
The One Google Plus Feature Facebook Should Fear - ChrisArchitect
http://www.allfacebook.com/the-one-google-plus-feature-facebook-should-fear-2011-06
======
matwood
This article is dead on. I already have many google apps open all day and g+
will integrate with those nicely. A friend already exclaimed this morning that
the google apps integration is what will kill FB (if that's even possible -
myspace still has users). He then set out to move over those he actually cared
about on FB to g+.

I especially like default use of groups and how it forces users to think about
privacy from the get go. This is very different from my FB experience years
ago and why I quit using FB.

~~~
farlington
It's a brilliant strategy, and I'd be very surprised if it doesn't lead to
some antitrust litigation.

~~~
nostromo
I think it's difficult to make the anti-trust case against Google.

Unlike Microsoft's control of the desktop, people choose to use Google
everyday. It would be so very very easy to switch to Bing tomorrow (even
easier than choosing not to use Facebook!) but people have chosen not to
switch.

Just because you have a lot of marketshare doesn't mean you are a monopoly.

It's also quite easy to say that consumers will benefit from the increased
competition with Facebook. This is what anti-trust tries to promote, not
restrict.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> It would be so very very easy to switch to Bing tomorrow (even easier than
> choosing not to use Facebook!) but people have chosen not to switch.

I assume that Bing also offers free e-mail with as many features, a calendar
system, an equivalent of Google Reader, etc? Unless it can deliver all of
that, it wouldn't be a very easy switch for me - whereas ditching Facebook is
literally something I contemplate every time I access it and see the crap
that's on my feed.

~~~
bad_user
Microsoft has alternatives for mostly everything, including Google Apps if
you're willing to switch to Exchange and pay the price for that.

But all these Google products are hard to switch from because they are kick-
ass. It's hard for me to switch away, not because Google has me trapped, but
because the competition sucks.

You can export all your data from Google and import it wherever you want. I
did so with Google Reader (since you mentioned), but I came back to it since
it's better than any desktop client I tried.

But this doesn't mean Google has lock-in, unless you extend the definition to
include " _being better than the competition_ " and that shouldn't trigger
antitrust regulation; and if it did, you could say that the system is terribly
broken.

------
cryptoz
Am I being unrealistically impatient, or is the only feature that actually
matters the feature that lets your friends sign up? Google+ is a ghost town
for me right now and there's nothing I can do to change that.

It's very frustrating. I love the ideas in Google+ and want to use it, but
I've got no ability to share or add friends.

~~~
Ygor
I had the opposite reaction: At first only a couple of close friends were in
my circles, and it felt like a true social site. Even though many of us are
miles and miles apart, we were sharing, talking, hanging out and posting. All
this without hundreds of relatives, coworkers, ex girlfriends silently
watching us like some stalkers from the bushes.

It got even better once i realized that because of the way circles work, this
kind of feeling might actually be preserved without much effort on my behalf.

~~~
DrHankPym
I'm actually very excited about this feature. I feel like George Costanza
faced with "worlds colliding" when my family, friends, and coworkers were all
meeting each other on my wall.

I had to give up the site because I have to keep those lives separate for my
own sanity.

~~~
joebadmo
I was also excited about this feature (and the way it's properly exposed and
integrated) until I started thinking about how sharing to a list can get
complicated in deceptive ways very quickly. For example: when someone comments
on something I shared, how does she know who will see that comment?

I have a more thorough explanation here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2714333>

~~~
wikyd
G+ posts have a link in the top right corner that says: "Limited" or "Public."
If you click on limited, you can see everyone who can see that post.

~~~
joebadmo
Yes, but that's still a significant amount of friction for something as
important as understanding what your social context is. And how many people
are really going to understand that that distinction even exists?

I think the real problem is that there's no easy mental model for the way
information flows through the system. That's what metaphors are for. A
"Circle" is not a metaphor. It's just a brand.

~~~
drivebyacct2
The people that don't notice are the same ones spamming their friends with
FarmVille invites and there's limited controls for blocking them without
disavowing them entirely within Facebook. They're the people that post drunk
pics to Facebook in "Everyone" albums without any consideration.

So what if they use + the same way. Ignore them, move them to a quieter
circle. And for their benefit, it defaults to a more protective privacy
setting than Facebook, especially for pictures.

