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Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

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641–650 of 733 posts

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#641
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…

You can create lists in Facebook and classify people into close friends, acquaintances, and restricted classes. You can view the feed from those lists if you want. It's more cumbersome than Google+ but you can do something similar on Facebook. I even have a list of all friends to actually see each and every update from all of them if I have the time and not the fraction of them that Facebook usually serves me.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#643
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…

I'm working on something that, to this day, is inspired on circles -- I just think the execution was really poor, the UX of having to always decide who sees what is just too heavy and there are better ways to approach this lovely idea.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, Google+ never aimed at feature parity with Facebook. At least not in the way of having the same set of features and accessible as easily as they were/are on Facebook. Having used both platforms for a long time, this was a huge barrier to doing anything on Google+ even if one didn't mind many people not being on it. If it had copied Facebook shamelessly, it would've given an alternative for all those people…

Uh, they kinda did copy Facebook shamelessly on the core features and basic UI, with the exception of Circles. I log in, I see a feed, I have a way to add “friends”, I can share text/photos/videos/links and comment. It basically looked and felt like logging in to Facebook with no friends on there, less features, and a few interesting UI differences. If they had done something different, like say restricted you to X n…

I think the parent meant that Facebook had more features so Google+ didn't really aim at "feature parity".

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#645
Number of project failures and cuts under Larry Page is just amazing. Normally you would expect that founder CEO insist on long term vision and loves to go after big bets. Under Larry Page, X had been cut. Boston Dynamics was lost. Robotics effort was shutdown. And now G+. After all these time no one at Google's highly paid smartest on Earth visionaries were able to experiment, try something new and continue fight for social. This is at the time FB is bleeding heavily, is losing trust and people are willing to try something new. Google is one case where it looks like outside traditional CEO Eric Schmidt did much much better not only in operational excellence but also long term big bets including maps, gmail, YouTube, Android etc. Larry Page has nothing comparable to show for in his 7 years of leadership. This might be one reason: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-09-13/larry-pag...

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#646
post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still miss Reader. :( I basically stopped following most blogs when it shut down, and reverted to individual bookmarks.

I wonder if that's in their interest or not

the feature is basically replicated on android phones that have the google now launcher page that shows you customised results based on how you search.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#647
post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What "important" market is there? It's far from certain that VR/AR hardware is going to amount to anything for the next 10 years.

The important market is when smartglasses replace smartphones as the dominant form of human computer interaction. Which will happen in the next 10 years.

here's to hoping it happens in the next 5

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#648
post #99

This is Vic Gundotra's legacy and perhaps the first major strategic decision Larry Page made in the post-Eric Schmidt era and it was the design and launch of Google+ and (IMHO) it marked a turning point in the company's culture. Internal resistance to aspects of G+ was enormous. People outside the company get this idea that Google acts as some kind of singleminded (possibly nefarious) entity when "herding cats" is so…

Google "hate" is a product of their success. IBM, MS, Apple, they all get it or have had it too. What is frustrating with plus though, it was clear from outside Google that the company wasn't completely behind it. It also seems like it was good enough that they could have played with it to find the right recipe. I haven't followed it that closely, but from the outside, it looks like it launched, it didn't achieve fac…

except when they did throw their weight behind it they did it in weird ways - requiring google+ for youtube but then keeping all youtube tools on youtube and google+ as an abstracted login entity that had some old version of your data(google+ profile didn't pull your youtube banner or details in any way nor did it facilitate creator growth by automatically suggesting contacts based on the type of content you create - which is very much in the realm of possibility for google)

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#649
post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well to be frank I've been in these meetings and yes people do intentionally think of dark patterns. If people are willing to sit in war rooms to murder people and Wall Street board rooms to steal pensions, it shouldn't seem so unbelievable that someone could intentionally obfuscate a social media timeline. In fact they use more technical language, such as "engagement", to discuss these topics so that it seems less r…

Yes, jargon is a very important aspect. "Lard it up with debt, fire down to a skeleton-crew and stop all maintenance" sounds bad, like you're killing the company or something. "Unlocking value", hey, doesn't that sound better? Similarly, "Let's get rich creating the second-coming of AOL by building a tacky nextgen panopticon" doesn't sound that great. "Creating a community of technical greats to bring people together…

How did you put together your IP list?

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big companies typically don't go after small niches. Big companies go after niches all the time. Many microbrews are owned by massive multi-national breweries. Huge drug companies chase niches every day. Giant food companies release ethic niche foods every month. Whomever told you that there isn’t big money in niches or that they’re not worth going after is someone you should stop taking advice from.

It very much depends on the market. This is the reason why Seagate and Western Digital aren’t big names in the SSD market. They dominated the mechanical drive market for years (and still do!) but by the time SSDs were worth pursuing, other companies were light years ahead of them. Google isn’t really in the business of filling small niches. That’s why they kill so many products that have small but passionate user bas…

That's because HDDs and SSDs are actually very different on the inside. They do roughly the same, but just because a company is good at manufacturing HDDs does not mean that it can also produce good SSDs.
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