
Google+ Redesigned - uptown
https://plus.google.com/+DanielleBuckley/posts/AnaA1XCANWm
======
ChuckMcM
And now we have come full circle. The new Google+ looks like crap in my web
browser because literally over 50% of the page is useless grey pixels.

The reason is that the page design assumes its on a mobile phone which its
somewhat unique tall portrait orientation. And sure enough, looking at the
page on my phone it looks a bit flat but it works well.

So now we are in a place in the web where browser users get the crappy UX
experience because someone spent all their time focused on the other community
and really didn't bother to make their pages responsive to both.

~~~
notatoad
the individual post pages contain a lot of whitespace, yes. But text looks
better at a narrower width. what do you want them to do, fill up the gutters
with ads just to colour your pixels?

the main index page wraps nicely to multiple columns when you're on a larger
screen.

~~~
zeveb
> But text looks better at a narrower width. what do you want them to do, fill
> up the gutters with ads just to colour your pixels?

True story: I'm completely capable of narrowing my browser window if I want
narrower text. The site I'm reading doesn't actually need to do that for me!

~~~
bananaoomarang
This is a very 'computer programmer' mindset. Most people want an appealing UI
out of the box, less need to configure at the expense of configurability.

~~~
ashark
I'd bet a fair percentage of computer users are uncomfortable resizing windows
and rarely/never resize. And a smaller but still significant set is probably
unaware that it's possible or how to do it.

~~~
cmurf
Isn't the browser experience on Chrome OS pretty much full screen?

~~~
hnal943
It is a windowed environment, same as any other.

~~~
cmurf
Sure, but in practice I think the idea is you run the browser full screen most
of the time.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Huh? Chrome's fullscreen functionality is the same as any other browser's. And
fullscreen hides tabs, so it's definitely not something you want to do most of
the time.

------
cromwellian
Lots of posts in this thread are trying to find a "reason" for why G+ isn't
beating FB. I think they're overlooking the obvious: Good Enuf + Path
Dependency = Inertia. Simply put, the most amazing social network the world
has ever seen, that executed perfectly on every front, is not going to
suddenly displace FB. It's like asking why no one disrupted Windows pre-
Web/pre-Mobile. Was it because alternative operating systems sucked?

IMHO, the big chance anyone had to disrupt FB was a paradigm shift away from
social news feeds. That paradigm shift arrived with photo sharing and
messaging on mobile, where increasingly people were just sharing pictures and
text messages privately. However, Zuckerberg saw that one coming and acquired
Instagram and WhatsApp to head off any disruption.

That shouldn't stop people from trying to innovate. But we should not regard
being smaller than the leader as a failure. I use G+, Twitter, and FB, but I
have the best conversations on G+. Twitter discussions are an exercise in
frustration, and I find the signal/noise on FB to be worse.

There's a benefit sometimes to having a smaller audience.

~~~
dredmorbius
You're leaving off a few additional factors:

1\. Repeated self-sabotage. On multiple fronts, G+ actively dissuaded large,
initially positive, early-adoptor groups.

2\. Founding cohort. Googlers were OK, as were the early techies. Google's
position as the world's leading ad agency meant that marketing types,
particularly the sub-breed known as SEO, were a large initial cohort. Until
users learned to block them on site, this was a net negative.

3\. Fighting users' interests. There were several use-cases, but one that many
sought was a long-form content posting space. Google+ supports this in some
ways (posts _can_ be quite long), but offered far too little by way of
preview. One of my few heeded suggestions: to insert a word count on post
previews.

4\. Forced mergers of unrelated products. I really _don 't_ want random people
off the Web popuulating my email contacts, or writing to my calendar, or
tracking my YouTube views. I and I don't want my personal and private online
activities broadcast to co-workers, family, friends, and others. I don't want
to have G+ nags following me across all other Google properties, and actively
sought out alternatives to Search, Maps, and other tools simply to no have a
Persistent Red Dot appear everywhere I went.

Abysmal search ( _no_ search when the product was first launched), abysmal
filtering, abysmal response to privacy, abysmal record of unilaterally joining
up multiple independent accounts against users' express wishes. Abysmal
experience in locking people out of _all of their Google services_ for
perceived misdeeds on a single one. This was a massive shitshow from start to
finish.

~~~
cromwellian
And yet, even if all of those hadn't occurred, do you really think it likely
people would switch en-mass? What would be the benefit? Circles? What is the
major pain point of Facebook that another social network would solve so
convincingly to cause their users to bear the costs of switching?

That have been dozens of other networks launched besides G+, none of them have
garnered significant traction. Only mobile chat products that utilize phone
numbers and contacts to build a network have really made a dent.

The vast majority of users of G+ never experienced blocking, didn't care about
nymwars, etc. These are edge-user complaints. It causes distress in early
adopters and the technorati but is meaningless to most people.

If you look at WhatsApp and Instagram, it turns out the majority of Facebook's
users didn't care about 90% of their features. They just want to share photos
and sent short messages.

My point is, those who are deeply about these things focus on edge case
features that make a ton of difference to them, but are invisible to most
people. Hell, I've rarely used Facebook search to search for anything other
than a Contact. I suspect most people don't use the Search feature much, or
lists, or groups, and all of the other dials and knobs.

Much of the world's communications by average people now runs on WhatsApp,
iMessenger, WeChat, LINE, etc, because the use case for most people is not to
be a public persona with a subscriber base, to conduct arguments and
discussions with them.

