
The mystery of Google+ - pascal07
http://www.elezea.com/2013/07/google-plus-mystery/
======
diydsp
Google Plus is like the movie Dark City. It's a group of technical aliens
picking apart the human experience, trying different scenarios in order to
find out what the human soul is.

Once per day, humans wake up and find themselves in its meticulously-
constructed parallel universe, doing things as ordinary humans do on other
websites. Their activities, such as appreciating music and searching for
lovers, feel familiar, necessary and meaningful, but at the same time, the
unsettling atmosphere prevents the existential questions from settling deeply
repressed where they should be. Instead, we're left wondering, "Why are we
doing this here?" Isn't there something better? Is there a Shell Beach out
there somewhere? Couldn't I just do this all myself on 1999-style website and
live a more natural life?

Successful, albeit defunct, networks like MySpace work b/c above and beyond,
they were passionate about connecting people with things they want. e.g.
music... at all costs! Facebook reassures you that you dodged a bullet when
you didn't marry your high school sweetheart. Google Plus just screams "use
me. use me. use me for... everything or anything.. so that... um... so that
google can keep track of what's hip and make money while I don't." There's no
soul or love deep at the bottom.

There's a whole lot more I could say about passion, sacrifice, vulnerability,
and empty vs. full cabinets, but I have a customer to service now, so I'll
leave you with this hint: Germick is onto something with the google doodles.
Hire me as a consultant if you really want to pick my brain.

~~~
raldi
_> Germick is onto something with the google doodles._

Who?

~~~
diydsp
[http://www.ryangermick.com/?content=about](http://www.ryangermick.com/?content=about)
Ryan Germick leads the Google Doodle Team. This is his ol' portfolio website.

~~~
scholia
Interesting. I wonder what happened to Dennis Hwang, who started the whole
doodle thing....

------
tstactplsignore
Google+ is a UI disaster. Look at some of the basics. When the browser is
fully maximized, my screen can see 8 chats / contacts / "hangouts" / whatever
they're called in the sidebar on the right. On my Facebook chat sidebar, I can
see 14 contacts. When you refresh a G+ page, the open chats mysteriously
disappear. This cuts down on usage, because, for example, each time I go to
Facebook, my chats are still open and I can immediately continue from where I
left off. Google+ has 3 "toolbars" at the top of each page, taking up an
enormous amount of vertical space. Honestly, with the sidebars open, it feels
like you're working in a 500px x 500px window. For God's sake, the "About"
page doesn't even let you be in a relationship _with_ another member. The
"About" page also doesn't allow other users to see your interests, or favorite
books / TV / music. Essentially, G+ utterly fails to encapsulate everything
Facebook offers in this regards: when you first Facebook friend someone you
just met, you immediately get the basic information about their life: where
they stand romantically and what things they like.

There are other problems. Tagline? Bragging Rights? Skills? Links? Is G+ a
page for socializing or a resume?

I simply cannot fathom why some people in the tech industry think that G+ is
in any way a viable competitor to Facebook. Outside of the tech bubble, its
usage is nonexistent and unhelpful. It is cluttered with things people don't
want, and it lacks some of the basic things people DO want.

~~~
alan_cx
I look at G+, and as it happens GMail, and I just see a confusing mess. I have
to look at it for a second or two to sort of orientate my self, and let the
site sort of focus. I'm sure its the flat design lark we are currently in the
middle of. Last time I used facebook (I "deleted" my account a year or so ago)
it was far clearer and instantly use-able. Although looking at it now, using
one of my kid's profiles, its beginning to get as bad.

I might actually use G+ if it were use-able. I have joined two groups, purely
because people migrated there from Usenet, and every time I want to check
whats what in these groups I come away wishing I hadn't bothered. Good job the
one I most care about is a slow burner.

So, for me the biggest barrier is the UI.

------
roc
I'm increasingly convinced that the mystery amounts to "Circles working as
designed."

Let's say you've got a classic oversharer in your Aunt Sally. It's uncouth to
ignore her entirely, as sometimes she does post things you need/want to be
aware of, if for no other reason than to reduce family stress.

On Facebook, there's just a steady peppering of her stuff in all the other
posts. On Google+, you can shunt her off into a "noisy" circle and deal with
her posts maybe once a week.

But there-in lies the rub: any given dull Facebook session you can click on an
Aunt Sally link -- they're always right in front of you. But on Google+ even
if you've got 5 minutes to kill on a random link, clicking over to the "noisy"
circle carries a mental obligation to not just find a link, but actually do
the chore of scanning her aggregated posts to see if there was anything in
there about your Uncle's knee surgery or the family reunion.

So you generally don't do it. Or, if you do, you're not concentrating on the
random links, you're dealing with the chore of sorting the pile, and the
random links still aren't getting clicked.

And the flip side is that when you construct circles for your own sharing, you
may think you're sparing your gear-head uncle bob from all your links to
computing articles, not realizing that he actually _did_ read them from time
to time on Facebook.