~~~
joebadmo
I definitely agree that Circles are better. I don't think they're as good as
they could be. I don't think it's that clear for people, even those that are
outside the group you cite, where exactly their comments are going. It's
discoverable, but it's certainly not immediately obvious. I think privacy
usability is really important, you want to make that stuff as easy and
intuitive as possible.

------
kanenathan213
So true. The red notification really hooks you back in.

It's because Google+'s social signal to noise ratio is so much higher than
Facebook. I dread the red notifications in FB's upper left corner bc they're
usually from some friend of friend's irrelevant spam event/survey/tagging etc.
Google+ Circles really filters thats out.

Facebook's mistake was introducing Groups so late. With Circles, users can
create Circles AS friends join. I will never retroactively organize my
Facebook "friends" into Groups. I will, however, take a little time each day
as new REAL friends come to Google+ to organize them to reflect real social
structure.

Google 1. Facebook 0.

~~~
jankassens
You are actually kind of forced to think about it. If you want to 'follow'
someone you can only do so by adding him to one or more of your circles. Of
course, you can throw all people in the "Friends" circle, but I think given
this visible choice not many will do that.

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dilap
This is actually a misfeature -- it's hard enough to avoid procrastinating
without having to summon the super-human willpower necessary to avoid clicking
your notifications every time you do a simple search.

~~~
rbarooah
I think you're spot on - Facebook is basically an entertainment destination.
If google is trying to become the same thing, they may end up making the
search experience worse.

That said, it's not like there's a choice.

------
r00fus
I think Google's real goal with + is to fight Facebook in social searching.

The fact that it's a different form of social network (more refined imho) and
has new features (hangouts, circles) is bonus.

Google's bottom-line success with + will be the mitigation of the Facebook
social search threat... anything else is gravy.

~~~
joebadmo
Circles isn't really new. It's definitely implemented better (exposed and
integrated), but it suffers from what I think is a serious weakness: hidden
complexity. When you think about it as a broadcast, it's very simple and
straightforward, but when someone in one of your Circles starts
commenting/talking back, it gets a lot more complicated.

More thorough explanation here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2714333>

~~~
michaelchisari
Appleseed has already addressed this. When you comment, a push notification is
sent to the group defined the _context_. Actions are not broadcast, contexts
are.

IE, Alice posts a blog, which is available to Group A. Bob posts a comment to
the blog, and members of Group A are notified (even if they're not on Bob's
friends list). Chris, who is on Bob's friends list, but not a member of Group
A, will not receive a notification.

~~~
joebadmo
That's still potentially confusing, though. Bob has no idea who is part of
Group A apart from himself. He could probably check, but there's a cognitive
load/uncertainty there that equals friction to every secondary action (like a
comment).

So there's two problems: 1. Bob might comment on Alice's post thinking he's in
his own social context, which is reinforced by the fact that on Google+, he's
in his own UI and Alice's post shows up in _his_ Circle; 2. Bob has to
consciously check to see what the context is every time he wants to make a
comment on Alice's post.

My idea for a potential solution is "Places." Which is through the link I
posted above.

~~~
michaelchisari
In Appleseed, you can set a Circle to be viewable by it's members, so it's
similar in function to how you describe "Places".

~~~
joebadmo
It's the same in Google+, but you still have to consciously check. My point
being that it's not really the functionality that matters per se, it's the
metaphor. Having the explicit metaphor gives you an immediate understanding of
how the information flows. Having an optional setting checked does not.

------
antimatter15
Shameless Plug: I just wrote a chrome extension that adds that little red
notifications box to the browser, so the persistence of Google+ is unavoidable
:) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2716053>

~~~
udfalkso
Funny, I did the opposite. I wrote a little chrome extension that hides the
little red notification from the google toolbar so it won't bug you at all:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ogcfegjiehdakiogch...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ogcfegjiehdakiogchpnllekccphhebd)

------
cft
The black bar at the top of Google can be extremely distracting when I try to
do work-related searches. I think their core product can suffer if they try to
make this a game dashboard, bombarding users with these notifications.

------
thewaz
The reason I think Google+ has a good shot at being successful boils down to
the fact that its simply a better product. Not to disparage facebook and all
the brilliant people working there, but the fact remains that it was first
started by a few people out of a college dorm partly on a whim.

