
Why Google+ Still Has Huge Potential - matthewlmcclure
http://static.matthewlmcclure.com/s/2012/10/06/why-google-plus-still-has-huge-potential.html
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michaelpinto
When Google+ came out I was blown away by just how well designed it was, but
then slowly Google ruined it. Andy Hertzfeld created an amazing product, but
then Google worked their "magic" just like they did with Blogger and watered
down every strong feature like circles.

The problem at the end of the day is that Google just doesn't understand
"normal people". If you read up on their corporate culture they're filled with
former gifted Montessori kids who make amazing engineers, but the dark side is
that they may have a low social IQ. In fact Google goes out of its way to not
have to interface with people: Have a problem with a Google product? Well good
luck if you want to talk to a human.

So yes Google+ has amazing potential; but not with the Google management team.
I'm sure over time if they're lucky they can turn it into Pepsi to Facebook's
Coke -- but that's only if they figure out how to focus. And if you want to
see their latest failure just try using their mobile app: When put next to
Facebook it's terrible, and when put next to Instagram (now owned by facebook)
it looks like student project.

And I say this as someone who loves and uses G+ every day!!!

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mdwrigh2
> When Google+ came out I was blown away by just how well designed it was, but
> then slowly Google ruined it. Andy Hertzfeld created an amazing product, but
> then Google worked their "magic" just like they did with Blogger and watered
> down every strong feature like circles.

How have they ruined circles? They work the same as they did on day one as far
as I can tell.

> In fact Google goes out of its way to not have to interface with people:
> Have a problem with a Google product? Well good luck if you want to talk to
> a human.

Let's not confuse two separate issues. Social IQ has no relevance to their
customer support. Their customer support is non-existant for free products
because doing support at their scale is nearly impossible. And while I'm not
familiar with their support for paid products overall, I've had a decent
experience dealing with Play support when I purchased my Nexus 7. Anyways,
point being that the engineers were never going to be customer support in the
first place.

> And if you want to see their latest failure just try using their mobile app:
> When put next to Facebook it's terrible, and when put next to Instagram (now
> owned by facebook) it looks like student project.

First off: which platform? Because on Android, G+ _far_ outstrips Facebook's
generally terrible mobile app. I've also seen some pretty positive reviews of
the iOS app, but I have no direct experience with it.

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michaelpinto
1\. Circles: They did a redesign at one point where you can browse specific
circles by clicking on well hidden buttons buttons at the top. Of course the
buttons don't stay there, so you have to keep clicking. Facebook displays
everything on the left nav so it's easy to see their version of circles — and
having wasted too much time on both sites i can tell you that in terms of
functionality (not ascetics) Facebook wins.

2\. "Their customer support is non-existant" This works great for search, but
not for every other product they offer. Also it's not great if you're a
professional who is using a product. But what kills me is if you are a top
brand they do the hand holding, but if you're not in that league well good
luck with that! So this sort of blindness reflects a low social IQ. I'll grant
you that they aren't the only ones guilty of this, and in fact maybe amazon
first invented this approach (but they've learned and have purchased companies
like zappos that get it).

3\. I'm on iOS looking at my iPhone and the Facebook app is better than G+: Of
course Instagram blows them both away. If you forced me to hand out grades it
would be: G+ with a C-, Facebook with a B- to B and Instagram with a A. Of
course Instagram was designed to be mobile so maybe they cheated? Now I'll
grant you that the G+ app looks the most pretty, but it's a pain to use.

But keep in mind I'm ranting because how much I loved the original G+ — if
they had a wayback machine setting all would be forgiven.

~~~
gurkendoktor
> Now I'll grant you that the G+ app looks the most pretty, but it's a pain to
> use.

This! I can't believe that Google, out of all companies, would go "form over
function" on a mobile app. Scrolling through a feed is so distracting that I
wouldn't even want all my friends to be in there. (So far I've only scrolled
around the food pictures in the public stream.)

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sshumaker
Just curious - what do you find so distracting?

~~~
gurkendoktor
The 3D fall-down animation for every news feed item (or is that limited to
some feeds?)

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darklajid
Don't hit me.

I visit G+ if

\- some post here links to it (seriously, I have more or less no other source
that points to that stuff, and_very_ rarely a search hit leads that way)

\- I check, in vain usually, on the progress of a CM port for my LG crapphone,
because the amazing guy behind most LG ports uses that site. I have a bookmark
for his.. uhm.. posts? timeline? feed?

People in my non technical and environment don't know what G+ is. People in my
geek community left it because it's worse than Facebook in trying to build
'identities'. I'm always surprised to see real world usage and will continue
to be a skeptical observer. That huge potential might certainly exist, but I
fail to see it.

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swah
I also follow Ricardo Cerqueira... and Jeff Dean, Brad Fitzpatrick and Linus
Torvalds. It's like a small private space.

~~~
darklajid
I sometimes do. But I don't have an account or need one for that.

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davitr
I think Google+ and Facebook complement each other in some sense. Facebook is
social network which is mostly used communicate with "friends" and Google+ to
communicate with like-minded people.

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modarts
Wouldn't it be fair to assume that there's a great deal of overlap between the
two groups?

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davitr
Sure, there is big overlap, because we all need both type of interaction.

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nc17
I don't understand how this article talks about the future of Google+ in the
enterprise, yet it makes no mention of LinkedIn.

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X-X
That's because LinkedIn is not used by employees within companies to
communicate like Facebook is used by students within a university to
communicate. He's saying that there's a gap there that Google+ can fill.

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smegel
I think people are slowly waking up to the idiocy of having an online
"identity" that matches their real world one. If anything there will be a
trend away from these spy networks as more people switch on to their purpose.

~~~
madprops
There's a place for that kind of online network. There's also a place for
random usernames like radnation. There are a lot of games to play.

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pcwalton
Yammer definitely does have traction. It may well be that the author didn't
use Yammer at the two companies he worked at, but Microsoft wouldn't have paid
a billion dollars for a company without traction.

~~~
codeka
They just wrote down $6.2 billion on their aQuantive purchase, so I wouldn't
be _too_ quick to say that...

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moocow01
"At first, it’s just a place to put notes to myself, but I share them so that
others can find them too. Once a few people start doing that, or a small team
commits to doing it for the good of the team, the game is over. It can’t help
but take off"

And when one of your team members leaves and pulls your access to their
company related content/documentation they've previously placed on Google+
what do you do ???

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Evbn
It is a company controlled G+ domain. More interesting is how Google privacy
policies and company data retention policies interact when someone leaves a
company.

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exabrial
Ok, their mobile app was once a beautiful thing. Then some retard designers
got ahold of it.

\- Now, there is hardly a text summary on posts. Just big ass pictures with
hardly any content. \- There's a delay when fetching new content. \- They
added really shitty scrolling animations that are just annoying.

You can install the older v2.5 of the app and bypass the crappy UI/UX, but you
lose the newer features of G+. Sad tradeoff!

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iomike
You can keep beating that dead horse, but I ain't gonna ride it. I was on G+
ver early, it's just not what I wanna use.

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capo
G+ has huge potential because it's Google's identity layer, the discrete
social network thing is a byproduct.

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gurkendoktor
I don't understand the distinction, isn't Google's account system still the
same as before? So G+ is the need to attach a real name?

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capo
They've never had a proper picture profile integrated across all services, G+
solves that.

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songgao
How about Google Profile before the G+? I actually find myself still using G+
in the same way I used Google Profile...

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Evbn
G+ is the overall system that links your Google profile to all your Google
services.

It's Google Plus, and it does what the name says, it adds a new layer on top
of all of Google.

