

Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded? - kkleiner
http://singularityhub.com/2011/07/06/google-is-awesome-facebook-maimed-twitter-mortally-wounded/

======
raganwald
_The Google+ circles concept is powerful and easy to use. It represents the
defining, foundational difference between Google´s and Facebook´s vision for
social networking. If this new model takes off with users, then Facebook will
find itself in the uncomfortable position of having to replicate these
features within its own platform. Unfortunately for Facebook, moving to this
new paradigm will not be possible overnight. We are talking about a major
architectural overhaul. In the meantime, Google will have a chance to attract
significant numbers of users and influence._

There's a massive assumption here that G+ is blindsiding Facebook. Obviously
there is no limit to human stupidity, however I'd personally be surprised if
adding a circles-like feature to Facebook is an architectural nightmare, or
that they haven't thought about it.

The idea that there are meetings at FB where people are saying "F___, we're
screwed" is implausible. This has been discussed for years, and I'd bet actual
money that FB engineers and/or product managers periodically propose adding
this feature and FB decides that the time is not yet ripe. If and when G+
demonstrates that people really, really want this functionality, I expect
Facebook will roll it out smoothly.

~~~
mrshoe
In fact, Facebook lists already do everything he praises Circles for in this
article. They might even do a little more (e.g. share with List A, excluding
anyone in List B).

As he correctly notes later in the article, the lists feature is not prominent
on Facebook, and therefore few use it (or maybe few people actually _want_
it?). But it _definitely_ will not require _a major architectural overhaul_ by
Facebook.

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

~~~
r00fus
Bingo. Thus the people wondering if Google isn't a bigger threat to Twitter
than Facebook.

The real issue for Facebook is that, if Google+ is successful (my feel is that
it's a strategic fire-break to stop Facebook's possible domination of social
search), it limits the ways Facebook can additionally monetize their social
network.

Google+ doesn't need to fail for Facebook to survive, but it does hem in their
possible revenue growth.

Now twitter...

------
goodside
This headline is sensationalistic beyond the pale of respectable journalism,
and certainly beyond that of HN. The article does nothing to justify the
title. Speculating ways in which Twitter might eventually lose to a new
competitor does not license you say they've already been "mortally wounded".

To the extent that anyone reading this has the authority to change headlines
(I only know for sure that pg does), could you please modify it to something
reasonable? Thanks.

For others, please note that improving headlines is not only permitted, but
very much precedented and generally encouraged. Bad headlines let shitty
articles get upvoted, and degrade the overall quality of HN. (With some
sources, namely Popular Science, I'd even humbly suggest changing the
headlines be mandatory.)

~~~
jimbokun
The headline's awful, and the tone of the article sensationalistic, but I
thought it made some good points.

If the description of Google+ is accurate (don't have an invite, haven't
really tried to get one), Google may have found a solution for Facebook spam.
I tried to use my Facebook account for awhile, but it quickly became a wall of
Farmville updates. I know there are settings I could use to get rid of those,
but investigating it seemed too much work to bother.

So it seems that Google is attacking Facebook at their weakest point, and
that's pretty interesting and worthy of discussion, and I'm glad it got up
voted enough that I saw it, in spite of the bad title.

~~~
hullo
A while back (6 months? more?) Facebook tweaked things so that only game
players see game updates in their feed.

Overall the article dramatically undersells the work that Facebook has done to
improve the feed, mainly building off of signals you give it via engagement -
I don't see updates from friends that I don't care about, and fairly rarely
miss important updates from those that I do care about.

I could see how someone who only uses Facebook rarely wouldn't get that
impression of improvement, as they will have given the algorithm very few
inputs to work with.

~~~
BenOfTomorrow
The problem with the filtering is that it isn't transparent. Updates from
people I'm actually interested in don't show because Facebook's feed algorithm
thinks we don't interact on the site enough, and there's no mechanism to
correct it or even let me know I've missed something.

Perhaps it's been fixed more recently, but I found that incredibly annoying.

------
camtarn
"Each of us on average has hundreds of friends on Facebook. When you share
things on Facebook, you have to share it with all of them! How stupid is
that?"

It would be stupid ... if it were actually true. Facebook's privacy controls
are actually pretty sophisticated now: by default I have anything I post shown
to friends of friends, but excluding certain people. For potentially
controversial status updates I restrict visibility to a couple of lists. If I
wanted I could target a photo or status to an individual person.

So, Facebook already has all of this control baked into its architecture. In
theory, all it needs to do is make it more easily discoverable and easily
used. Of course this is easier said than done, but it's certainly not a 'major
architectural overhaul'.

I do wish that, when people slate a platform for not having certain features,
they would actually do a little research instead of assuming.

