

A Google slide presentation that explains some of the thinking behind G+ - AndrewDucker
http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-network-v2/

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cmurphycode
This is actually quite good. Around slide 100, he started bringing in some
very interesting numbers. Among them:

    
    
      - using facial recognition, they determined the average number of unique people in your Facebook photos is 6.6, against an average friend count of 130.
      - 80% of Skype calls are made to 2 friends
    

He makes a very strong point about caring about these "strong tie"
relationships, both from the point of view of the user, and of Google (the
company making use of the relationships you cultivate).

This has implications for how you analyze Plus's success. If Plus ends up with
a couple hundred million users, but an average friend count of 30 or so, I
suspect Google will be just as happy, or happier, than if they achieved
Facebook's level of friend count.

~~~
loumf
From a business point of view, what Google will care about is pageviews and
pageviews/user (because that determines the #of ads they can show).

It may be that having fewer friends makes you update more and check more often
(because it's more relevant). Or it may be that having more friends causes you
to check back.

Another metric that drives revenue is how long you stay an active member --
that also might be better the more intimate your relationships are.

~~~
tbh2347
People have to stop saying this. Google isn't so blind as to think every
product's sole purpose is to drive pageviews.

I'm speculating just as much as you are, but I don't think it's unreasonable
to guess that a big part of Google+ is to drive usage of its other products.
Once people start sharing directions, collaborating on documents, and so on G+
will be there to introduce users to one product after another. Sure, social
ads may/will be important, but saying "what Google will care about is
pageviews" is simplifying it immensely.

~~~
loumf
That's why I prefaced it with "from a business point of view" -- to imply that
it isn't the "sole purpose", but it's certainly looked at. I'm not saying that
they will game the system by forcing page-views when not needed by the
product, but that they will judge success based on usage, not average friend
count.

------
eneveu
There were a lot of insightful comments when it was first discussed 8 months
ago : <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1867807>

Some more context:

Paul Adams, the author of these slides, was Google's social research lead in
the UX team at the time. According to Dhanji R. Prasanna, who worked on Google
Wave and Google+, Google feared that Facebook might see the slides and copy
the Circles idea ( <http://rethrick.com/#google-plus> ):

 _I asked the obvious question--"While I agree that Circles is a very
compelling feature, this slide deck is public. Surely someone at facebook has
seen it, and it won't take them long to copy it?"

I was met with a sheepish, if honest look of resignation. They knew the danger
of this, but were counting on the fact that facebook wouldn't be able to
change something so core to their product, at least not by the time Emerald
Sea got to market.

[...]

Many were visibly unhappy with his slide deck having been published for all to
see (soon to be released as a book). I even heard a rumor that there was an
attempt to stop or delay the book's publication._

The fear only increased when Paul Adams left for Facebook in December 2010 (
[http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/20/paul-adams-googler-whose-
pr...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/20/paul-adams-googler-whose-presentation-
foretold-facebook-groups-heads-to-facebook/) ). Happily for Google, Facebook's
response, "Facebook Groups", missed the point. Google predicted correctly that
Facebook wouldn't be able to change something so core to their product.

------
adamdecaf
_It's already happening. In the future we'll know thing like who out of our
friends has bought this bad, who has bought this brand, who bought competitor
brands, what do people think of this brand, and we'll have ways to communicate
with them to find out more. Understanding sociability will become a core
requirement for designing online. Almost all of us will need to become skilled
in social web design. (Slide 33)_

I don't want that. I don't want random sources or websites knowing who I am,
who my friends are, and who bought their products and who didn't. I want to
remain anonymous and protect my data. Of course, I won't be someone who visits
these websites, I prefer markets and anonymity.

------
username3
Circles work when I know what kind of posts my friends like and when they know
what I like, but what about when we don't know what each other likes?

I want to share my posts with all my friends and have them decide what they
want to see. I want to tag my posts or have my friends tag my posts. Then,
they can follow my posts with certain tags or hide them from their stream. I
want to see what they post in certain circles and join or subscribe. It's like
twitter lists, but instead of lists of people, it would have a list of posts.

------
stevenp
I'm quite amused by the deck's opening story about the horrors of 10-year-old
kids on Facebook seeing gay men dancing with towels wrapped around them in a
bar.

The problem of needing to partition one's social groups is very real, but the
moralization in the deck rubbed me the wrong way.

Then again, San Francisco is a city where people bring their children to the
gay pride parade, so maybe I'm just a wacko liberal with an incredibly biased
perspective. :)

------
seagaia
We can only stay up to date with 150 ties, and roughly at best...it is true,
and it is interesting to think about who the closest people to us are.

Mixing social groups really doesn't work. It is kind of strange.

I want to give this a more detailed look a bit later, but it's quite
interesting now. I wonder if it says anything about people who have thousands
of friends, and why they do...

~~~
bergie
150, the Dunbar's number[1]. That is indeed the natural number for any
traditional communities (villages, tribes, etc).

I think an important distinction is between "real" contacts, and the people
you like to read stuff from every now and then. Circles can help organizing
those, and not just ensuring that information doesn't leak between your
distinct friend groups.

1: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbars_number>

------
sequoia
Thanks, I saw this last year but couldn't find it after G+ came out. It
clearly indicated their intention to do something like G+; they practically
even have similar verbiage and branding (in particular circles). Facebook must
have very much seen this coming... I'm very curious what they're next step
will be.

~~~
username3
Facebook made Groups according to
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2749559>

