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Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

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Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#611

Post by JauntTrooper »

yks wrote: post #488
mindgam3 wrote: post #373

RIP. Like so many of Google’s high profile efforts (anyone remember Wave? Glass, etc), a bunch of good ideas and great tech brought down by an utter failure to understand the human element/social psychology angle. Google+ was dead in the water from day one. You don’t beat Facebook at social by building a slightly different product with some cool ideas like Circles. Going for feature parity was a mistake. Instead they…

> Instead they should have tried to identify a niche where Facebook was failing and build up a loyal core of rabidly passionate users As Google Reader history shows, Google does not care about the passionate users.

I still miss Reader. :(

I basically stopped following most blogs when it shut down, and reverted to individual bookmarks.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#612

Post by mike00632 »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #383
mindgam3 wrote: post #373

RIP. Like so many of Google’s high profile efforts (anyone remember Wave? Glass, etc), a bunch of good ideas and great tech brought down by an utter failure to understand the human element/social psychology angle. Google+ was dead in the water from day one. You don’t beat Facebook at social by building a slightly different product with some cool ideas like Circles. Going for feature parity was a mistake. Instead they…

Why do you need to beat Facebook at social at all? Just focus on what you’re good at, it’s not like Facebook is going to suddenly dominate search.

Facebook is perhaps the biggest competitor to YouTube with video.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#613

Post by opsroller »

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…

Facebook has this already, and has had it since I joined in 2004.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#614

Post by jhabdas »

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…

I love you.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#615

Post by phyller »

Shutting down consumer Google+ is the least important part of this post. Hardly anyone used that. The privacy changes they are making for everything else are much more important. More granular control of app permissions is a big deal.

Overall I'm not sure how to feel because I didn't realize how bad it was. How many apps have required access to my contacts for legitimate reasons, and I wasn't aware I was providing access to our interaction data?

> Finding 4: When users grant SMS, Contacts and Phone permissions to Android apps, they do so with certain use cases in mind.

> Action 4: We are limiting apps’ ability to receive Call Log and SMS permissions on Android devices, and are no longer making contact interaction data available via the Android Contacts API.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#616

Post by roguecoder »

mindgam3 wrote: post #473
class4behavior wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>RIP. Like so many of Google’s high profile efforts (anyone remember Wave? Glass, etc), a bunch of good ideas and great tech brought down by an utter failure to understand the human element/social psychology angle. Absolutely this. It is, however, not the marketing strategy that failed them. G+ was hyped for some time before release and it became a hit since day one. With the level of attention any Google product gai…

I don’t remember many particularly egregious failures in UI and product design. In my experience it was well designed, but served no purpose whatsoever given that it was almost a complete clone of Facebook features, thus no reason for any of my facebook addicted friends to start using it, thus no reason for me to use it, thus dead in the water due to marketing fail and not product. Maybe I missed some specific UX or…

The "Real Name" policy at the start was a huge mistake that hurt them. Early adopters were overwhelmingly digital natives who immediately felt the product wasn't for them.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#617

Post by NeedMoreTea »

mindgam3 wrote: post #473
class4behavior wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>RIP. Like so many of Google’s high profile efforts (anyone remember Wave? Glass, etc), a bunch of good ideas and great tech brought down by an utter failure to understand the human element/social psychology angle. Absolutely this. It is, however, not the marketing strategy that failed them. G+ was hyped for some time before release and it became a hit since day one. With the level of attention any Google product gai…

I don’t remember many particularly egregious failures in UI and product design. In my experience it was well designed, but served no purpose whatsoever given that it was almost a complete clone of Facebook features, thus no reason for any of my facebook addicted friends to start using it, thus no reason for me to use it, thus dead in the water due to marketing fail and not product. Maybe I missed some specific UX or…

They made a complete farce of marketing it as it wasn't initially like Facebook. Facebook connects to people you know or are connected to. Google+ seemed more a Usenet 2.0 in connecting based on interests, especially with things like circles, whether you knew people or not. A few friends joined really early in beta and thought it was great.

So when I got to joining what did it present? Welcome - connect to some famous people. Now add your friends. Not one mention of interests, and I'm not sure they even mentioned circles. So everyone joining was being presented a picture of Facebook.

I didn't last long.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#618

Post by simonebrunozzi »

Another one bites the dust... I can easily imagine that in 100 years Alphabet would have been rebranded as Google, and only one single service will be generating ~100% of revenues.

There will also be a software graveyard with the 1,000+ dead projects that google launched and then shut down years later.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#619

Post by mindgam3 »

roguecoder wrote: post #616
mindgam3 wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t remember many particularly egregious failures in UI and product design. In my experience it was well designed, but served no purpose whatsoever given that it was almost a complete clone of Facebook features, thus no reason for any of my facebook addicted friends to start using it, thus no reason for me to use it, thus dead in the water due to marketing fail and not product. Maybe I missed some specific UX or…

The "Real Name" policy at the start was a huge mistake that hurt them. Early adopters were overwhelmingly digital natives who immediately felt the product wasn't for them.

See, that's an interesting angle. Facebook had to stick with real names because they were trying to become the default source of personal identity online. (and basically succeeded) But with real identity comes a whole host of problems.

If Google had pivoted 180 degrees and offered up a full featured social network with pseudonyms and, like, one other twist so that it wasn't just Myspace, then there's a reason to care about Google+. LinkedIn is facebook for professional identity... There have to be other identities not shown on Facebook that google could have gone after.

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