~~~
dredmorbius
Technical features don't make your network. Technical _failures_ can break
them.

 _Community_ is what matters, and founding cohort is hugely significant. Group
personality is established early, and can often veer off in unexpected (and
frequently unwanted) directions. I've just mentioned my recent Imzy
experiences, an interesting concept in several ways, but with some
exceptionally poor dynamics interacting with a quite volatile userbase (at
least in part).

Google's Circles were a fuckup from the start, and that was apparent from the
first "you're holding it wrong" arguments and flamewars coming _both_ from
those following people and those castigating their followers. Distribution,
topic, notification, and source are all different concepts, Google+ tried
squishing them into a single conceptual model. That model didn't fit reality.
And it wasn't reality that broke as a consequence. I think it's Larry Wall
who's observed that you _cannot_ simplify a complex state _simply by ignoring
its complexity_. That complxity _will_ out, and it's going to be ugly.

You're probably right about the vast majority of G+ users not caring about
blocking and nymwars, _because the vast majority of users never publicly
posted to the site._ Only about 6% of users have _every_ written a public
post, something I and Stone Temple Consulting independently verified by
sampling actual profiles (I ran 50k, STC 500k, see STC's "Hard Numbers" blog
post for a solid breakdown).

 _On the other hand,_ if you _did_ use G+ heavily, blocking matters a hell of
a lot, because otherwise you've got a bunch of annoying fucks in your face,
and Nymwars was critical to the participation of many, quite a few of whom are
what made G+ interesting, to the small extent that it actually is. _Not_
offering those features may not have _direct_ effects, but it does have
_indirect_ effects, often profound.

In the Imzy instance, the _lack_ of blocking (which I wanted to use), and the
_presence_ of pervasive anonymous posting (which interests me little -- a few
nyms are largely sufficient, though I might occasionally use a throwaway) had
a tremendous impact on the tenor of discussion. Such that I quite simply feel
it would be a major risk to me to continue to use the site. Something I quite
rarely feel. I certainly won't be inviting others there. This despite _some_
nice technical features.

I agree, actually, that most conversation is small-scale. We're effectively
creating an impromptu, softly-defined conversation space here, for a one-on-
one discussion. David Weinberger, commenting on Reddit a year or so back,
quipped "Conversation doesn't scale very well." For the types of discussions
I'm most interested in, a group of 6 to 60 seems pretty good, maybe a few more
than that in a good crowd with solid direction from the top. My Imzy
experience is contrasted directly with dang's moderation here on HN -- one of
those "antisocial techie spaces", which frankly achieves vastly better results
than the "kinder, gentler Reddit" Imzy claims it wants to be.

Where I'll disagree with you strongly is that the people who focus on edge
cases are invisible. They may not be _apparent_ , but their presence or
absence is quite tangible.

G+ offered the promise of being Usenet 3.0, and had (and still has) a number
of first-generation Usnetters, several of whom I follow. Peter da Silva (who
created Usenet 2.0), Karl Aurbach (one of the very first Arpanet team), Lauren
Weinstein, and others. But quite a few people I'd really hoped would
participate, and followed with anticipation, opted out. Pretty much the whole
Boing Boing crew, notably Cory Doctorow, though Xeni Jardin posted for a
while. Jonathan Zittrain. Lawrence Lessig, who posted for a bit then left.
Etc.

Ello saw a similar initial groundrush with Quinn Norton, Merideth L.
Patterson, Clay Shirky, and Paul Mason (the journalist) active early. Even jwz
showed up -- to tell us that we'd all discover the importance of the social
graph soon enough. There's a small little group there, and I enjoy the
interactions, which are also refreshingly healthy. But it's not what I'd hoped
for. Great place for art and poetry, and there are some local heros -- Ksenia
Anske, if you like Russian-American authors, and Trenton Lee Tiemeyer, a
gifted poet. I really like their content.

But critical mass on diverse topics, not.

I've looked into where that _does_ happen, and the answers, in general:

* Wordpress. Far and away the winner. Long-form, complex content favours blogs. Whodathunkit. The problems though are engagement and discovery, issues that SocMed platforms address.

* Reddit. Large and very high s/n, by my measure. Not quite the quality of blogs in terms of posts (though that can happen), but a far richer conversation.

* Metafilter. Tiny by Internet standards, but an astounding s/n.

* Facebook. Sheer mass has its advantages.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/trackin...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/tracking_the_conversation_fp_global_100_thinkers/?ref=search_posts)

HN also does well, though within a somewhat limited scope. The reasons have
little to do with the technical _capabilities_ , and may have a great deal to
do with _lacking_ features. The resulting conversational level is high though.

------
awesomerobot
What's it like to work on the Google+ team? are they all kind of blindly into
it, or is there any sort of "yeah yeah, we know" there? I guess it's an
exciting challenge maybe?

~~~
Mahn
I mean, engineers are generally pretty smart people, I don't think anybody
within the company thinks Google+ is killing it. But the thing is, I would
imagine that if you work at Google you are going to work on "unsexy" products
too. Working on Google+ today is probably not worse than say working on the
Ads Platform or some random internal reporting tool. It's not super mega
exciting, but it's a job and you get paid.

