

Google +1 is failing, miserably  - yalimgerger
http://gerger.co/yalimslodge/2011/08/12/1-for-google-1/

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GBKS
Comparing the Tweet, +1 and Facebook buttons next to each other, I can easily
see how people just don't understand what +1 means. The button graphic has a
colored ribbon at the top with the label '+1'. Next to it, I see the number of
the total clicks. However, there is no explanation what it means. Compare that
to the Facebook button. It says "Recommend", and "60 people recommended this".

'Recommend' is a clear call to action. '+1' requires a lot of interpretation
and prior knowledge. It's the same issue G+ faces with huddles, sparks,
hangouts and circles. By not adopting everyday language, features become
mysterious.

~~~
ThomPete
Isn't that a little post rational? It took people quit some time to get the
whole idea of tweet.

~~~
jamesbkel
I think that's true to some extent, but at least with a tweet the user is also
commenting/providing some context for their audience. One of the issues with
+1 is that it's not always clear to users how the +1 will be interpreted.

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click170
I honestly thought +1 _not_ appearing in the stream was a feature. A feature I
liked. After all if they want to share it they can share it. It's the same
thing about games not appearing in the stream -- I honestly don't give two
shakes if you need two more friends to visit your farm in order to get the
golden shovel, I'm not interested. I like how it's segregated to it's own tab,
IMO the only improvement they could make is adding an option to toggle whether
you see your friend's +1s and game 'trophies' in the stream or not.

~~~
dhimes
I agree. I also get it from a position angle- if everybody else is doing A,
we'll do !A. Of course, the risk is that people may prefer A.

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mbrzuzy
I don't think looking at one site is enough to judge whether Google +1 is
failing or not.

With a site like msnbc, I can't help but picture an older less tech savvy
crowd. A crowd that wouldn't know what google +1 is, let alone have an email
other than an @aol.com.

If you look at other sites, Techcrunch for example. The primary mode of
sharing there is Twitter, and suprisingly linkedin with facebook really
lagging behind. That doesn't mean facebook likes are failing.

~~~
yalimgerger
All valid points. This demographic is the exact demographic I wanted to look
at though. Most of the world is not tech savvy.

~~~
lukeschlather
Only tech savvy people are allowed to use Google Plus. You can't just sign up.
Calling a service in closed beta "failed" because it has a small number of
users is totally irrational to the point of being an obvious troll.

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wccrawford
What benefit do I get from +1'ing something? It doesn't go in my stream, it
doesn't affect anything that I know of... Why would I do it?

It's like they implemented it without have any idea why the customer would use
it... They were just copying other people... Badly.

And while we're on the topic of sharing, why doesn't Google Reader send shared
items to G+ yet? It has sent it to Buzz for quite a long time, and Buzz isn't
even popular.

~~~
edwardy20
The benefit is that it (allegedly) improves your search results. If someone in
your social circle +1'd something, it affects your search results.

~~~
megrimlock
If that's the case then I wonder if my search results will end up populated
solely by witticisms and novelties. In my experience so far +1 seems mainly
used as a polite nod or chuckle, because its primary effect is that it's
visible to the person who said the thing you approve of. Something like
del.icio.us seems much more likely to identify timeless great content worth
sharing -- it's a bookmark to come back to rather than a nod of social
approval.

If you were designing a search algorithm it does not seem like you want want
to give much weight to an embedded easy approval button (reddit, digg, +1,
like, etc.) compared to something that requires more investment of someone's
time and thought, like making a del.icio.us bookmark. I mean, half the time
you have to go try to remember what your password was, then have them send you
a password reset mail, then re-login -- now that's a bookmark I care about.

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stesch
Yes, after 5 years of running Google+, they still don't have 750 million
users. :-(

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mike-cardwell
I'd guess that the fact that Facebook has hundreds of times more users at the
moment has something to do with it as well.

