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Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded?

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Re: Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded?

#93
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact, Facebook lists already do everything he praises Circles for in this article. Having used both Google+'s Circles and Facebook's lists, a lot of people are missing the point. Sure, Facebook's lists may be capable of some or even all of the functionality of Google+'s Circles, but that's not addressing the important difference in functionality between the two. Google+ has clearly been designed with Circles in…

Facebook Friend Lists are far more powerful than Google Circles and Facebook Groups are an entirely different beast. At an architectural level Facebook Lists are a core feature. They even had them front and center for a few years as they asked you to populate them by "how do you know this person?" when you added them as a friend. The problem is that no one wanted to use them so they were gradually phased out of the U…

Almost reminds me of how Microsoft promoted .NET as being a runtime capable of running code generated from multiple languages. The JVM had always had this feature but it was underutilized and somewhat obscure. After the .NET launch, it took a while of explaining that the JVM could run other languages besides Java before it became widely known in the programming community.

Re: Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded?

#94
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook has "circles" but they are called "groups." I have sources that say, unofficially that: 1) They were not blindsided at all. They worked hard to compete on major features before g+ ever came out. 2) "Groups" has more or less similar functionality, and the feature is known to have a poor UI right now. The point though is that FB thought about this and even though they aren't up to the same polish with that fea…

I think that Facebook killed MySpace for one simple reason - tricking people into using their real name made it easy to find real life friends (and classmates, etc). IMO, this is what put it head and shoulders above all the other social networks. Nobody could copy it, because their existing users (the early adopters) had silly names like "wisty". Existing users already have old habits, and existing data that they don…

But they will only add their photos to one, and that one will ultimately pull ahead.

Re: Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded?

#95
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, Facebook lists already do everything he praises Circles for in this article. They might even do a little more (e.g. share with List A, excluding anyone in List B). As he correctly notes later in the article, the lists feature is not prominent on Facebook, and therefore few use it (or maybe few people actually want it?). But it definitely will not require a major architectural overhaul by Facebook.

Yes, it would because Google+ following system is asynchronous, kind of like Twitter (though not quit). Facebook doesn't work like that, and it would be a MAJOR change if they implemented it. I think a lot of users that are used to how Facebook currently works would be very upset about it.

asynchronous --> asymmetric

Re: Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded?

#96
post #25

The Google+ circles concept is powerful and easy to use. It represents the defining, foundational difference between Google´s and Facebook´s vision for social networking. If this new model takes off with users, then Facebook will find itself in the uncomfortable position of having to replicate these features within its own platform. Unfortunately for Facebook, moving to this new paradigm will not be possible overnigh…

In fact, Facebook lists already do everything he praises Circles for in this article. They might even do a little more (e.g. share with List A, excluding anyone in List B). As he correctly notes later in the article, the lists feature is not prominent on Facebook, and therefore few use it (or maybe few people actually want it?). But it definitely will not require a major architectural overhaul by Facebook.

And therein lies one of the biggest issues with Facebook. They offer a lot of features that are hidden away, deliberately released without much fanfare, and are difficult to find.

Re: Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded?

#97
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook Friend Lists are far more powerful than Google Circles and Facebook Groups are an entirely different beast. At an architectural level Facebook Lists are a core feature. They even had them front and center for a few years as they asked you to populate them by "how do you know this person?" when you added them as a friend. The problem is that no one wanted to use them so they were gradually phased out of the U…

This may be a stupid question: How do you use lists? I made some lists with circlehack.com. But on Facebook I don't see a way to share something with a list. I am puzzled...?

You need to have lists populated. I add people to lists as I friend them so my lists are all set. From the homepage, click "friends" in the left column, then "manage friends" button in the centre. Hover over a friend and you can "Edit lists" to add or remove them from lists (at http://www.facebook.com/friends/edit/).

Once you have friends in lists then you use lists like you would an email list. From the homepage click to write a status and you'll see next to the "share" button an icon (which for me is a padlock) that allows access to the functions to limit sharing. My default is "friends of friends". Choose to "customise" your shared status and you can enter either a friends name or a list name, start typing and it auto fills.

There are other situations when you can use friend lists too around the site, I think pretty much everywhere you can enter a friends name. For example if you do @listname in one of your statuses then everyone in the list will get that status in their news feed. You can activate online chat for only members of a list for example.

HTH.

Re: Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded?

#98
post #87
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more ironic, the guy who did that study was later hired by Facebook. I honestly think Zuck either figured that a) Google was incompetent/unwilling to challenge them or b) Google be damned, Facebook will make much more money with the public-by-default, privacy-optional approach to sharing. Perhaps the blindsiding was the promotion of Page to CEO and subsequent mobilization of Google's developer army?

Zuckerberg is also a kid, he's like a rookie who hit a home run on his first at-bat. It would not be surprising to me if he was blindsided out of a combination of youthful arrogance and inexperience.

Because there's only Mr Zuckerberg running the whole company?

He's been at it a while. If he gets beaten I don't think it will be to do with youth and inexperience. Remember Google failed with their first offering in this space (Wave), was it youth and inexperience then?

Re: Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded?

#99
post #27
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook has "circles" but they are called "groups." I think Friend Lists is what you may be referring to. They need to make the feature easier to use/find, and they need to make the News Feed more sensitive to these.

Yeah, they have been pushing Groups (like including it in the sidebar) but it's not very useful for privacy filtering since it tells the group members they are in the groups. Given that, Friends Lists aren't especially hidden either. Account > Edit Friends > Add a list. But using them for privacy is hard: you need to select custom privacy, then say show to specific people, then type in the friend list name in a box t…

Wouldn't Facebook massively improve usability by just including the Lists in the drop down list in the web interface also? It is actually not too hard if they approach this incrementally.

Re: Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded?

#100
I love the sensationalism of the headline. Very exciting, concise and a good summary of what's to follow.

I genuinely enjoy the techniques yellow journalists use to get page hits :)

This gif from the article is great: http://singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/faceboo...

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