

Google+ Project: It’s Social, It’s Bold, It’s Fun, And It Looks Good - philipDS
http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/28/google-plus/

======
dfield
I'm very excited to try this out. Context (AKA "Circles") is the biggest
feature Facebook still hasn't gotten right. By mirroring the way we think
about our social graph in real life, Google is making a huge step toward
converging Online and Offline identity. It will be very interesting to see how
Facebook responds to this... they might finally have a competitor.

~~~
jinushaun
Facebook has gotten increasingly harder and more convoluted to manage. Case in
point: no direct way to edit the photos in an album. Used to be so easy.

~~~
terinjokes
What do you mean? It's in the same place it's been in for a while. From the
sidebar, Photos -> My Uploads -> Edit Album.

Sure the light box makes it harder if you go that way. Click on the Album name
-> Edit Album -> Edit Photos.

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icarus_drowning
Well, I'm glad there are some significant new features that Google is trying
to use as leverage. Group video chat comes to mind as something that most
people don't like to deal with, but as an integral part of a social network, I
can see it making more sense.

Its clear they've tried not just to 'clone' Facebook, which I appreciate.

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jagbolanos
I have been an anti-wave, anti-buzz but I just tried Google+ and it's great. I
think this time Google really can kick FB. Great, simple interface and
integrated to my gmail, picasa, contacts, gtalk it is definitely great!

I love the circles philosophy and UX.

One problem is the restriction on invites. Google+ is valuable to me if I can
share things with others, just like I do it in FB right now. They have to
enable invites soon or the early adopters will get bored and leave forever.

~~~
pkulak
Would you mind fielding some questions? I'm interested to know if the photo
sharing is any good? Do the full-resolution versions stick around? Are the
management features any good?

~~~
jagbolanos
It reduces the dimensions of the picture, however it keeps a good quality.

Album management is great and it pulls/pushes your pictures from Picasa.

The album UI is also great.

I just found that the navigation bar of gmail is now extended so I can see
notifications and comment on them without going to Google+

It's a FB killer :o

Things are going to get interesting in that space. If the people that I relate
with get into Google+ I wouldn't need to check my FB. And they can get more
people in by pluging it to Google Apps users.

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jneal
Okay, there are way too many posts on Google+ on HN right now, but I do have
an opinion I would like to share and this thread seems to be the most
appropriate.

When I first heard the news about Google+ today, my initial reaction was wow,
Google is going to fail again. I mean, with Wave, and then Buzz, and I figured
this was just another in the line of failures.

However, after looking into it and reading about it, it is actually very cool
looking. I look forward to trying it out live when it's ready.

~~~
robgough
I get the feeling everyone was expecting their effort to be rather, dare I say
it... rubbish. But, it looks nice and I think a lot of people are pleasantly
surprised by that.

Buzz was a blatant twitter clone, and I disabled it as quickly as I enabled it
- whereas I'm actually finding myself excited to try this.

------
katieben
Awesome, can't wait to try it! Circles sounds like just what everyone wants. I
think I'd switch to any half-decent social network made by Google. I do hope
they provide a way to use the Facebook data export to make switching easy.

~~~
Kadin
Same here. Although I don't necessarily envy them; Facebook has a huge
advantage by virtue of network effects.

I don't know anyone who really likes Facebook; they've alienated users with
privacy missteps and stupid interface changes over and over and over. But
everyone keeps using it because that's where everyone _else_ is. Somehow you
have to break that cycle.

If anyone can do it though, it's probably Google. They effectively broke the
back of the fat-and-lazy AOL Instant Messenger (at least in my experience)
when they built chat into Gmail. Once they did that, AIM went from a "must-
have" on most of my friends' computers to something they barely remember their
login information to anymore.

