I love how Google has really taken time to address the problem number 1 with Facebook games : they are spam machines! Games in Google+ will feel more like real games (pc, mobile or console games) as in if I feel like playing a game and I see my friend also plays that game, then we can share scores and stuff. But when I'm not feeling for games, then games don't invade my news feed. What would be the point anyway in knowing my friend had a high score in a game I wouldn't play? It's only spam.
Clicking on that "Game" tab on Google+ will be just like opening Steam and seeing all your friends' activity and going "Cool, which game do I play now? Is there anyone online right now?" and I love that!
> What would be the point anyway in knowing my friend had a high score in a game I wouldn't play? It's only spam.
Most of us hate this kind of stuff. I know I do. It's super annoying. Furthermore, as a game developer, it would kill me a little bit to "sell out" like that.
However, this is why Zynga is worth a bazillion dollars. They understand the power of "virals". Have you ever talked to a Zynga employee? "Virals virals virals". They are one of the few companies who really understand the power of converting social pressure into profit.
"problem number 1 with Facebook games : they are spam machines!"
Really?
I remember when I first joined Facebook, and my News Feed came to be quickly dominated by Zynga items, and my notifications came to be dominated by reminders to see how fast I can type A-Z.
I remember last summer after I joined Facebook as an intern, when the head of the newly-created Games team announced that they would collapse all the Zynga notifications into "Bob and Sally are playing Farmville."
Now, I don't remember the last time I saw any Facebook game spam.
I hear people say this a lot, but is it true?
(Just checked my last 300 feed entries. There was one notification about someone beginning to play Jeopardy. Spam machine indeed.)
It is not true anymore but people remember the bad things, right? It was horrible maybe year or two back. Gazillion of notifications, wall completly covered with app spam... Now it's quite good. If anything appears it is very easy to hide the app, no more notifications (invites or whatever), .. quite clean.
On the other hand. Those polls are The Evil now. Absolutely no way to get rid of them (w/o using external scripts).
I never really realized this had stopped. I thought it was due to the fact that I clicked so often on the "Hide publications from game X" that now I had hidden most of them. I think it all comes down to the fact that I remember clearly how bad it was because I had an emotional reaction to that spam ("fucking farmville get the fuck out of my feed arrrrrrr!!!") instead of now that I didn't even notice it one bit. How could the situation I didn't see come to mind before the one that got me pissed a few months ago? And that's why everybody still says that games on Facebook = spam.
Yes, the blog says "you can comfortably share your latest high score--your circles will only see the updates when they’re interested in playing games too."
Sounds like a winner to me. I won't have to keep blocking every new game that comes along.
Look, guys, you have to realize that even though many frown upon the social games market, it's a niche market that's here to stay. After all, social networks are mostly entertainment media and people have been playing games even before they learned to write. Social games are dumb most of the time, a mindless way to interact with friends, but people like them. The "games" tab certainly seems compelling, however they need to be aggressive on removing spam apps. That's exactly what facebook didn't do and what zynga took advantage of to the maximum possible degree. Social app developers are almost always aggressive about exploiting user behavior and communication channels to funnel growth. If google is not vigilant about enforcing their rules correctly and tuning their algorithms to be fair to all developers, it's going to be the facebook nightmare all over again.
Thanks. Just for kicks I guessed at the URL /games and was rewarded with a page beginning, "We're glad you want to play games on Google+. Don't worry, your turn is coming up!" and then saying basically what you said.
Yesterday I finally got the button. I was somewhat busy at first, so I just glanced at the games available. I was somewhat disappointed to see time-sink games, but that's obviously very subjective. Of course they had Angry Birds!
Later, when I could spend a bit more time I went back and was presented with a screen explaining that games would need access to my information and tried to paint as rosy a view of that as possible[1]. I clicked through to play Angry Birds and was presented with specifics of what that particular game wanted to access: too much. Why?! I can play Angry Birds on my phone or tablet and not give anyone my info. I declined.
1. "Games on G+ are social" or some such nonsense. Of course games are social! Giving up my private info does not make them more social. The cited examples of showing you which friends have been playing the game you're looking at could (and should) be done by G+ itself, not the game app.
As a games developer still green-around-the-ears I'm really looking forward to trying my hand at making a social media game. I never wanted to make a facebook game because I felt like that ship had sailed.
Definitely a combination of html, flash, etc. These aren't games developed by Google -- rather games running on Google's platform (similar to Facebook games).
Yeah, it would be an opportunity for Google to nudge people off of legacy browsers. Some sort of message like "These games run best in Chrome, Firefox, and IE9" Better to offer the carrot than the stick.
I think it's because "supporting HTML5" is something with nebulous meaning, and not allowing people to make canvas games in this day and age would be shooting themselves in the foot big time, so it's quite unlikely that they won't. I don't think that deserves downvotes, though. People just surly.
I see. Still, I don't think "HTML5 games" is as vague as "HTML5" - it pretty much means either canvas or SVG. And it would be nice to hear an explicit line from Google on it - not sure why they haven't actually stated the supported technologies yet. I suppose they're still working on it.