~~~
boredguy8
I actually like Facebook's privacy better. Except for chat's online/offline
status, it seems to follow a 'most restrictive permission applies" policy,
which is nice.

Using Google's example: If I have a biking group and a work group, there's
probably someone in the intersection of those two groups. I might want to
share something with my biking group but not share it with my work group.
There's not a mechanism to do that, that I can find, in Google+.

On the other hand, in Facebook, if I post something but restrict it from my
work group, people that are in my work group won't see the post even if
they're also in another group that does have permission.

This is a vastly superior approach, it seems to me.

~~~
icebraining
I don't get it, if they _are_ in your biking group, why would you want to not
share something with them just because they happen to be in the work group
too?

~~~
biot
How about "I'm considering taking a new job on the other side of the city.
Anybody have experience on the best cycling route to ...?"

------
quanticle
I find it ironic that the article claiming that "Facebook is maimed" and
"Twitter mortally wounded" is on a site that has "Like" and "Tweet" buttons,
but no Google+ interaction at all.

~~~
nickik
He talked about features not the situation NOW.

~~~
quanticle
In that case, shouldn't the author put his money where his mouth is and put
the article on a site that has a +1 button?

~~~
icebraining
Why? How does that affect the author's arguments? Tu quoque is a fallacy, you
know.

~~~
Maro
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque>

------
Tyrannosaurs
Yes it can do what Twitter does plus all the other stuff but most Twitter
users don't want that other stuff, they actively dislike it. They like Twitter
because it's simple, that's one of it's killer features.

Google+ is Twitter on steriods isn't a sales pitch for people who value
simplicity.

The article mentions this but then goes on to completely ignore it in it's
analysis but for me it's critical to understanding why people like Twitter in
the first place.

------
fab13n
This article takes an engineer's point of view, and is relevant to maybe 5% of
the population.

Facebook is about reinventing the web for dummies: micro-blogging, RSS-like
stream aggregation, photo/video/text publishing, web application publishing...
FB is pretty much the sum of dumbed-down versions of these. By targeting a
very wide unsophisticated audience, they reached a critical mass.

Sure G+ is better, nicer, more powerful etc. Will it appeal to unsophisticated
masses, though? It might, but I'm not so sure. Maybe it will partially
succeed, and become a secondary social network catering for more savvy users.
But when it comes to herding Average Joes, Facebook has a strong track record,
Google hasn't. FB's going to give its very best at delighting your average
Farmville player, and G+ will do the same to your average EFF member. Guess
who matters to advertisers?

------
wccrawford
I just realized I can use G+ as a blog and just post those entries publicly...
It would be even better if they'd implement tagging.

~~~
markkat
It seems they took a swipe at a lot of services. probably not intentionally,
but by rolling up a lot of functionality that has been proven by others into
one app.

------
iter8n
Signing up for anything google feels more like a commitment compared to
creating a twitter account. Google wants to integrate more and more of your
data into their system, linking it with your other google accounts whether you
like it or not. G+ seems, like FB, more like an experience than a simple
service. Not that it cant provide the same function as twitter, but providing
only that function is still valuable, I think.

------
watmough
Why is Twitter wounded? Twitter is essentially friction free in use, and has a
lot of momentum as a single-purpose destination.

On the other hand, Facebook has felt increasingly intrusive, facial
recognition etc., and I already gave up on it, even before I knew G+ was
coming out.

~~~
phamilton
Twitter was a great way to create/mine public content. The problem is that
most of us prefer to express ourselves in more than 140 characte

------
juliano_q
The question is: nobody likes doing lists on Facebook because they don't like
to categorize their relationships or because the UX of the lists on Facebook
is terrible?

I tried to use the Facebook lists feature many times but its a freaking pain.
I almost dont share on Facebook anymore exactly because I dont want everyone
to read it. Now I am using the G+ circles and having a lot of fun with it.