Here's hoping they can find some leverage to get a critical mass of users over
from Facebook.

~~~
zppx
Facebook's interface is much better than Orkut's interface, Orkut is a social
network that was acquired by Google some years ago, and it does have the
broadcast feature that made twitter popular, so Brazilians, were Orkut was
really popular, loves Facebook.

I think that Google can leverage adoption by targeting android users and
creating a good application for them.

EDIT: Orkut still is really popular here in Brazil but the majority of my
friends migrated to Facebook and do not login in Orkut anymore.

~~~
gfodor
Orkut afaik was a 10% project, and named after its author.

------
thirdsun
I have to admit that the stuff shown on Googles demo page looks really good. I
really appreciate the focus on social circles as I really don't want to share
everything with everyone but rather address different groups of friends.

Overall this seems to be very well thought through with some fresh ideas.

------
luu
_Unlike on Facebook, people do not have to agree to be friends with one
another. They can receive someone’s updates without sharing their own_

So it's like a reverse twitter, where you choose who can follow you?

~~~
munificent
That depends on your definition of "follow". You can choose to add someone to
your circle without them reciprocating. In that sense, you are following them.

However, _they_ choose which of _their_ circles see the things they post. So
you can follow whomever you want, but the people you follow may not
necessarily broadcast to you if you do so.

~~~
esrauch
So then it will still work like twitter if a celebrity goes on and just
publishes everything as "public", then anyone can subscribe to them.

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illumin8
If they pull a Wave and only invite users in small groups it is doomed on
arrival. This thing needs to be free and massively available like Gmail.
Social is not like email - you need wide participation in order for it to
succeed.

~~~
oldstrangers
Gmail used to be invite only.

~~~
muuh-gnu
Gmail used to be infinitely better than everything else on the market. So
closing it it off made it only more scarce and sought after than it already
was. Now if plus is even finitely better than everything else, so that
artificial scarcity will make it seem more valuable, is debatable. It's a
rather risky bet Google has already lost once with Wave.

~~~
esrauch
I can remember people selling GMail invites for a decent amount at the very
beginning of their launch.

------
Ryanmf
Facebook launched at schools not called Harvard the Summer preceding my
freshman year of college. It went live at my school a few weeks into that
first semester. I enjoyed it immensely and observed it carefully, but sometime
in 2007 it really began to wear on me. Later, (~2 or 3 years ago) I more or
less withdrew from using it altogether.

Circles addresses something like 70% of my gripes with Facebook. Of course, we
still haven't seen Google successfully build a social network, so nothing's
really been addressed until everyone joins the party (or doesn't). Google+
looks interesting though.

Too bad my primary Google account is my Apps account for my primary domain,
and since Apps accounts don't have associated Profiles anymore, I don't get to
play. Then again, I'm still dealing with the fallout of the transition to "The
New" Google Apps, having already used my domain email as a Google account to
sign up for really exotic things like Google Reader, so perhaps I don't need
yet another new plaything at the moment.

I will add that I think the Huddle and Hangout components may offer—in the
case of the former—good competition both on Android and in general to iOS
Messaging/BBM (the only hang-up that has me short of sold on iOS messaging is
people don't yet think of their Apple IDs as communication accounts/channels,
their Gmail accounts on the other hand...), and—in the case of the
latter—someone not only to compete with Foursquare, but perhaps to answer the
question from normal folks: Why "check in" anywhere to begin with? (Because
you've arrived at the "anywhere" you just "Huddled" over meeting at, your
phones already know it, and if you acknowledge their requests to "Hangout"
together, even more of your friends may show up. Or something. That last
part's a little hazier for me. What if you want to broadcast to the world that
you're enjoying your new favorite tea spot, but you don't want to say which 5
people you're with and risk persons 6 and 7 whom were specifically _not_
invited showing up? In any event it seems to me a more human workflow than "Go
places, check in, get points/kittens/whatevr."

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Pistos2
I'd have to see these Circles in action, but if they're what I think they are
(e.g. you'd make a "Work" circle, a "Family" circle, a "Casual Acquaintance"
circle, etc.), then Diaspora has that concept: They call them "aspects". I
must admit, "circle" seems like a better term than "aspect", though.