Though this explanation does raise the question of "was the lost traffic
actually _valuable_?" as your killing 5 minutes on an Aunt Sally post, or
Uncle Bob skimming an anti-Facebook rant are certainly going to be page-views,
they're unlikely to have resulted in any sales or ad-clicks.

~~~
bradbeattie
I'd always thought that circles should have been two-sided. People should be
allow to create personas (channels for their profile) and choose which
channels a post is associated with. Others can then follow a person's
personas, not the person directly.

I admit that the idea gets a little clunky when you have to take into account
"I want to make a post that only people in my X circle can see", but I don't
see why that couldn't be worked in somehow.

~~~
VLM
You've pretty well described "communities".

"Tactile Keyboards" doesn't have much kitty pictures or religious quotes...
mostly.

------
MRSallee
I've been using G+ more frequently since the upgrades introduced at IO. It is
a better product now, and the photo sharing is quite good (at least compared
to Facebook and Twitter).

It is still a UX nightmare, however, and I imagine hat turns off a lot of
users that try to dabble in G+.

Communities seem to be the best draw for Google Plus right now, maybe because
it is otherwise difficult to converse with a large group of people (e.g.
friends, family) on G+.

------
gcb0
There's no mystery.

> is Google artificially inflating it's numbers while really dying a slow
> death

Yes.

Every free Google product that they don't know how to monetize is being moved
under g+ in an effort that g+ will be highly monetizable(?) In the future.

I have some 7 g+ accounts just for such logins.

~~~
k3n
Damnit, you're overcompensating for my refusal to join. I'm going to have to
refuse to join 6 more times now...

------
tim_hutton
The article says it's a mystery but then nails it:

 _" In line with Google’s vision to organize the world’s information, the
focus on Google+ seems to be shifting to content more than relationships. ...
I wonder if Google is more interested in being Reddit (the front page of the
Internet), than it is in being a Facebook/Twitter clone (what your friends are
up to)."_

~~~
scholia
Problem with that is that G+ is an even worse version of Reddit than it is a
Facebook clone.

Reddit already has (a) anonymity; (b) a working karma system; (c) proper
threading; (d) organisation by subject/topic; (e) freedom to start new boards;
and (f) a lot more intelligent debate than G+. Fixing all of these G+
deficiencies in the current system looks a long way beyond Google's
capabilities, even if it wanted to.

The dog-slow operation of G+ and the extreme information-poverty of the UI
(which makes it impossible to scan topics quickly) add to G+'s problems in
being a pseudo-Reddit.

~~~
snowwrestler
I was with you until you said intelligent debate. Aside from a few pockets
like /r/askscience, Reddit is an awful place for an intelligent conversation.
I don't know if Google+ is worse, but there are great pockets there too (Linus
Tovalds for instance).

~~~
scholia
Reddit is certainly variable, but I often find the debates interesting. On G+,
I mostly see people on soapboxes: it's not so much debate as the defending of
entrenched positions....

------
BruceIV
Of course network effects are more important than technical factors for a
social network.

For what it's worth, I gave Google+ a pretty solid try when it came out, but
very little of my social network actually moved over there, and then I moved
to a new city and all my new friends were on Facebook instead, so I stopped
using G+.

~~~
VikingCoder
Why do you use Hacker News?

No, seriously.

I simply can't understand the logic of someone who says that they stopped
using G+, BECAUSE all of their friends are on Facebook... when they SAY THAT
on Reddit or Hacker News.

~~~
scholia
Hacker News and Reddit have lots of information and good discussions. People
use them because of the quality of the content, not because they know the
contributors.

People use Facebook because they know the people, and that's what makes the
content significant _to them_ but not to outsiders.

G+ simply doesn't have the ease of access or quality of content (links,
discussions) that you get on HN or Reddit, and it doesn't have your friends.
It fails at both.

~~~
VikingCoder
You personally don't find the quality of content on G+. I personally do.

Or at least, it's rewarding enough to make it ANOTHER site that I visit.
GMail, Facebook, Reddit, Hacker News, CNN, G+. I don't think G+ is going to
replace GMail, Facebook, Reddit, Hacker News, or CNN for me. But I don't
expect ANY of those sites, to replace any of the others. So it just boggles my
mind when people - on Reddit or Hacker News - comment that G+ didn't replace
Facebook, so therefore it is not valuable.

I think I've put a bit more effort into finding interesting people, Pages,
Communities, and #topics than you have, and I've been rewarded for my efforts.

Google+ doesn't have a Front Page like Reddit and HN do, that's true. But it
wasn't hard to get started finding stuff I care about.

~~~
scholia
Fair enough, but the whole idea of following _people_ to find _content_ just
makes it harder to find content on G+. On Reddit, you pick the topics that
interest you and the best content (in theory at least) gets upvoted.

