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A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+

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Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+

#71

Post by adwn »

onion2k wrote: post #48
adwn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the real world, the quality of a product isn't the only criterion influencing adoption/market share: There's also - price and cost (doesn't really apply here, though) - marketing and image - critical mass and network effects Therefore, your conclusion is invalid.

Price and cost matter a great deal here. Although the price of G+ was zero, the cost quite high - the user's time. G+ was hard to understand for most people. Google tried to give it a language of it's own that took people effort to learn - groups were "Circles", chat was "Hangout", and so on. It didn't instantly click in the way that Facebook or Twitter does for most people. Given that, the value proposition for G+ w…

> the cost quite high - the user's time

That's a good point. I still don't really "get" Google+, and I find it somewhat counterintuitive.

> tl;dr G+ didn't provide enough value to users to make it worthwhile spending time with the product, ergo it was a bad product that people didn't spend time with.

I was challenging your "few users ==> bad product" line of reasoning in general, not necessarily the statement "Google+ is a bad product". Sorry, I should have been more clear on this.

Still, I stick to my point that there are more factors influencing the market share of a product than its pure quality. Even if I made a better Facebook clone, I wouldn't gain any noteworthy market share.

Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+

#72

Post by zby »

oelmekki wrote: post #11

That's not the biggest problem, to me. Google+ maybe has not hit the target usage stats google wanted, but even when you love google+, it's awkward to use. I'm a daily google+ user and quite like the product. But when it comes to publishing, it always feels a bit off. I don't have a single public identity. I'm a rails developer, a news addict, a french citizen and since recently, a 3d printer user. Recently, I decide…

What is lacking is 'channel negotiation' between the sender and the receiver. The sender knows what he sends - the receiver knows what he wants to receive - neither of them has the full information and they need to collaborate on defining the channel connecting them.

For example the sender can sort their messages into out-channels (as it is partially implemented in Google+ via circles) and the receiver can chose what out-channels he subscribes to (which is not present in Google+) - this is the classical publish-subscribe design pattern.

What I would like to see is a bit more - I would like the receiver to be able to also apply some additional sorting logic to the subscribed channels, and he could choose the results depending on the mood - or he could some of it also copy directly to his out-channels. In short what I would like to see is a 'social routing' - but that would probably require that the user has full control over his node.

Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+

#73

Post by richardwhiuk »

wpietri wrote: post #13
oelmekki wrote: post #11

That's not the biggest problem, to me. Google+ maybe has not hit the target usage stats google wanted, but even when you love google+, it's awkward to use. I'm a daily google+ user and quite like the product. But when it comes to publishing, it always feels a bit off. I don't have a single public identity. I'm a rails developer, a news addict, a french citizen and since recently, a 3d printer user. Recently, I decide…

Yeah. For precisely this reason, I maintain two Twitter accounts: business me and personal me. It kills me that Google+'s Circles were only about privacy control, not targeted sharing.

You can share with only a specific circle.. - just set the To to the specific Circle....

Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+

#75

Post by kh_hk »

Tin foil hat mode ON

Google never needed Google+ to be successful, it was just a means to complete their analytics and ad platforms with more data about the users by awkwardly signing them up.

As Wave, it might also have led to the development of new internal processes (providing a band aid for things like youtube comments) and finally on Google's look and feel rebranding.

Now Google has new ideas on how to feed the analytics and ad platforms with a line of futuristic projects that may or may not improve your daily life.

Taking this with a grain of salt it might make sense. For Google to do what they do they need to know everything about their users and their environment, which closes the circle feeding the products that are giving the company value.

Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+

#76

Post by levosmetalo »

amirmc wrote: post #44
levosmetalo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, what have you migrated to from Google apps? I don't use much of apps except for mail, calendar, contacts and docs. I could live without online docs, but couldn't find slick email, calendar and contacts available seamlessly on any computer and phone I use anywhere else.

Do you normally use email, calendars etc via the browser? Just curious as you say you've not found slick versions elsewhere and I'm not sure what that means to you. For example, I hardly ever access these things via the browser so 'slick' for me is just fast sync between devices.

Yes, I access email, calendar and contact via browser only on all desktop computers I use. And on phones and tablets I use native Gmail and Calendar apps and have contacts synchronized everywhere.

I haven't used desktop client for private mail for years, and I don't see that changing, because of the privacy and security concerns. I'm willing to let NSA or some other faceless foreign entity snoop my email if that will prevent people around me that can get hold of my phone or computer from reading my mail.

Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+

#77

Post by stormbrew »

pekk wrote: post #19
stormbrew wrote: post #15

I don't really think this would have helped much, but I do think that it highlights a part of why G+ has not been a very big success. It just lacks a compelling use case to make you come back to it after you discover that it doesn't have Facebook's network effect. There's nothing it does that Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook don't do better, aside from look kind of googly and force you to pick which one of your 5 gmail…

If I had been able to selectively subscribe to technical content of posters rather than also hearing about their cats, there is no reason I would not be using it over Twitter and Facebook to catch up on people's microblogging/thoughts. I never had a use for Facebook-style surveillance, I don't want it and I don't care how many annoying people it has who I don't want to hear from, this was for me always a ludicrous ar…

Well, that's kind of exactly my point. Facebook does the "things happening in my friends' lives that are largely inane but relevant to me" thing far better than some give it credit for (going to great lengths to determine relevance based on real actions you take). Twitter does the "I want a mind dump of the people I admire from afar with no filters" thing much better.

If Circles were the other way around -- a way to organize and categorize your thoughts for better consumption of other people -- I think that would have been better, and more along the lines of what you're talking about. If it had done it somewhat automatically that might have been even better.

But one thing that always kept me unhappy with G+ was that managing my circles felt like painful busywork better left to a computer, and it was only for my own benefit. It feels like work to control who gets to see what, and it's amortized on the wrong end, so I never did it. I don't know that anyone really does.

At any rate, no one's arguing people use facebook because of the people they don't want to hear from. That would be ludicrous.

Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+

#79

Post by emn13 »

richardwhiuk wrote: post #73
wpietri wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. For precisely this reason, I maintain two Twitter accounts: business me and personal me. It kills me that Google+'s Circles were only about privacy control, not targeted sharing.

You can share with only a specific circle.. - just set the To to the specific Circle....

The point isn't to limit the viewership, but to target the people you annoy with your notifications.

Sharing to a specific circle only implements privacy control, but it's much too heavy handed - nobody else can see it. Also, you can't change sharing options after the fact, so choosing the right options becomes particularly important.

Re: A simple way Google could have avoided fucking up Google+

#80

Post by kh_hk »

tn13 wrote: post #37

What % of internet users use RSS ?

The future of RSS is finding a way to make users use it without knowing they are using it.

Sadly, more and more platforms are abandoning RSS/atom (hello twitter) --they want no part on anything defined on an RFC that decentralizes and makes it easier to consume a service without entering their site. Other than that I guess XML.

As of % of internet users that use RSS, count me in.

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