~~~
praeclarum
997 > 100 * 6, 330 > 100 * 1, 7000 > 100 * 63

~~~
yalimgerger
Oh, thank you. :-) I also would like to mention again that you don't have to
be on Google+ to use +1.

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MikeCapone
+1 has been around for like 5 minutes and already I see it on almost all of
the sites that I visit daily. I'd say that's a good start.

It's too early to say if it has failed or succeeded, though. I do wish people
would be a bit more patient... But looking at the stock market, people
obviously are short-termists.

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grandalf
In my circles which contain 800+ people, Jason Calcanis is the most prolific
(and only) poster. It's essentially the Jason Calcanis feed until more people
start posting things.

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01Michael10
Really??? The author of this post is comparing the number of Facebook likes
(750 million active users) to the number of Google +1s (some 25 million users)
from a small sample of Internet articles...

People really need to stop mentioning how Google+ does not have this or that
feature. It's not open to the public at large because it's not a finished
product yet!

~~~
yalimgerger
You don't need to be on Google+ to +1 anything. All you need is a Google
account. Most people think +1 and Google+ are related which is not true. But
this is what happens if a company build two products with the same name.

~~~
01Michael10
You are right but I am guessing well over 90% of the +1s are coming from
Google+ users.

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cbs
This article seems to boil down to the idea that because plus isn't a 1:1 copy
of the mental model and concepts of facebook and twitter, it has to be a
failure.

It builds on a bad assumption right out the gate, that automatically reposting
trash you happen to perform a lightweight operation on is what it means to be
"social" online. That only happens because facebook is pandering to marketers.
I wish I still had the email where facebook described to marketers the change
from "Become a fan" to "like". The change was to make it so that the action
that got people to spam their friends became more lightweight.

The author compares it to tweeting. Really? Last I knew on the twitter you
slammed a link into the text field, just like people do on plus when they
actually want to share the link.

Ultimately, a lower number of bullshit reposted from MSNBC.com showing up in
my stream than my feed is a WIN for me.

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lovskogen
Does Google+ have to be a sucess? Everbody is a user, it just sits there up in
the top of your gmail, reader, docs. There is no effort to start using it, so
Google can just sit and wait for it to become a natural part of the Google
apps exerience.

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dugsu
I guess you could say +1 is still a relatively new feature. It appears that
it's something Google just released without a clear end goal in mind of how to
integrate it across all of their social networks.

I'm hoping that they have something new and different in mind with how they
integrate +1's into Google+. It's slightly annoying as a user to be presented
with so many share/like buttons on a post. As it was mentioned in the blog
post, what's the incentive for a user to choose the +1 button. There needs to
be a benefit beyond just making the +1 viewable in your Google+ stream.

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pornel
+1 in Google+ is even weirder, because you can't see a list of your +1'd G+
content _anywhere_. It's just brownie points for the poster.

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alexyoung
I +1'd this just to make sure I could:
<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/221414/tmp/plus_one.png>

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nextparadigms
I guess they need to make the +1's appear in the stream, too, to make ppl care
about them. I was hoping there is another way, though.

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pasbesoin
I was all ready to jump in -- under my real name, even -- until they started
shitcanning (entire) user accounts. I am already too dependent upon my pre-
existing Google account/services; I can't afford the risk.

A bit of irony in that.

~~~
mdwrigh2
This isn't true though. Unless you have some egregious terms of service
violation, your account will only lose access to Google+. For example, not
using your real name could get you banned from G+, but the rest of your Google
account will still be usable and accessible.

~~~
pasbesoin
Anecdotal, but I'm put in mind of one new user's experience where they
accidentally "sent/addressed" (keep in mind, I have no direct experience with
Plus) a message/post to all of their circle contacts or somesuch. IIRC, the
message basically just said "Hey, I'm on Plus now". I don't recall whether the
broad addressing was mistakenly made or the implications of the broad
addressing not understood. Either way, that one message was allegedly enough
to get the person's Google account suspended.

Um, no thanks.

P.S. I concede that the original article is specifically about the "+1"
feature. However, I -- perhaps mistakenly -- view this all as part of Google
Plus.