------
newobj
Guaranteed that it'll be easier for Facebook to mimic the successful features
of Google+ than it will be fore Google+ to acquire the relationships that are
already captured in Facebook.

~~~
Peaker
I've been keeping my Facebook account only to avoid losing out event
invitations that some publish only via that channel. I've not really logged in
for any purpose in a long while.

Facebook has lost a lot of user trust with their arguably shady practices. I
think there are many of us who _want_ to be in on the whole social networking
thing, but don't want it on Facebook.

Then there's Google's almost monopolistic leverage using Google's services to
give Google+ its much-needed bootstrapping boost.

Whether all of this is enough, or is more or less than the actual
relationships already captured in Facebook -- I don't trust anyone to really
know.

------
alexsherrick
I have to agree with you on a lot of your points (even though I haven't had
the chance to use G+). I am actually happy that G+ is missing advertising,
corporate pages, and widgets. These things are "social", but I truly believe a
social network should be about people and not games and corporations.

However, put with words with friends on there, and I'll be happy!

~~~
ghurlman
You can't really believe that Google isn't going to throw in ads once it opens
up wide?

~~~
joejohnson
Yeah, I'm sure the ads will be similar to Facebooks soon. But possibly less
annoying/more personalized.

I think this is the real concern for Twitter. G+ can kind of do what Twitter
does, and G+ is much easier to monetize.

~~~
sequoia
Facebook's ads aren't personalized enough?! I post that a had a good BM this
morning and there's an ad for Charmin and Welch's prune juice on the thread!
How much more personalized do you want?

------
ahi
Am I the only one that really hates this stuff? I have a Facebook account
because I have to have one in order to be a socially functional 20-something,
but I don't actually like or want it. Please "social media douchebags", just
stop.

------
masonhensley
The problem is that you cannot categorize the thousands of friends on any
social network. No one should or would curate that many connections.

As cool as the lists/ circle are, they will be kinda pointless if users are
overwhelmed by the monumental task of curating everyone.

------
yalogin
Leaving the emotion of Google+ being awesome out - what is preventing facebook
from copying this? They have a huge number of users who are not going to leave
overnight. Facebook we all know can turn on a dime to get products/features
out. If these features are really that sought after and good they could just
implement them and give it to their users. Why won't that work?

Also facebook is a platform as much as a social network. People play games on
there probably more than post pictures or tag their friends. That is what
sustained facebook and made them utterly dominant. That is not going to change
with G+.

I agree G+ is a good service but why is everyone making the grave ready for
facebook?

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Facebook has a recent history of bad products. Their last hit was the Like
button and how long ago was that now?

~~~
yalogin
Not to get into an argument but when was the last time Google had a hit? All I
am saying is the tech crowd is probably reacting to this more based on their
dislike of facebook and love for google and not taking an objective/business
view of things.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Probably Google Instant, less than a year ago.

------
aufreak3
The share target in G+ leaves me wanting for a "not" operator - i.e. share
with "A and B but not C". I really wish they give a special "advanced" geek
interface for this - full set operator support. I tend to think "A+B-C" and
every time I've got to warp my head to the way G+ or FB thinks.

------
MrJagil
If Google+ can manage the same speed as Chrome, the future seems as bright for
Facebook as it does for IE.

------
dmbass
The one problem I have with G+ is that sometimes there is gold in the
junkstream. Sometimes someone does post something interesting and they would
not normally share it with me.

How can we balance over-granulated sharing with under-granulated sharing?

~~~
thwarted
How is this different than anywhere else, including Facebook and twitter? It's
a perennial problem.

~~~
dmbass
Those two solve it by encouraging everyone to contribute to the public stream
increasing the chance that you will find your gold by looking in the stream.
G+ does exactly the opposite and encourages you to not contribute to the
public stream.

------
jmjerlecki
I disagree with this portion of the article:

You have hundreds of friends, but your news feed is always filled up with
nonsense from the same 5 friends that seem to send an update every other
minute.

I believe Facebook has an algorithm that only displays status updates from the
people I interact with most on the service. For example, using Seesmic or
Flipboard shows each status update, as opposed to Facebook on the web I seem
to see only a small number of updates and I have noticed they tend to be from
the profiles I visit the most. I am actually not bothered by my Facebook feed,
although I do love the notion of circles. My Mom got a circle all to herself.

------
Steer
This whole discussion thread makes me think that Facebook/Google+ will be a
new PC/Mac discussion with people taking opposite stances and debating ad
nauseam. Is that really worthwhile?

------
robot
No matter how many users twitter has, I have found myself struggling to [use
it] find a twitter client that works on all my devices. I have to
install/configure multiple clients, log in just for twitter functionality, and
I have to train myself. I am sure there are millions of people in the same
position. If it is integrated with G+ though, you get it for granted once you
log in along with many other features.

------
digamber_kamat
Facebook lists seem to be equivalent of Circles. Why should I be using Google+
except that it is from Google ?