~~~
mason55
> _Working on Google+ today is probably not worse than say working on the Ads
> Platform_

Ads funds everything else that Google does. That is where the top engineers
are working.

~~~
euyyn
It's kind of unrelated. Case in point: Neither Jeff Dean nor Sanjay, the most
prominent engineers, work on ads-related things.

------
probably_wrong
I wish Google had stuck to their guns, called Google+ a social network, and
earned users over time.

Instead, they decided that 2nd place was not enough, said "just kidding, it
was actually an identity service, no, wait, a content discovery platform,
yes!", and turned into... whatever it is they are doing today.

They could have been the Facebook that is not Facebook, or in Randall Munroe's
words, "all I really wanted"[1]. Too bad.

[1] [https://www.xkcd.com/918/](https://www.xkcd.com/918/)

~~~
Terr_
What I would have loved is a social-network that with a built-in concept of
pseudonyms and potentially-separate identities for separate circles which it
honored.

Unfortunately, "a good social network" is somewhat at odds with "maximizing
ad-impressions", a problem which neither Facebook nor Google are immune to.

P.S.: What I mean is that "John Doe" and "John Doe, SDE2" and "JD12345, online
gamer" should have no automatic public links between them.

People don't merely post/like things with a different _audience_ , they
interact _as_ a different mask. Your fellow gamers shouldn't have your work-
identity, coworkers shouldn't have your close-friends identity, etc.

~~~
reitanqild
G+ does this, I have more than one profile and I can easily switch between
them without logging off, it is the same identity to me and them and a
different identity for everyone else.

Unfortunately it is named pages or something so it sounds like something else.

~~~
newscracker
Sorry, I haven't looked at this in a while and searching online seems to
confirm my doubt. Isn't a page different from a user profile in the UI, UX and
how one can connect with others and how others can connect? In other words,
wouldn't having different personas for different circles of people actually
require multiple accounts (not multiple pages) and switching between them to
look for updates and communicate with the different circles (although it looks
like switching is probably made easier and enabled as a feature on Google
products)?

~~~
Thimothy
Yeah, if you want different and (more or less) independent between them
personas you still need different accounts. What the parent is trying to
emphasize is that the transition between them has become really easy and
seamless, so if you really want that feature, might be worth it to spend a
little time in the set up to create those accounts.

Anyway, these days I just use Google+ to keep contact with a group of friends
and follow Linus rants, but the circles mechanic is so muddled that I wouldn't
really recommend anyone to actually use it if they want airtight separation.

~~~
reitanqild
> Yeah, if you want different and (more or less) independent between them
> personas you still need different accounts. What the parent is trying to
> emphasize is that the transition between them has become really easy and
> seamless,

Thanks for helping out here. Actually I can switch without using multiple
accounts, explanation here:
[http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/30701/how-to-
swit...](http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/30701/how-to-switch-
between-personal-page-and-brand-page-in-the-g-android-app)

I just verified it works by switching from my personal profile to my moonlight
consulting company "page" that is just another profile of me and I can post,
follow and add comments from it just like my main, personal profile. There is
also a third, non-commercial "page" that I sometimes use (because I have a
embarrassingly good taste in music : ).

> but the circles mechanic is so muddled that I wouldn't really recommend
> anyone to actually use it if they want airtight separation.

If I undersstand it correctly I should post family photos to a circle (since I
decides who belong in what circle).

Technical stuff I post into one collection or another so people can decide for
themselves if they just want to see my post on vegetables, the one on IT or
both.

And stuff that needs airtight separation I only share with /dev/null ;-)

------
whatever_dude
"Redesigned", and yet, this is what I see on my desktop:

[https://imagebin.ca/v/2tORL2z4J7LW](https://imagebin.ca/v/2tORL2z4J7LW)

Seems like an awful waste of space.

~~~
drusepth
Does it really default to the single-column layout? I've been using it for
months now on 3-column so I guess I must have forgotten switching over. This
is what I see on my desktop:

[http://i.imgur.com/dgBAaTK.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/dgBAaTK.jpg)

I 100% recommend switching over to 3 columns; not nearly the space-waster. The
setting's in
[https://plus.google.com/settings](https://plus.google.com/settings), ctrl+f
"Restrict stream to single column layout on all screen sizes" (the design is
especially bad on that page).

~~~
whatever_dude
The layout in the screenshot is for single articles (the link in the OP). It's
_always_ a single, tiny column. Click the link and you'll see it.

The setting you mention is only used in streams (e.g. a community, your home
stream, etc). Your screenshot shows your stream, not the OP link.

------
znpy
Google+ shows "hot on google+ right now", and it's basically stuff that has
gone very famous in south korea but makes no sense to me. And it comes from a
guy (i think, because the name is written in hangul characters) that I am NOT
following.

I am writing some feedback hoping that some googler will read this and improve
something..

~~~
znpy
* The search feature is just awful

* The search features suggests a lot of rubbish even before i started searching

* the whole interface is still slow

* When I click on "communities" on the left panel, i get redirected to the community suggestion page, while I expected to see the communities of which i am part. Also, the suggestion are completely messed up.

* when i click on "communities" and am brought to the suggestion page, clicking on the "member" link (that i guess, should show me the communities i am part of) does nothing at all.

* it is in general very very hard to understand what post comes from where, and this makes it very hard to use google plus more than the usual "oh crap i opened it again, how do i close it?"

* Opon a click to write a post, an overlay with a popup window is opened instear of just letting me write. The popup opening is slow as the other stuff.

* did i mention the whole thing is slow ?