~~~
michaelchisari
Appleseed (http:/opensource.appleseedproject.org) used "circles" to categorize
friends a few years before Diaspora.

It's not a very revolutionary concept, though. Livejournal had friends lists
almost a decade ago, for instance.

~~~
Pistos2
I would agree that it's not a very complex or innovative idea. I'm assuming
Facebook is intentional in not doing the same sort of thing, aiming for
simplicity (everyone in one circle).

------
terinjokes
Ironically, the "Keep Me Posted" page has Javascript blocked by Chrome.

------
rektide
I'm really excited I don't have to build my own XMPP Muji client[1]. Hang-outs
are something I've wanted for a long long time; passive virtual spaces.
Goonfleet used to go crazy with Stickam, but it was more event oriented, less
passive. Hopefully this can be a good marker in helping people actually
communicate and build community over the net, v. individual play.

[1] <http://telepathy.freedesktop.org/wiki/Muji>

~~~
nooneelse
"Passive virtual space", neat term. I've wanted something similar for my
living-room screen for a while. In some towns, people used to see their
neighbors out on their porch and go over for a chat... but my friends are all
across town or state/country/globe. So when not in use for something else, why
not let the big screen break that spatial and mental barrier to casual chats.

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rch
If G+ knows individuals, then search results served to other known (or
unknown) individuals could reflect the subject individual's 'circles'
settings. Ergo, individuals in general have a significant, possibly material,
incentive to take part in G+ to the greatest extent possible.

search > social

~~~
paganel
> If G+ knows individuals, then search results served to other known (or
> unknown) individuals could reflect the subject individual's 'circles'
> settings

Yeah, it would be really interesting to see which of my other friends would
make it into the "Midget porn" circle, or into the "How do you kill yourself?"
circle or the "How do I get rich?" circle, all these based on our collective
Google searches.

~~~
rch
I think the idea is that you could share pics of your latest furry costume
with your 'fur-friends' circle, without your parents or potential employers
even knowing that circle exists.

What's even better, is that there is technically nothing stopping Google from
keeping your employer from finding all the great ideas you've been giving away
on HN, if you've somehow associated your HN account with a circle... unless
said employer comes directly to HN, obviously.

------
ChrisArchitect
it feels so closed off. Silo'd. Makes me shudder.

~~~
joebadmo
That's one of the first things I noticed, too. I imagine something this full-
featured will be hard to open-source/make open protocols for/federate like
they tried with Wave and Buzz, but I hope they aren't abandoning those ideas
after the disastrous way those turned out.

~~~
commandar
> to open-source/make open protocols for/federate like they tried with Wave
> and Buzz

What's funny is that everyone (Google included) got preoccupied with the tech
demo UI for Wave, but the really interesting stuff was happening under the
hood. If you look at what Wave was trying to do with sending arbitrary data
between federated servers, all tied into contact management and privacy
controls, it basically would have been the _perfect_ foundation for a social
network. In fact if you look at projects like OneSocialWeb[1] or Diaspora,
they're similarly built on top of XMPP with an approach not entirely
dissimilar to what Wave was doing.

I really, really think Google missed the mark marketing wise with Wave, and I
wonder how much, if any, code has carried over to Google+.

[1] <http://onesocialweb.org/>

~~~
william42
I don't know about Google+ but a lot of the internals of Wave were carried
over into Google Docs.

------
makthrow
Very bad marketing here. Whoever chose the name "Google+" should be fired.
First, the name confuses people with google's +1 button. Second, what does "+"
have anything to do with a social network? It gives you no information at all
about the service. They should have called it "google circles" and emphasized
that Google Circles let you compartmentalize your social network, as opposed
to facebook. Bam, instant differentiation. Instead we have a product that
tries to do too much and needs a demo to make people understand.

