
Google+ Pages don't make any sense - taylorbuley
https://plus.google.com/u/0/115937550430731208132/posts/NcC5kDY4Xjr
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rglasgow
Why does everyone expect Google+ to be as fully developed as Facebook, a
product that was launched 6 years ago.

I don't like Google+, but of the complaining about its lack of features is
getting annoying. It's very apparent the Google+ team is working as fast as
they can to implement their product plan.

~~~
badclient
My complaint isn't so much that Google+ isn't developed as what they _are_
developing and releasing has been very underwhelming and lacks any cohesive
path to increasing engagement.

Almost all successful social networks that succeed have relatively high
engagement from the get go. Notice, I said engagement and not user-base(that
usually takes time to grow and understandably so). Google+'s engagement sucks.
And their user-base numbers are bloated: google can stick a call-to-action to
any service on their homepage and claim millions of signups overnight. It
speaks more about Google the search engine and almost nothing about Google+'s
success.

~~~
Pewpewarrows
We get it, you don't like Google+. That doesn't mean you have to take every
thread tangentially related to the product and make a point to criticize them
for not releasing engagement metrics barely two months after launch.

If you have any facts or statistics to back up any of your claims I'd love to
continue the discussion. Wild speculation and opinions stated as facts? Not so
much.

~~~
badclient
It is a fact that at 10M users, facebook was reporting engagement, notably
that over 50% of the users log in every single day. (1)

It is a fact that google+ has 40+M users.(2)

It is also a fact that Google's exec refused to release any info. about
engagement despite repeated attempts by journos. (3)

Given these facts, I think it is logical to conclude that google+'s engagement
is poor.

1\. [http://techcrunch.com/2005/09/07/85-of-college-students-
use-...](http://techcrunch.com/2005/09/07/85-of-college-students-use-
facebook/)

2\. [http://allthingsd.com/20111013/four-month-old-google-
has-40m...](http://allthingsd.com/20111013/four-month-old-google-
has-40m-users/)

3\.
[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_plus_engagement....](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_plus_engagement.php)

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joejohnson
Yeah, like most everything about Google+, it's pretty ill-thought out, but a
patch for these obvious oversights has been "promised" in the near future. I'm
sure that Google will add multiple admins to +pages, but this is another large
complaint in a long list of errors that Google has made with this product.
Sadly, Google+ is here to stay, and users of other Google products (gmail,
youtube, everything...) can expect G+ to be shoved further and further down
their throats.

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bpeebles
I'm honestly surprised by the defenses of Google in the context of G+ pages.
Yes, G+ is a new product, but releasing G+ Pages for business without multiple
account support is _not_ anything like a minimally viable product. It's just
not. It's actually worse than useless, it actively frustrates and confuses any
organization larger than a few people unless you're willing to break the
Google rules and used a shared account.

The fact that multiple admins are coming means they should have waited until
they were here. Releasing before then is kind of a trick to make companies not
dismiss G+ as worthless.

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tonfa
They already said multiple admins for +Pages will come...

~~~
dannyr
here's the announcement for that:

[https://plus.google.com/101560853443212199687/posts/BbbJc6tB...](https://plus.google.com/101560853443212199687/posts/BbbJc6tBo81)

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pbreit
This is an odd rant. First, it's coming from a Yahoo employee. Next, it's
about a service that is only a couple months old and a feature that is just a
couple weeks old. Next, it's the type of feature that is easy to see not
making the first release but would come at some point in the probably near
future. Finally, the post doesn't support the headline at all.

~~~
rgrove
Hi. That was me. What's odd about a Yahoo! employee using Google+?

The point of my "rant" was specifically that it doesn't make any sense to
launch a feature like Google+ Pages -- a feature targeted at organizations and
groups -- without the ability for those pages to be owned and administrated by
more than one user. This ability is fundamental to the usefulness of the
feature (and even to the way Google has chosen to market the feature), so the
fact that it launched without it is puzzling and frustrating.

~~~
pbreit
It's odd on a number of levels. First, does Yahoo have anything similar? If
yes, use it. If not, why not? Yahoo doesn't even have a blogging or publishing
service? Second, unfortunately, Yahoo criticism of Google doesn't resonate
well in 2011. The whole thing just comes off as further evidence of some weird
problems over in Sunnyvale.

~~~
rgrove
No, Yahoo! does not have anything similar to Google+. Even if Yahoo! did have
a similar product, it would be silly for me to restrict my community outreach
efforts to that product, ignoring YUI users on Twitter, Google+, and
elsewhere.

Please go back and look at my Google+ post one more time. Look closely. The
name next to it is "Ryan Grove", not "Yahoo!". The profile photo is a sketch
of my face, not a Yahoo! logo. The word "Yahoo!" isn't even used in the post.

This is not "Yahoo criticism of Google". This is me, Ryan Grove, person,
criticizing Google+ Pages. And to be even more clear, I'm criticizing out of
frustration because, on the whole, I like Google+ a lot. I wanted to like
Google+ Pages as well, but it has fundamental flaws. I'm criticizing it not
because I want to hurt it, but because I want it to get better.

This is not "evidence of some weird problems over in Sunnyvale". This is my
personal opinion, expressed on my personal account, and has nothing to do with
any views held by my employer.

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BvS
Bradley Horowitz "kind of" explains why pages look like user profiles:
[https://plus.google.com/113116318008017777871/posts/QBPAvCBa...](https://plus.google.com/113116318008017777871/posts/QBPAvCBaDes)

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ward
Release Early, Release Often.

The day they released pages they mentioned multiple admins was planned. By
releasing earlier they can also get some more user feedback as-they-go, I
would imagine.

------
systems
what exactly are the benefits of creating a G+ page for YUI?

~~~
rgrove
We currently use Google+ Hangouts (via our personal profiles) for team
meetings, since several members of the team (including me) are remote. It
works great (much better than iChat or Skype, which we've previously used).

It'd be super awesome if we could use a Google+ Page for YUI (instead of a
personal account) as a community hub, which would allow us to more easily host
Hangouts that are open to the community, share YUI news and videos, and just
generally interact more closely with our community on Google+.

In theory, this is exactly the sort of thing that Google+ Pages are for. In
practice, there's no point to us creating a Google+ Page for YUI, since it
currently has no actual benefits over just using a personal profile (and would
actually be more work).

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webwanderings
You see, G+ is doing exactly what Facebook does. The brands are basically
duplicating their efforts for social interaction. I don't see any difference
between how FB treats page creation versus Google Plus.

~~~
thenextcorner
Difference is, Google will be integrating the Google+ pages and profiles into
the Google search results, something Facebook only has a slight chance to do
with BING.

~~~
parfe
Google: facebook pepsi

Not sure how more integrated into google search results facebook could get.