~~~
znpy
Sharing a text post is awful:

* The default option for sharing is "Public" (oh hell no)

* Otherwise you can "add to a collection" (and wtf is a collection in google plus terms now?)

* in order to select a community or a circle (circles should be the hot stuff of Google+, you have to make two more steps ("See more", scroll).

~~~
reitanqild
My default seems to be who-/whatever I posted to last time.

Add to collection means "add to collection". Practical example: I share my
uncles interest in clean energy solutions but not his taste in music. Unlike
twitter, on g+ I can easily follow his collection about clean energy without
seing everything he posts.

~~~
largote
More importantly, you can Follow him and explicitly unfollow his "Music"
Collection.

------
Queue29
This looks absolutely horrible on a 4k monitor
[http://i.imgur.com/jSlw0St.png](http://i.imgur.com/jSlw0St.png)

~~~
bluthru
Google used to have such a strong visual brand with their fresh, bright,
clean, and utilitarian aesthetic.

Material Design really annoys me. Dingy grey backgrounds, unnecessary boxes
and shadows, and goofy animation that takes us bad to the bad days of Flash
sites.

~~~
CommanderData
I agree wholeheartedly, it feels like Google took a hundred steps back. MD is
very uninspiring in my eyes.

~~~
glenstein
I think MD is not too bad for mobile. But it becomes brutally, unforgivably
incompetent at managing white space on the desktop.

I hope that at some point in the future someone has a design epiphany centered
around embracing information density.

------
dleslie
Fullscreen on my 16x9 display wastes the clear majority of screen space. Is
having a single, centered column considered superior to alternatives?

~~~
TillE
Twitter has the same sort of design, but I think Google+ really draws
attention to the vast ocean of whitespace by leaving a column all the way on
the left.

Twitter has three columns when you load the page, but then just one as you
scroll down. It doesn't look as strange.

------
Rygu
The goo.gl short URLs in (parentheses) are really annoying. They totally hide
the content behind the links.

~~~
vosper
And why are they even visible? There's no value in seeing the link URL, so
they should just make the relevant text the link like everyone in the world
does.

~~~
intoverflow2
Not to mention that this isn't Twitter there is no text limit and no reason to
use godawful mysterious short urls.

------
HelloNurse
I enabled two-column mode and I keep the menu open for company, so my screen
is "only" about 1/3 to 1/4 empty and wasted. But this is the best case: if I
click the post age (obvious...) I can switch to a single-post page. More
exactly, I can make everything else disappear; on my 1600x900 screen the width
of the post DIV increases from 475 to 530 pixels and text and comments are
generously expanded.

But there's more! If I click inside the search bar, i get a 2 seconds pause to
load "featured collections", "featured communities", "Suggested People &
Pages" and "Suggested Posts" REPLACING THE PAGE I'M ON because Google clearly
knows better.

------
makecheck
Hmmmm…they’ve changed something so that if I log into Google+ in one tab, I
_must_ remain logged into Google in _all other tabs_. If not, when returning
to the Google+ tab, it does the obnoxious Facebook thing of “You must log in
to continue.”. And it’s not like I logged out of Google+; I logged out of some
completely unrelated Google page (or at least, it sure _should have been_
unrelated).

I want my context to be preserved in the tab that I’m in. I didn’t “log out”
of Google+ so I should be logged-in still.

These are the basics. Before they Material-Design-the-hell-out-of everything,
maybe they should create a foundation that works properly.

------
rdslw
Not many noticing that this redesign removed Events functionality and Google
confirmed they have NO plans to reintroduce it. And is playing with addictive
while not needed 'content discovery'.

In summary: * yet another redesign * mobile centric (looks like p on desktop)
* removes important features (events, hangouts tight integration) * forces
users into addictive content-discovery * works only now, the moment masses
join it, lolcats will ruin it

Sorry, content discovery has NO value for humans at the level we have it
currently. Content is everywhere. It's easy to find valuable content. Whole
this content discovery concept is riding on the addictive behaviour of humans:
I'm losing everything I dont know about, so I need to scroll newstream every 5
minutes. While it serves one purpose: page impressions stimulated by
habbit/addiction.

It harms us. We don't need content discovery. Corpos need our eyeballs.

------
kin
Home is like my Facebook feed, except with even less of my friends and even
more ads (only because I follow companies).

Collections is like following random Pinterest boards created by other people.
I don't know about others, but I like to follow official things, or things
that have the most followers but none of that info seems to be surfaced.
Featured really means nothing to me. Is it hand-picked? Randomly generated
featured? Are they paid to be featured?

Communities are cool but it's really hard nowadays to beat the communities in
subreddits. Anonymous users seem to give a lot more to the community in an
unselfish manner vs. Google+ users seem to post in communities in a self-
promoting manner. This could just be anecdotal and my subjective viewpoint but
that's what I see.

I honestly don't know how Google can do social, but I'm glad they're trying
different things. Hopefully they try something new.

Random thought: I find Slack very similar to Google Wave.

------
jeffehobbs
LOL at all the janky looking shortened links
([http://goo.gl/this](http://goo.gl/this)) scattered throughout
([http://goo.gl/that](http://goo.gl/that)) the announcement. If they’re
looking for a place to improve
([http://goo.gl/othrthng](http://goo.gl/othrthng)), that’s maybe a place to
consider?