I can't wait until they open up Google+. As far as I can tell, they're still in danger of a Wave repeat, where the hype burns out too early. There are tons of people still out there with their noses pressed up against the glass, unable to join in the fun.
Games are a big deal, though. They'll keep people on G+ even when there's nothing immediately social to do, and increase interactions between people, this time in a non-spammy way.
Hi starwed, I'd love an invite to google+ if you'd be willing. I'm not an FB user, but the google folks have me all curious. My email is in my profile, and thanks a million!
When I look back at my switch from MySpace to Facebook though, it took a long time before I fully made the switch. I made a Facebook account, logged on, didn't find too many people, so I went back to MySpace.
A couple of months later and Facebook kept getting better and MySpace kept declining mostly due to the spammy nature of people's horrible HTML tastes (read: Geocities).
Now Facebook seems like a similar case to me. The games were getting spammy, the quizzes my friends took to find out which character from Sesame Street they were are were getting spammy, the layout kept changing every week, and I kept finding annoying bugs.
I expect the same story to be repeated. Google Plus is the next iteration on social networking. They learn from the previous' mistakes (just like Facebook learned not to let people add HTML to decorate their profiles). Google Plus is imo a more polished, more thoughtful iteration on Facebook. SO I am not too worried.
Google has invested a lot in this move, and I hope and trust they will continue to improve it for a long time.
I've got like 10 people in my Friends circle on Google+ and my feed is literally flooded. I suppose I could do some filtering (although I doubt that is what a typical user would even attempt doing). It just seems like it's harder to find out "what's going on" than with Facebook.
Could you elaborate a bit more. Maybe we can gain some insights from your experience. i.e. Why is it harder to find out what is going on in Google+ as opposed to Facebook?
I'm not OP but I'm finding it hard to follow what's going on as well.
The primary reason is that my "following" circle is completely overwhelming my friends, family, etc, circles. I'd love to be able to look at all my circles except Following (or rather, to be able to view some subset of my circles at a time). Clicking to view "Family", scrolling down and reading, then back to the top and clicking "Friends", and then "Acquaintances" is tedious.
In addition, an option to view more condensed posts would be helpful for viewing my Following deluge. As it is, each post gets a few paragraphs and a handful of comments. This is often nice, but sometimes I'd like to scan it more quickly, and if it could be just the person who posted it and the first few sentences, I'd love it.
I seem to have developed a kind of bimodal distribution of contacts in Google plus that represent the extremes of Twitter and Facebook: a bunch of people I know really well (family), and a bunch of people I don't know at all (Vic Gundotra, etc). The problem is both groups are getting equal billing in the stream. Which means that right now anything my family members post is so far down in the stream I barely see it.
Another aspect of the same problem is a need for filtering on hash tags. Eg: I tried following Romain Guy because I'm interested in Android. But 9/10 posts he makes are about photography. I want to follow him but only see things he posts about Android. EDIT: thinking about it, there might be some useful cross pollination between this problem and sparks - it would almost solve my problem if I could just say "only show me things Romain Guy posts that are relevant to my sparks".
I feel like the two functionalities (twitter-like asymmetry, and facebook-like keeping track of your friends) are at odds. Either an option for all but "following" in the stream or else making the stream selection on the left as checkboxes instead of a radio group could really improve things.
Then uncheck the Following circle. Let me know if you have any problems with it. I'm in the process of making it work with multiple-accounts so if you have multiple accounts, it might not work.
Unfortunately, I've seen the same thing on my end. I've enjoyed using G+ far more than Facebook, but I think that it's going to be tough to pry enough people away from Facebook to make G+ work. Folks don't seem to want to maintain more than one Facebook-type account.
Yes, and - for one - really hope the eventual API builds on stuff they've already pushed in the past, and doesn't go in a whole new direction. I very much want to see OpenSocial, OAuth, GData / AtomPub, and existing open standards used for whatever they cook up. And given how much Google have put into these various standards in the past, it's what I expect... I just can't shake this sneaky fear that they're going to hit us with a big swerve and roll out a lot of new, incompatible stuff.
I hope they don't. OAuth is a nightmare (I just tried to make a simple client for IOS, right now I want to beat up the guy who made that standard) and the rest is far more complicated than a simple json based rest api.
Well, if you don't use OAuth, then what? You'd have to have something roughly equivalent to deal with authorizing API requests, no?
As for GData / AtomPub and REST... AtomPub was designed specifically to be a restful protocol, and GData is heavily based on AtomPub... but also has a JSON mode, so you get your wish there.
Anyway, the point I was getting at isn't about any one (or two or three) specific items of how they implement their API... just a hope that they stick (mostly) to established / open standards. By the same token, I hope Google are - or become - involved in the Federated Social Web initiative and adopt the work that comes out of that. But that's just me...
I would use password based authentication. The pattern is well established, users know how to deal with it and it is simple from an implementation point of view.
If you don't want to do that, then let me just pass as a parameter a nonce and then, if the user clicks agree or whatever, allow me to use that as the password.
Just skip the consumer secrets, token, two or three step authentication and HMAC based authentication. It is a social media system, not a stock-trading application.