~~~
chalst
My guess is that this is deliberate: the g+ sparks feature is meant to
complement the +1 buttons, and at some point they hope to talk about +1 as
part of g+.

~~~
commandar
Can't seem to find it now, but I'm pretty sure I recall seeing +1 mentioned as
a feature of Google+ in one of the about pages when I signed up for an invite.

~~~
chalst
Ah, good call.

It's mentioned in the Google+ help centre: <http://www.google.com/support/+/>

------
zephjc
Thing's I noticed trying out the demo:

\- You can only have add a person to one "circle". If I wanted to add someone
to two or more, I'm SOL. Maybe they will change this.

\- A "circle" can only contain a certain number of users before it runs out of
room. I haven't seen how it deal with this - does it shrink the circles as you
add more? What happens if there are 500 people in one, would they be a bunch
of 1 x 1 pixel dots? Or does the circle just say "You can't add any more
people"?

~~~
robgough
The demo has a number in the middle of the circle, I'm guessing the faces are
just subset of the users in that circle.

~~~
zephjc
That seems reasonable, but how do you do anything useful with the faces if you
can only see a subset? This is why I am a sorted lists man :)

~~~
robgough
I'm hoping they're doing something clever with it.

Like showing the last people online or the most frequently interacted with
etc.

------
lparry
I see they're using their 'winning' wave strategy again.

1\. launch a social platform, but restrict signups to the point where nobody
with access has any contacts on the service

2\. keep it locked down until the buzz/hype is all gone

3\. open it up to everyone and let them wonder why there was any buzz/hype in
the first place

If they dont let early adopters use the platform and give the crucial early
feedback, they might as well throw in the towel now.

~~~
zmmmmm
Actually this is the first sign I've seen that Google has actually learned
some lessons from their failures.

First, this seems _much_ more carefully thought out. The promotional material
is beautiful, simple, well targeted and clear. Restraining from a full public
launch shows they have learned from Buzz which failed in part because they got
things wrong early and didn't correct fast enough. This shows a much needed
loss of arrogance.

One other thing that makes it different: 500k Android activations per day. It
will be very interesting to see if this gets pushed out as a default installed
app to Android devices. Google never leveraged Android well to promote Buzz
and I never understood why. Hopefully they won't be so shy this time around.

------
MetallicCloud
> "Everyone has high-speed networks these days"

Oh really? Tell that to a bunch of my friends who are either forced onto dial
up, or 1.5Mb internet.

Not everyone lives in a big city.

~~~
hiena03
I actually have 256Kb adsl

------
johnrob
Apparently another feature was to automatically set your gchat status to
"available". That explains why I got a bunch of messages yesterday morning.

------
genericbrandx
Anyone want to wager when Google Mindmaps will debut?

------
hollerith
I might delay learning anything about Google+ until I have some evidence that
Google is not going to kill it in a few months :)

~~~
joebadmo
Not sure what you'd consider evidence, but the Wired article by Steven Levy
(the guy who wrote In the Plex) contains this quote:

 _No one expects an instant success. But even if this week’s launch evokes
snark or yawns, Google will keep at it. Google+ is not a product like Buzz or
Wave where the company’s leaders can chalk off a failure to laudable ambition
and then move on. “We’re in this for the long run,” says Ben-Yair. “This isn’t
like an experiment. We’re betting on this, so if obstacles arise, we’ll
adapt.”_

[http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/06/inside-google-plus-
so...](http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/06/inside-google-plus-social/all/1)

------
rektide
I haven't heard anything about API's or developers.

Another annoying case of "do no evil" not implying anything about actually
pushing the state forward or helping. I'm not altogether that interested in
the greater of the two silos, although I am excited by a state of play other
than facebook moseying down the field palming the ball in one hand.

------
olalonde
I hope it won't be blocked in China.

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presty
I wonder what huddle.com has to say about Google's Huddle..