~~~
winsbe01
it's not that you "should" use one over the other, but evaluate both to see
which works better for you. people are excited about G+ because it's new, it's
different (yes, lists and circles are basically the same, but their importance
to the platform is different), and it's got google behind it, which seems to
make everyone get excited.

i personally like it, and enjoy the list/circle-centric nature of it, but if
none of my friends are active on it, there's no reason why I "should" use it
over FB.

------
dasil003
Someone oughta show this to Calacanis as an example of how to write a
honeymoon fanboy article.

------
msimr
A Google+ extension that tags users mentioned on every page you visit.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jdncfcpdfdhodkdlec...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jdncfcpdfdhodkdlecgdiioogekhpnpk)

------
manishm
This is one of the problems I faced and blogged last September

[http://manishmideas.blogspot.com/2010/09/social-
network.html...](http://manishmideas.blogspot.com/2010/09/social-
network.html?spref=gb)

------
jgamman
Q. what would a social network look like if you designed it primarily for
business use and personal/social use was a subset? I think G+ could dominate
the corporate collaboration scene in a way that Facebook can't. Seriously, FB
is banned in lots of corporates but banning Google? Seriously, I literally
can't function without search. I guess you could say 'corporate Z only uses
Bing' and yeah you're right but seriously, Google is an extension of my own
personal productivity - and that's how i put food on the table. Now imagine
Huddle, Circles, blog/tweet, docs etc - work flow project management out of
the box. and, oh yeah, you can organise this weeks BBQ with your buddies
without it being a hassle... i don't know squat but if you wanted to own a
seperate space to the FB lolcat picture brigade - target the grown-ups...

------
sigzero
I do not see a wave of Facebook users moving to G+. It just isn't gonna
happen.

~~~
r00fus
> I do not see a wave of Facebook users moving to G+. It just isn't gonna
> happen.

“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a
decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out.
They’re not going to just walk in.” [1] - Palm CEO Ed Colligan, 2006

[1] <http://daringfireball.net/2006/11/colligan_head_stuck>

------
icebraining
I don't have a G+ account, so forgive me the question: since everything seems
to be cataloged based on circles where you put people, how does it work for
unapproved followers? Is there an 'empty' circle for them?

~~~
losvedir
You can share with them by making your post "Public". Conversely, there's a
wild-west "Incoming" section you can browse which contains posts by everyone
that has put you in a circle (whether you put them in a circle or not).

To be clear: it's asymmetric so you don't have to "approve" followers or not.
Feel free to put anyone in your circles, and you'll see their posts if they
make them public, or if they post them to a circle they've put you in
previously.

You get notifications when people add you to a circle, so you have the
opportunity to add them to a circle if you want, but it's not required.
Whether it's socially expected (as it seems it used to be on Twitter), is
something of a debate among G+ users currently.

------
dennisgorelik
I think Google Circles would finally kill LiveJournal. Ability to friend
people without them friend you back is probably why LiveJournal is still alive
(in spite lack of new technical features in LiveJournal).

------
dools
_"These circles represent a powerful innovation. They allow us to send more
personal updates just to our closest friends instead of forcing us to share
with all of our hundreds of acquaintances"_

Powerful innovation!? Give me a break. This should be called an "obvious
innovation" or "trivial implementation". How is it any different from having
mailing lists?

------
known
Is drag & drop extensively used?

~~~
phamilton
Yes. You can drag users into circles.

------
bonch
Only trendy bloggers even know or care about Google+ right now.

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

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

This gif from the article is great: [http://singularityhub.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/07/faceboo...](http://singularityhub.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/07/facebook-vs-google+.gif)

------
bhartzer
I'm still waiting for my google plus invite.