All in all, it looks well done. I want to be absolutely sure I don't see Puzzle crap if I'm not interested, but their statements so far are in the right direction.
Facebook credits is mandatory now and is pretty popular. 95%+ of Zynga's revenues comes virtual goods which are now based on credits and the rest are from ads.
i wish they bought me out and integrated mogade.com into it as a part of the platform for game developers :(
If you think games are important to your platform, I really think that having game-specific APIs and features for game developers to target is both useful and simple.
I've always thought a Facebook meets xbox live would do well.
That's why I've largely unfollowed "famous people" on Google Plus... until they have the ability to view "everyone but X circle". The only people of the 100 or so I follow on Google Plus who post anything are celebrities and they post nonstop (and the hundreds of useless comments keep bumping their stuff to the top of my feed). It works on Twitter for some reason, but not on G+.
I've actually created a couple of composite circles that include the people from circles I want to pay attention to depending upon how much time/etc I have.
My biggest reason for not using G+ more (I prefer twitter) is that a single conversation / thread can take up too much room in the feed. I rarely have the time to wade through / scroll down constantly -- the composite circles tend to help a bit.
Probably because that guy didn't read the article. Games can't post status updates and spam your feed, it all goes in the games page so you'd have to visit the games page specifically if you want to view anything game related.
This is problematic given the current vulnerability to spam Google+ has. Anybody can friend you, via your own friends.To make it worse, Google will give you a red notice for this on every service, even search. I've been friended by multiple online media sociopaths through my friends.
Say Mr. X social media adds a few of your publicly listed friends. And some add him back. Then Mr. X adds all their friends by looking at their circles (both ways). This includes unlisted people. They add all of them. Again, some of them add them back without double-checking. This is reinforced when Google+ shows contacts in common. You think, hey this is a friend of a friend. Often they have more than 2 contacts in common.
It's either spreading like fire or my friends are particularly vulnerable to this, wich I doubt as most are tech-savvy.
I hope Google takes care of this issue before the Zyngas creep up and make the service as trashy as Facebook.
Edit: reworking examples to make it a bit more clear.
> Anybody can friend you and it will be shown across all Google pages, even search. I've been friended by multiple online media sociopaths through my friends.
I don't see how that leads to spam. Friendship isn't symmetric in G+. Media sociopaths can follow me all they want. If I don't follow them back, I don't see a word they write in my stream.
Mr. X adds me. Looks like a normal guy and G+ shows we have 2 contacts in common. So I add him. Then I get his spammy stream. The only way to verify is to go check their page before adding, but that's a hassle. So most people just add them. And while they keep the spam rate low and make it look OK most people just leave them. This happens in particular with users who visit G+ less frequently.
This happened to me several times in the last few weeks.
EDIT: I am aware of this so I don't add them anymore, but many of my contacts, perhaps most, keel falling for it. And I cant escape the constant notices of MR Xs adding me on G+ even when I'm not in G+. I can't tell G+ not to notice me of spammers adding me and just do it for actual friends. BTW, downvotes? Wow...
There's your problem. Why on Earth are you adding people that you don't know at all? I'd like to see you back up your "So most people just add them" statement with hard evidence. I for one, do not "just add" people just because they circled me. I first check to see if they are someone I care about at all.
This isn't quite "hard evidence", but as an...experiment...a few weeks ago, I added every single person Google recommended, a total of 1118. Of those, 65 complete strangers have added me back, which is 5.8%. This percentage is not "most", "many", or even "some". It is irksome to see the red notification for no good reason, but I do not think people really feel compelled to add random people to their circles.
Not long at all, actually. The first time I added people, Google was recommending around 600 users. So I just selected all, the dropped them into a new circle. Same process to get the rest of the remainders over the next few days.
Now, Google shows maybe 100 or so recommended users, which is below my threshold of "fun number of people to add at one time". I say "maybe 100" because, interestingly, Google+ no longer shows the number of recommended users. I wonder if they removed this feature because of visual clutter, or were finding a lot of people abusing the feature like I did.
It was an example. I do not add them anymore. But I get constant notices of random spammers adding me. And these notices show up on every Google page, including normal searches. There is no way Google can tell Mr. X is a friend of a friend or a random social spammer.
Even if you do the right thing, you get those notices. And even if only some of your friends fall for it, it spreads. And I don't blame them, it's a hassle to check.
Edit: and of course, I am not publicly listed! But they can bypass that by adding friends who have their list of contacts public (a default!)
How is it anybody else's fault if you're the one that adds spammy strangers without checking their profile, and then you're not bothered to remove them?
When someone you don't know adds you to one of their circles, that just means they found your public posts interesting. It doesn't mean they want to be your friend. They're just following you, like on Twitter.
Downvotes, you say? Well, if you took a minute to learn how G+ works and how easy it is to avoid annoyances, then you wouldn't be posting hypothetical and very misguided complaints about your "friends'" accounts in regards to interaction on G+.
Clicking on that "Game" tab on Google+ will be just like opening Steam and seeing all your friends' activity and going "Cool, which game do I play now? Is there anyone online right now?" and I love that!