------
newscracker
Several years on and we still have to deal with the fact that we cannot have
good names for our URLs ("vanity URL" or "custom URL" or whatever else you'd
want to call it). Want to share your profile with others? Here's a Google+
link with a long string of digits at the end. Want to share your Google+
community's link with others? Here's another Google+ link with a long string
of digits at the end. Want to share your Google+ page's link? Here's yet
another Google+ link with a long string of digits at the end. Want to shorten
these links? Use the built-in shortener and get a shortened-yet-gibberish-
like-link. Want to simplify these links for sharing using meaningful names in
the URL so people can actually remember it? Oh, then just use bit.ly (or
another better URL shortener) and create a custom one with whatever name you
like (assuming it's available on bit.ly)! How hard is it to provide custom
URLs? Does it cost Google millions of dollars to do this? Does it make
maintenance of Google+ a lot more expensive? Facebook provides custom names to
be used in URLs for one's profile, for pages, and for groups (first come first
served and all that, of course). On Google+ you can do this for your profile
(?) after you meet some primitive pre-conditions.

For something that's supposedly social, I'm deeply disappointed with how
Google+ has been developed (read neglected) over time. I like some aspects of
G+ (like the layout, font, font sizes, etc.), but two things that are grating
are the lack of custom URLs and the unintuitive navigation scheme (compared to
Facebook). I still post to G+ once in a while (although, there's really no
audience there) and look for improvements with the hope that I can start
nudging people away from Facebook and get more traction on an alternative
platform (another walled garden, but at least not as evil, IMO). It's sad, for
me, that even long wait times don't show much for progress. If the strategy
seemed convoluted while Vic Gundotra was managing it, his departure left the
platform languishing as if it were a part time project.

Anyone from the Google+ team reading this - firstly, please bring in basic
stuff to the platform that's important for people to share, and secondly,
please copy Facebook shamelessly in whatever it's doing well for user
experience.

Lastly, thanks a lot for (reverting to and) retaining the freedom of users to
use pseudonyms on the platform!

~~~
delroth
[https://google.com/+PierreBourdon](https://google.com/+PierreBourdon)

~~~
newscracker
Is this an indication that it's possible? I already stated in my comment that
it's possible for personal profiles, but only if some pre-conditions are met
(number of people who've added to their circles and some others). Having a
custom URL is still not possible for pages, communities and people who don't
know a lot of other people.

------
katpas
I've always wondered why Google+ did so badly. I love google apps for
everything but social. Seems like a missed opportunity to make something that
moves away from Facebook as the norm.

~~~
blakeyrat
Because they forced people to "link" an account with their real name to
accounts that had always previously used pseudonyms (Gmail, YouTube). And the
penalty for not doing it, or putting a fake name in Google+, was _deletion of
all your accounts_. Because while you were perfectly fine for years before,
suddenly your "Google Account" (a thing nobody asked for or wanted) was in
violation of the Google+ terms of service you didn't have the option not to
agree to.

Even worse, particularly for YouTube users, the first version of this
"integration" didn't respect at all that a YouTube channel is not a person,
and a person is not a YouTube channel. (It's a many-to-many relationship,
morons.) And when they forced Google+ comments on YouTube channels, the damned
thing didn't even slightly work correctly.

Basically, they unforgivably fucked-up their own product and made all of their
most engaged users hate them with a passion. Honestly, it's a miracle they
didn't get _more_ bad press for that shitstorm.

Apparently, it's now possible to once again have a YouTube or Gmail account
without associating it with a Google+ account. But of course for people who
lived through that campaign of awfulness, there's no way to undo the damage
and get my Gmail and YouTube accounts back the way they were before Google+
fucked them over in the first place.

\---

For what it's worth, I'm _not_ a Facebook user. I wasn't prior to Google+ and
I'm not now. So maybe I'm the freak. But I don't think I'm alone in my opinion
of Google+ or the sheer incompetence of its rollout.

~~~
CaptSpify
I still have a youtube account that's linked to my google account, and I can't
unlink them. I never wanted that, but, thanks Google, for doing it "for my own
good". I don't use Google+ out of principle because of this.

And that's sad, because I _really_ wanted them to beat out FB.

~~~
glenstein
I did too. In the face of so much for will, there was a lot of forced movement
on accounts, real names, comments sections which left people disoriented and
angry.

I also think making an incredibly careful integration of Google Reader, the
one social network they did right, would have helped (though not cancelling it
would have been best of all). I still wish they simply evolved Google Reader
into a fully fledged social network.

~~~
glenstein
>In the face of so much for will

Oops, that should be good will, not for will.

------
runn1ng
I literally cannot scroll the post itself down. It's stuck no matter what I
do, so I will forever see just the first half of the article.

I usually hate one-note comments about the web platform of the postings, but
since this is a blogpost about Google Plus webdesign, hosted on Google Plus...
I guess it's telling.

No, I will not start using it again.

------
msl09
Am I the only one that's afraid of getting emotionally invested on any Google
product(or product update) because of the fear that shortly after Google will
announce that will discontinue development of that service?

By the way, the new design looks great I just wished the performance could be
better for Firefox.