Both Twitter and Reddit (and HN) pack a ton of info into small spaces so it's
very quick to scroll through and pick up new stuff, which is a major problem
with G+. The same info may be on G+ but, in my experience, it's a lot harder
to find. (And if do I find it, it's already been tweeted to death.)

Incidentally, it wasn't me who thought G+ should replace other services! I do
think it started as an attempt to replace Facebook, but as far as I can see,
it isn't a good substitute for anything I already use. Worse, it doesn't have
any unique attractions (unless you want Hangouts, which I don't).

~~~
VikingCoder
You don't need to follow people to find content - you can follow Pages,
Communities, and #topics. That makes it very similar to sub-Reddits.

I can scroll through my stream pretty quickly. j/k keys work great.

Reddit isn't a good substitute for anything I already use. It augments them.
Google+ is the same, it augments the things I already use.

A unique attraction for me is that when I +1 something, and later Google
Search, I can find my own +1'd things very, very quickly. That's a completely
unique feature.

Try to find anything you ever saw on Facebook or Reddit, for comparison.

~~~
scholia
I've not found any Pages or Communities that were worth the effort. And
however fast you page, you still end up viewing close to one item per page,
which is ridiculous. I want to see at least 10, preferably 20 or more. (Worse,
G+'s endless pages mean you never get very far down the stream even if you
try.)

------
ratscabies
It's no mystery. Google creeps people out. I am one of them. I read his
comments on Google plus, but you have to be on Google + to respond. Seems self
limiting if you are trying to find out why people don't use it. Facebook is at
least as creepy, but for some reason, people don't seem to care. Twitter, for
the most part, doesn't seem creepy. If I was to be on any of those 3, it would
probably be twitter, though I don't see any reason to use it, so I don't.

------
microtherion
I wonder about that “#2 social network” statistic. Google is, e.g. getting
increasingly pushy about getting me to merge my YouTube account with my G+
account. I wouldn’t be surprised if a sizable proportion of whatever metrics
went into determining that #2 ranking were derived from people who did NOT
think of themselves as “being active on G+”.

Of course the same is true for Facebook, to some extent, with an increasing
number of web sites outsourcing their comment system to them.

~~~
m_ram
Also, it's no longer possible to sign up for any Google product without
getting a G+ account with it. You can remove G+ from your account, but of
course 99.9% of people have no idea how to do this.

------
josephers
> Does it mean that Google did too little, too late? Does it mean that the
> major social networks are all syphoning off their own unique customers that
> will never overlap? Is Google inflating the numbers artificially and it is,
> in fact, dying a slow death? Or, most disturbingly, does it mean that having
> a superior product doesn’t matter as much as strong network effects?

I've never given Google Plus a serious try, but I would totally do it if it
had no barrier to entry
([http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000052.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000052.html)).
If I could try it for a while, use it to create content, then know that if I
don't like it, I can go back to Twitter and others won't even know that I
left, then I would give Google Plus a try.

If Google Plus already does this.. well. Then it's marketing's fault.

~~~
freehunter
What are you looking for? Are you asking that Google+ automatically brings
over all of your Twitter followers? Or automatically Circles everyone you
follow? I don't think either of those would work out very accurately. I'm not
sure what the barrier is that is keeping you from trying Google+, considering
it's completely free, it's competitor is completely free, Google+'s character
limit is far greater than any of its competitors (so you can post the same
stuff)...

You literally can just try Google+ for a while, use it to create content, and
if you don't like it you can go back to Twitter. They're not mutually
exclusive. Google+ doesn't deactivate your Twitter account. It doesn't edit
your hosts file to null route www.twitter.com. There are even browser plugins
that let you post all your existing Twitter and Facebook content to Google+
retroactively, and let you post to both for future posts as well.

So... that doesn't seem like it's marketing's fault. I'm not sure what would
be a barrier to entry to something that's completely free and demands
literally nothing of you.

------
peterkelly
So perhaps Google⊉ might have been a more accurate name?

------
camus
Google should "remove" whatever person is in charge of the G+ UI/UX . It's so
bad . that's why people dont use it. Let the content breath , get ride of the
header that takes half the page on laptops , stuffs like that. It's like they
want it to fail ... It's funny with the load of money Google has , they
usually suck at UI. Youtube UI is good most of the time though some iterations
were bad.

Keep things simple for god sake. Even Microsoft is better at UI than Google.

~~~
PavlovsCat
Youtube is fine in most aspects, but I would consider comment system one of
the most broken things on the web, period. I know it's not easy to make good,
given the variety of audience and usage, much less "perfect", but I doubt
anyone is even trying.

How much of the quality of youtube comments can be attributed to this? Anyone
wanting to make a point or responding to one would rather post the video in a
forum and discuss it there. And considering that it's YOUtube, which means the
initial idea was that people talk into their camera, and others respond with
videos and comments, I wouldn't exactly call the comment system a gimmick
either. It would be nice to at least _theoretically_ be able to have actual
discussion on important videos, right where the video is. But no ^^

