s “don’t be evil”, not “do no evil”. There’s a subtle but important difference.

So, too, the difference between "don't be evil" and "be good."

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#65

Post by skybrian » Thu, Jun 20, 2019, 12:54 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #50

The key element of why Google+ failed is deeper than these arguments. The key reason is because Google didn't do any 'human' testing before release. They should have picked a school or town or even a small country and released it just for those people. If it didn't work there (IE. See sustained growth till it had most of the market share), they should have changed the product, tested in a new town, etc. As OP points…

They tested it on Googlers. However, that's an atypical audience and more testing with a different group would have helped.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#66

Post by fyoving » Thu, Jun 20, 2019, 12:55 PM UTC

I always thought the name had something to do with it, "google plus" doesn't sound right specially for a social network, also "Hangouts" is a terrible name, it doesn't internationalize well nor does it work for an enterprise setting, and "keep" is a good app but it should be called "google notes" nevermind they already used that name on a now defunct product.

Google has been worse at naming products than they have a right to be.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#67

Post by untog » Thu, Jun 20, 2019, 12:59 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #35

The ranking system did kind of annoy me. We used G+ heavily inside of Google, and lots of interesting people posted interesting things. As time wore on, I felt like I got less and less of that stuff. A coworker would say "did you see so and so's G+ post" and I would go look for it and not be able to find it until I begged someone a link. I followed them. They followed me. The post had 300 +1s. But I could never see i…

Not that I'm particularly fond of it, but how is Medium evil in a way that G+ was not?

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#68

Post by skybrian » Thu, Jun 20, 2019, 1:01 PM UTC

combatentropy wrote: post #18

Computer networking in general and social apps in particular are still young, in civilization's history. We are still figuring this out. Maybe in a hundred years we will have a good grasp of what works. If the writer is right, then Google Plus's lack of traction was from the interaction among several subtle ingredients.

Yes, even Facebook's "successful" model is kind of a failure because it encourages people to spam all their friends and relatives with crappy memes.

It seems like a better model should somehow encourage people to think about their audience and post what they would appreciate.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#69

Post by xamuel » Thu, Jun 20, 2019, 1:01 PM UTC

sumanthvepa wrote: post #49

I have to disagree with the author. Google+ did not fail. Had it been a startup rather than a Google project, it would have been considered an amazing success. The problem was that the goal of being a Facebook killer was just too ambitious. Had it instead been a social feature amongst Google products it might have served valuable purpose for both Google and its users. Sadly, in a large corporation, every project has…

But all its success came from strong-arming people into using it, using the leverage Google had with all its other products. So it makes zero sense to compare it to a startup.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#70

Post by Marazan » Thu, Jun 20, 2019, 1:10 PM UTC

Realnames. It was entirely Realnames on launch.

Realnames Realnames Realnames.

Realnames stopped people joining just at a point where Facebook was being incredibly shitty.