[Edited for clarification]

------
fiveoak
It's too bad that Google+ never really caught on, but I'm not sure if
redesigning it is enough to fix that.

~~~
ajkjk
I don't think that's too bad. I didn't think it was a good product, and it
didn't deserve to do well just because Google threw their weight behind it.

~~~
grendelt
I wish they'd wake up and throw Plus on the pile with Wave.

~~~
fizzbatter
I actually thought Wave had potential though. Sure, it had tons of flaws, but
it was at least _trying something new_. Plus is just so.. well, not new. And
this is coming from someone who used Plus for quite a while (year or two).

To me, Wave felt shut down too early.. and of course, way over hyped. By
comparison to Wave, i'm shocked Plus still exists.

~~~
newscracker
When Google Wave was released, I tried it for a personal chat and came away
confused and not getting how to use it effectively. Later on, while chatting
with a few team members regularly on IRC (some of them being long running
discussions), I realized the genius of Google Wave and thought it could've
helped our chats and discussions a lot. It was way ahead of its time but was
unfortunately shutdown.

~~~
glenstein
I think there are some products where the company hopes for massive initial
success, but fail to achieve it, and then they have to decide whether they
want to play the long game, or kill the product. I think Amazon did this with
Amazon Prime, and it worked out tremendously in the long run.

Looks like Google decided to be in it for the long haul with Google Plus, but
let Google wave die due to a lack of popularity. But that would have been a
very good product to play the long game with.

------
dvh
Whenever someone posts goo.gl shortened links, I look who reads it (it's
public data):
[https://goo.gl/#analytics/goo.gl/Yn6mjA/all_time](https://goo.gl/#analytics/goo.gl/Yn6mjA/all_time)

------
millstone
When I click on the Search field to type something, it loads a completely
different page. Very unexpected and confusing.

------
neximo64
Odd to see Google using a brute force strategy for this. They kill off their
wonderful products and keep the bogus ones.

------
XzetaU8
"Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" was never more apt than now.

~~~
audleman
thread

------
chrsstrm
If anyone from Google is listening, this is probably a better place to vent
than submitting a support ticket. I don't care what it looks like, +'s
functionality has been broken for me for almost a year and it has killed how
my entire family uses it. I went through great pains to teach my family to not
send photos and videos over email. We all had Gmail accounts and we all used
the Google Photos camera sync so it seemed like a great idea to teach them to
share content within a Circle in +. It worked great for a while until out of
nowhere I could no longer see any of my sister's posts. I went through both
her and my account many times looking for permissions issues or errant blocks
and found nothing. I submitted multiple support issues from both her account
and mine and nothing. (And on a side note, I like the support feature that
allows you to screenshot and annotate the issue you are having, but 90% of all
issues I have in + are inside a modal window, which cannot be screenshot. You
literally cannot report issues that happen inside a modal window, WTF?). My
sister generated the majority of the content my family Circle consumed and now
that she can't be seen, our entire usage of + has all but stopped. People have
reverted back to emailing photos and videos and we're right back where we
started...

I don't care what it looks like, if it doesn't work, I won't use it.

I also used the Hangouts on Air feature extensively and never understood why
it had to be originated in + and why you _had_ to invite people. The best use
case for this tool was to do screen recording that was automatically imported
into YouTube but getting the right combination of + account and YouTube
account and making sure you were authorized to use Hangouts on Air with
YouTube was incredibly frustrating. Hopefully the new flow using YouTube Live
will allow going on-air without forcing you to invite an audience.

And while I'm at it - suggesting people join Communities but hiding the fact
that there are sub-topics in these communities was a huge dark pattern I
hated. I joined the Linux community thinking I would see some interesting
packages or hacks or discussions and all I found was perpetual posting of
Wind0w$ is teh Suck memes and obvious spam. The _majority_ of my interactions
on + was marking posts as spam and blocking users hoping content would
improve, and it never did. It wasn't until much later that I figured out I
could unsubscribe from sub-topics, if I could only find where they were
listed.

~~~
dredmorbius
Robert Scoble on G+ Noise controls, 2011: "Why yo daddy won't use Google+: no
noise control"

[http://scobleizer.com/why-yo-daddy-wont-use-google-no-
noise-...](http://scobleizer.com/why-yo-daddy-wont-use-google-no-noise-
control/)

Blocking fuckwits helps, but you've got to be tremendously brutal about it.

[https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/drLZV8sm...](https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/drLZV8sm7Tq)

------
nilved
I'm disappointed to see that Google is still pushing +. I almost left the
platform when they tried to jam it down my throat last time, and it seemed as
though they'd come to their senses and shuttered that misguided project. I'm
genuinely surprised to see that people are still working on it.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
There's actually been a huge changeover in Google+ in the last year. Luke
Wroblewski is the new product director there, and he's absolutely busted up
some of Google's worst ideas of design. Another huge thing he's done is made
the change and feedback process for Google+ extremely public, whereas since
2011, it's primarily been "people notice something changed" as with most
Google sites, and now we get changelogs from the man.

I absolutely recommend people check out what he posts:
[https://plus.google.com/+LukeWroblewski](https://plus.google.com/+LukeWroblewski)
is his G+, but he's actually surprisingly active on LinkedIn of all places,
and I'm pretty sure Twitter as well.