~~~
mdwrigh2
Honestly, that story sounds really vague and I can't see _anything_ in it that
would even be remotely responsible for an account suspension. What do you
think they got in trouble for? Sending a message to too many people? That
certainly isn't a bannable offense, especially since there is a public posting
option.

~~~
pasbesoin
As I recall, it was a specific, first-hand account. And the author was
initially as puzzled as you are. What happened? Why?

It's one of several stories/anecdotes I've run across. Unfortunately, I
haven't kept a list of links to those.

En masse, they've caused me enough concern to not "push the button". In good
part, if something does go amiss, you're pretty well stuck, unless you have a
big enough megaphone to garner sufficient publicity and/or enough of the
"right" connections to garner some love from fellow geeks.

Maybe I and others are being gamed by opposing forces. I'm not at a point
where I care to find out the hard way whether that's the case.

------
ditojim
"i'd +1 that" sounds better than "i'd like that".

------
Hisoka
Google doesn't get social... that's all. They demand everyone that applies for
a job knows algorithms, but they fail to understand that to nail social, they
need to hire people with a different type of intelligence: emotional and
psychological. People who know what makes other people tick. We human beings
crave attention, impressing others, and thinking we're special. We don't give
a damn about placing people in Circles - that's a problem you solve once you
give what people crave, not a problem that convinces people to join your
social network.

Google does need computer scientists but the company has enough of them. This
isn't a knock against Google employees, but the vast majority of their
employees know how to scale search engines, or write efficient code, or write
the next generation NLP parser, but to get social right, those things are
unimportant.

To create a great social network requires less technical expertise, and more
getting the little things right. Think about LinkedIn: You can't help but
tweak with your skills and experience so it looks impressive to you, and to
others (even if they aren't recruiters). Think about how much people care
about filling in their Facebook profile, and making it look good. Now look at
Google+. It's TOO clean. It's TOO private. That's a great recipe for a search
engine. A horrible recipe for a social network.

~~~
ditojim
If google doesn't get social, who developed Google+? Too clean? I find the
page very easy on the eyes and easy to use. Too private? I have put way more
info in public (intentionally) on Google+ than Facebook. They make it easy.
You are just making general statements and assumptions we have heard all over
the internet, meanwhile, Google+ continues to delight its users.

I will say: Google finally gets social. It is called Google+

~~~
ry0ohki
Google copied a bunch of technical features from other networks (Facebook
mainly) that do get social. But as the parent points out, they don't truly get
social because there is a complexity that confuses me let alone my mom in
using Google Plus.

~~~
ditojim
What complexity do you refer to? Facebook has groups, it just has a crappy UX
for it. Google's Circles are way better, easy, and kinda fun to setup with a
slick UI. Once they are setup, it is easy to filter your content based on
circles. Circles make a ton of sense to me (and a lot of other people, too). I
can finally share all my information in one place, with different groups and
view those groups in context in my stream. No one is forcing anyone to use
Google+ though. Users have a choice and we shall see where the cards fall over
the next year.

~~~
ry0ohki
I agree, but you are talking about technical features again. The interface for
circles is slick, it allows new technical fun. I think this is why Google+ is
pretty popular with the tech crowd. But now, one month on, even though 60% of
my Facebook friends join G+, none of them are using it. My feed is littered
with celebrities that overpost because circles are great for limiting who you
share with, but poor for limiting what you view. (Google doesn't let you say:
show me every circle but X, and if you choose to view a specific circle it
will always reset to all)

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ristretto
On a related topic, why is google going after the "like" game anyway? They
have better data than the stupid likes they can use to direct advertising. And
+1 is a "meh" name. It would be more intuitive if they used a star, like gmail
does, instead. Star it, save it in your bookmarks and tell your friends.

~~~
yalimgerger
They wanna be Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Apple, Microsoft and Yahoo (just to
be on the safe side). Is there a line of business in software that they have
not dived into?

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getonit
+1 is failing miserably, as opposed to author's sense of perspective?

~~~
yalimgerger
Could you elaborate a little more about your point please?

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petervandijck
He's trying to say that by stating that a brand new service that is, by most
measures, doing fairly well is "failing miserably", you've lost your sense of
perspective.

~~~
yalimgerger
I am not talking about Google+ though. I am talking about +1.

~~~
hencq
Fair enough. The submission title does say google+ though. Additionally, I
think strong statements like 'failing miserably' require strong evidence. This
seemed more like (weak) anecdotal evidence and opinion to me.

~~~
woobar
There is a space between 'Google' and '+1' in his title.

~~~
hencq
Oops, you're right. Somehow skimmed over that on my phone. Apologies. Still I
think the actual blog title is a little bit less sensationalist than the
submission.