On the other hand, google+ has the might of one of the web's most powerful and
innovative companies investing tons of R&D into the psychology and science of
human friendships behind it. The fruits of all this research are plain to see
in everything from the way it maintains circles to the implementation of
hangouts. Ultimately, its just a better product. Not that it guarantees
success, but it does a good chance at it.

------
ohashi
I am getting tired of reading all about it and not being able to actually just
use it :/

------
dhughes
I still think this is too little too late especially if Google+ is aimed at
people under 30, most of that crowd is mobile and smartphones seem to be the
way everyone in that group prefers to communicate not sitting at their desktop
computers.

Maybe Baby Boomers will like it over Facebook or not at all for either, if
it's aimed at a younger crowd I can't see it working unless as stated it's
forced upon people.

With iPads and other tablets and mobile devices becoming more powerful with
bigger and better screens I think a stripped down mobile social network app
would be the best way to attract attention or a completely different concept.

~~~
bad_user
[https://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.app...](https://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.apps.plus)

~~~
dhughes
Yeah I saw that and downloaded it but no invite.

It looks good and has some interesting features such as 'nearby view' similar
to Facebook Places, the instant upload looks convenient and dangerous, is
Huddle just Google Wave mobile light?

At least it looks like they are aware the mobile aspect is important.

------
Ygor
How about social search? Sparks has a huge potential, doesn't it? Facebook's
greatest strength is its huge social graph. However, they still didn't create
a really valuable social search.

Facebook can easily mimic google circles. But, who will be better at combining
search and social to add some new value to both?

And hangouts? It could be quite hard for someone to make a good
implementation, and still have a huge user base as google.

Anyway, circles seems like the easiest feature to implement for the likes of
facebook. Good social search, and group video chat, this might be more
difficult (facebooks classic chat isn't even working most of the time).

------
rhplus
I wouldn't be surprised to see a really basic version of Office 365 integrated
into Facebook as a response to this. There's already an experiment of sorts at
<http://docs.com>

------
diogenescynic
So if you're Microsoft in 1999, you bake it into Windows.

If you're Google in 2011, you bake it into search.

All you do is make your core product heavier. The thing you wanted to kill
doesn't go anywhere. It hardly notices what you did:
<http://scripting.com/stories/2011/06/28/googleYawn.html>

------
nlanier
The other trump card: Chrome. Bake the Google bar in and Facebook is in a
world of hurt.

------
drivebyacct2
Duh. Click around Google after being in Google+. Your full account loads into
the interface, it's very apparent that Google+ is the "next version of
Google". I assume that eventually the "+" moniker will be dropped and it will
simply be "Share with your Google Circle", etc. They say they're integrating
it into their products... I think it's the other way around.

Look at how Gmail contacts are treated in Google+, they're relegated to a
stopgap. Look at the privacy settings for various fields in your profile -
they default to sharing with your Gmail Contacts and once you chose a circle,
you never have any context of Gmail Contacts anymore.

I love unification and data aggregation, especially with Google's Data
Liberation efforts and the export they already have for taking your social
data (potentially elsewhere).

~~~
nextparadigms
The context with Gmail is exactly what got them in trouble with Buzz. People
think of e-mail as a very private tool, as opposed to a social network where
things are not exactly private.

~~~
winsbe01
true, but with Buzz, everyone was added by default. it sort of sprung up out
of nowhere, with everyone rushing to shut it down (myself included). with
this, it seems that the privacy can be maintained (at least the feeling) with
circles.

------
ignifero
Add to that the frustration that the thousands of facebook developers feel
with the never ending changes and broken documentation. Btw, i believe Zynga
_is_ tied to facebook via some agreement. I d really like to know more about
google's plans about its platform.

------
ignifero
I 've just had an interesting discussion with a colleague who feels extremely
annoyed when she sees the black social bar when she searches on google. She is
now logging out of gmail when searching on google. I fear this may cause a
major backlash over privacy, and it would be better for google to make it easy
to turn off social features for search.

------
Trivialiti
Too bad Google sucks. Otherwise their service might be considered.

As it is, I can't wait for it to die like Google Wave. More worthless web apps
from Google will come to fill its place.

~~~
wallnutboy
Could you elaborate on why you feel Google sucks?