~~~
iwintermute
in his bio on G+: "Humanizing technology. Currently at Google. Previously:
Mobile First"

There's some irony in that, given G+ design really looks like 'mobile first'

------
leshow
Why is it only using 20% of my screen? the vast majority of the page is a grey
background

~~~
criddell
Mobile first. Desktop... some day.

------
zatkin
>Last year we completely re-wrote the Google+ Web app from scratch. Rather
than rebuild every nook and cranny that developed over the five year history
of Google+, we started with a clean slate of the features people used the most
(based on our data & research). We then released this preview version to
collect feedback and find out what people missed the most of what we left out.

Proof that Google+ 1.0 was an enormous flop.

[https://plus.google.com/+LukeWroblewski/posts/Zcn7bDAwqmm](https://plus.google.com/+LukeWroblewski/posts/Zcn7bDAwqmm)

------
slackoverflower
The Apps for Work integration is going to be interesting. Google should just
clone Slack and make Slack Plus tier features free on their service. That
would literally steal thousands of communities and companies.

~~~
intoverflow2
Isn't that the sort of logic that caused G+ to be made in the first place?

Slack's value mostly comes from their brand not their product. Same as how
Dropbox can provide a weak and expensive service but still be the goto choice
for what it does.

------
electic
Mobile and web aside, the amount of dead space in each of these pages is
absurd. A lot of the pixels on the screen are just white or grey. One would
argue, this is one of the major drawbacks of material design.

~~~
mindcrime
For FSM's sake, tell me about it. I don't know why in the world Google can't
figure this out. All that dead space is absolutely horrid. For the love of
FSM, why can't they make the middle column wide enough to use most of that
space, and/or fill the rest with something useful.

------
ElijahLynn
After having actually used the new G+ for a couple hours, the speed is
amazing, especially on the Brave browser (probably because I don't have
extensions slowing it down). Plus the ability to put links and images in
comments finally brings that part on par with Twitter.

I think the people who do use G+ are going to use it a hell of a lot more now
that it is so much faster. Plus the people who get frustrated by Twitter's 140
character limit from time to time may be easily swayed.

------
AStellersSeaCow
There was this super weird club in my high school who went out to hospitals
and gave long-term patients (mostly vegetables who were on indefinite life
support) ghoulishly gaudy makeovers. They seemed to have no motivation in
doing this "community service" beyond their own weird self-satisfaction.
Didn't really seem worth challenging them over the utility/sanity of their
efforts, but damned if anyone thought it was a good use of their time.

Anyhow, what's this thread about?

~~~
michaelvoz
This is not Reddit. Please keep comments high-effort and on topic.

~~~
IntelMiner
Why do you equate people making relevant jokes to "Reddit"?

Humor is fairly universal

~~~
na85
Because the upvote/downvote mechanic coupled with easily visible karma totals
results in endlessly-increasing numbers of users who simply want to get more
imaginary internet points by means of resorting to low-effort, easily
digestible joke posts or one-liners.

Reddit comments are invariably a cesspool of shit outside of a handful of
decent, smaller subs.

~~~
dredmorbius
Humour is spice, and often an exceptionally effective mode of criticism.

Reddit subs lack a _consistent_ moderation quality, though the ones who
moderate well, and I'll give AskScience and AskHistorians as stellar examples,
maintain exceptionally high-quality discussions. They are also not entirely
humourless (AH's FAQ addresses this and points to some examples), but there's
a difference between being overrun by cheap jokes, and using dark humour to
point out an obviously unclothed emperor.

I've used Google+ since public beta, was tremendously enthusiastic for it, and
have been washed through disillusionment after disillusionment in the process.
The extent to which it's exposed what I'm finding to be the true Google -- a
largely evil advertising empire with a vestigal, and yes, sometimes principled
technology arm attached -- has been both profound and ironic (I doubt this was
the original intent).

It's not that Google are alone in being an evil tech company, the most evil,
or even above average. But something huge rotted in that beast and is
consuming it from the inside out.

------
wickedlogic
/me loads page in full browser tab, notices google still limiting single
column width to less than 1/4 of my screen, closed page. Still missing the
basics.

------
Raphmedia
My main issue with G+ is that every time I get back on it (few time a year)
the layout is so different that I get tired and leave after scratching the
surface...

------
balls187
What the heck. This looks terrible in firefox.

[http://prntscr.com/ccb22r](http://prntscr.com/ccb22r)

------
HelloNurse
The Google+ team appears scrambling to address user feedback: clicking the
search bar I got the obnoxious page of featured content replacing the page I
was reading, but it had a blocking popup that, when clicked, bounced me to the
featured collections page.

Not only Google+ knows what I should be reading better than me, but their left
hand knows better than their right hand!

------
jonobird1
They'd be better off pivoting rather than wasting time on redesigning
something no one wants. /end brutality

------
pbarnes_1
If anyone from Google+ is reading this:

Please allow me to remove shit from my 'recommendations'.

In between Android developer things which I like, I'm getting weird-ass pro-
Trump BS that looks like Stormfront. I guess this stuff is all that's left on
G+, but still. Not interested.

~~~
intoverflow2
Google is awful for this, even if I block someone on youtube it still
recommends them to me.

------
thr0waway1239
Is it just me, or do other people feel like the press release was translated
into English from a different language? As if it wasn't already hard enough to
use Google Plus, even their press release is hard to read.

------
appleflaxen
It makes me so sad that products like picasa, sketchup, wave, and google labs
projects like google sets got decomissioned, but google plus lives on.

Meanwhile, they are trying to make the guber car service.

It's hard to understand from the outside.

------
ElijahLynn
As a daily user of G+, this is great news! I am so tired of micromanaging
characters on Twitter. I just want to express an idea sometimes without using
extra CPU cycles. I only have so many of those available each day and I don't
want to use them on Twitter.

It just needs more users. It is great to follow developers on.

Here is a seed list of active G+ users that may be relevant to you (remember
how empty it was when you first signed up for Twitter? You had to follow some
seed people...):

[https://plus.google.com/+ElijahLynn](https://plus.google.com/+ElijahLynn)
(Elijah Lynn, myself, web developer)
[https://plus.google.com/110558071969009568835](https://plus.google.com/110558071969009568835)
(Koushik Dutta, Android dev)
[https://plus.google.com/+JonoBaconProfile](https://plus.google.com/+JonoBaconProfile)
(Jono Bacon, former community manager for Ubuntu)
[https://plus.google.com/+ChrisWeber](https://plus.google.com/+ChrisWeber)
(web developer)
[https://plus.google.com/110043970153071176315](https://plus.google.com/110043970153071176315)
(Chad McCullough, Linux/BSD guy)
[https://plus.google.com/+UrsHölzle](https://plus.google.com/+UrsHölzle) (Sr.
VP of Tech Infrastructure @ Google)
[https://plus.google.com/+DerekRoss](https://plus.google.com/+DerekRoss)
(Phandroid)
[https://plus.google.com/+KirillGrouchnikov](https://plus.google.com/+KirillGrouchnikov)
(User interface engineer on the Android project at Google)
[https://plus.google.com/+LukeWroblewski](https://plus.google.com/+LukeWroblewski)
(Author of Mobile First, Product Director @ Google)
[https://plus.google.com/+BensonLeung](https://plus.google.com/+BensonLeung)
(USB cable guy, Google)
[https://plus.google.com/+DaedTech](https://plus.google.com/+DaedTech)
(Software Engineer, Writer)
[https://plus.google.com/+IlyaGrigorik](https://plus.google.com/+IlyaGrigorik)
(Performance Engineer at Google)
[https://plus.google.com/+DanielleBuckley](https://plus.google.com/+DanielleBuckley)
(G+ Team at Google)
[https://plus.google.com/+ChetHaase](https://plus.google.com/+ChetHaase) (Sr.
Software Engineer at Google)
[https://plus.google.com/+GoogleChromeDevelopers](https://plus.google.com/+GoogleChromeDevelopers)
[https://plus.google.com/+google](https://plus.google.com/+google)
[https://plus.google.com/+GoogleMaps](https://plus.google.com/+GoogleMaps)
[https://plus.google.com/+JonathanZacsh](https://plus.google.com/+JonathanZacsh)
(Software Engineer)
[https://plus.google.com/+AddyOsmani](https://plus.google.com/+AddyOsmani)
(Engineer at Google)
[https://plus.google.com/+DonnaPeplinskie](https://plus.google.com/+DonnaPeplinskie)
(Front end developer)
[https://plus.google.com/+NityaNarasimhan](https://plus.google.com/+NityaNarasimhan)
(Engineer, Consultant)
[https://plus.google.com/+IanHickson](https://plus.google.com/+IanHickson)
(author and maintainer of the Acid2 and Acid3 tests, Google)
[https://plus.google.com/+JeffreyZeldman](https://plus.google.com/+JeffreyZeldman)
(A List Apart)

Not active but still:
[https://plus.google.com/+LarryPage](https://plus.google.com/+LarryPage)
[https://plus.google.com/+SergeyBrin](https://plus.google.com/+SergeyBrin)
[https://plus.google.com/+EricSchmidt](https://plus.google.com/+EricSchmidt)
(former CEO at Google)
[https://plus.google.com/+SundarPichai](https://plus.google.com/+SundarPichai)
(CEO at Google)

~~~
ElijahLynn
Argh, HN totally didn't honor my line breaks on this one and I have no way of
editing it now. The anti-procrastination setting was successful in locking me
out after I posted it. I came back now to edit it and it is too late.

~~~
ElijahLynn
Mod, if you are reading this, could you please edit my post and fix the line
breaks?

------
wazoox
The only social network I'm using is Google+. As long as the new version
doesn't allow me to have 3 columns display on my PC, I'll stick with the old
version.

------
iza
At least the navigation is sane now which is a huge improvement.

------
hackuser
To use it, do I still need to share my real identity with Google? With the
world? If so, is that just policy or is it enforced somehow?

~~~
newscracker
The real names policy on Google+ was long removed. You can use any pseudonym
and don't have to share your real identity. In this respect, it's definitely
better than Facebook.

~~~
hackuser
Thanks. I should have asked above: Do they my phone number (ostensibly for
2FA)?

~~~
newscracker
It's not necessary to provide your phone number if you don't want to. It does
not force you to do that, although for account recovery purposes (getting
access back to an account if it's compromised), it will bother you once in a
while to add your phone number as a recovery mechanism. I see this request
coming with plain Gmail and Yahoo Mail too quite often, and just choose to
skip it whenever asked.

------
TheHippo
No events anymore. This was one of the most useful features that G+ had.

------
edwinyzh
Hello G+ team, please give me code syntax highlighting. Thanks.

------
balls187
What the heck. This looks terrible in firefox.

------
lolive
What is Google+?

