
Google+ Opens to All - Umalu
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/google-92-93-94-95-96-97-98-99-100.html
======
Kylekramer
The fact that dozens of comments think 90 days is too long for a service to be
invite only shows we are really in a instant gratification news bubble here.
90 days! People act like we are talking about Chinese Democracy or Duke Nukem
Forever here (not to mention that for about 80 of those days getting in was
merely a five minute search process for anyone who really cared).

The majority of comments here are about too long of an invite window, nymwars,
and Google Apps. While I appreciate those are important issues for people,
acting like they are going to kill Google+ is extremely shortsighted and
uninteresting. They are about as much of a factor in Google+'s success as the
quality of the concession stands at Fenway to the Red Sox's success.

~~~
0x12
You can't simultaneously have an invite system _and_ a huge marketing push.
It's like pretending that you are classy and telling a lot of people that they
are not part of the crowd you consider good enough to make it through the
front door.

You have one chance to launch a service like this for a large audience. If you
want to do an invite only private beta to get the kinks out then you would
probably have to do that under a different name. Once you associate the google
brand with it people expect it to work and expect it to work at scale.

Anything less is blowing your first impression. 90 days to wait to try a new
service? People are simply not going to wait that long, they _might_ have
tried it in the first week but three months is a relatively long period to
feel left out, that's a negative first impression. It takes a lot of work to
undo a negative first impression.

As for google+ not going to be killed, they did it to wave and plenty of other
products that did not attract enough users to be good enough for google, why
would google+ be different, especially with a purposefully slowed down launch
like this? That only increases the chance.

~~~
finisterre
> You can't simultaneously have an invite system > and a huge marketing push.

I don't think Google has done a huge marketing push, yet, considering how big
a product this is for them.

They've done little press and haven't bought advertising online or in the real
world - something they did for Chrome. They've so far done pretty much the
minimum a company of such scale could do for a product this big. It was
inevitable that a lot of people would want to join as soon as they heard of
Google's plans.

I have a feeling that the marketing push is very much still to come.

~~~
enjalot
> I have a feeling that the marketing push is very much still to come.

sign out of google services and go to google.com If everyone gets that little
arrow, that's a pretty big marketing push...

~~~
thomaslangston
Which happened on the same day they are dropping invite-only, correct?

------
xnxn
I'm alarmed that the comments here are so bitter. Am I the only one who's had
a positive experience with G+ so far? (Is my perception rose-tinted because I
really, really want Facebook to die?)

The new Hangout stuff is great, and the addition of screen sharing has now
obviated my need to use Skype. Maybe when On Air opens up I'll be able to
broadcast my programming sessions.

~~~
ineedtosleep
Overall, (and, forgive me, since I'm going relatively OT here) I've noticed a
lot of hostility towards Google in every Google post. I've not been with HN
for too long, so I don't know if this is what partially defines HN, but I'm
starting to get irked by it.

~~~
guelo
I think a lot of it has to do with the HN love for Apple. HN used to love
Google until they became Apple's enemy #1.

~~~
sigstop
What I find more disturbing is the influx of Microsoft friendly commenters.
Articles on various MS products are frequent and receive a lot of praise.

Articles that point out how MS is crippling innovation through extortion of
Linux users receive relatively little attention.

Google is an extremely open company (with respect to user data and user rights
as well as contributions to open source software). However, most comments
about Google products and contributions seem to take the most negative view
possible. Case in point, today's article on Richard Stallman's comments on
Android focused on how he was critical of Android, mostly ignoring that he
said "Android is a major step towards an ethical, user-controlled, free-
software portable phone..." Android is still the most open major platform out
there. It's put Linux on millions of devices.

~~~
gurkendoktor
> Android is still the most open major platform out there. It's put Linux on
> millions of devices.

If you want to do crazy stuff on your iPhone you jailbreak it. If you want to
do crazy stuff on your average Android you root it. How does using Linux alone
make something 'more open'?

I also think that most metrics for being "open" are missing the big point
about the cloud. Yeah, maybe Google's business code is written in FOSS tech
and they give people a FOSS browser and one or two FOSS mobile OS to use their
services. Where's the _practical_ open-ness for the end user? It's still a
cloud ecosystem, the one thing that is worse than a closed-source desktop
ecosystem.</rant>

------
sjs382
...almost everyone.

"Google+ is not yet available for Google Apps. Learn More."

I should have known better than to get my hopes up...

~~~
binaryorganic
This. They must have really backed themselves into a corner somehow when they
were building Google Profiles. I. Will. Not. Open. A. Secondary. Account.
Ever.

~~~
pilif
I had my Gmail account way before they even introduced Apps accounts, let
alone before I migrated my company mail to Google Apps.

So, let me tell you this: You made a good decision. While dealing with
multiple accounts on the desktop is annoying, it's utterly terrible on mobile
because their slow-as-hell multiple sign-in feature _doesn't work on mobile_.

Yeah. While on the desktop it's annoying but not that much of a hassle to sign
out and back in, it's terrible to having to do that on a phone - especially
once you enable two factor authentication.

Before they "fixed" (note the quotes) the apps accounts so they can use (not
quite) all of google's services, I could at least stay signed in with both
accounts. Not any more.

This ended up with me having two browsers, one for plus, reader and all other
google services I had much prior to creating the apps account and one for
reading mail in gmail.

Yes. I could migrate to an Android phone. Been there. Done that. Multiple
times. I really tried. Over two years on and off.

While Gmail works much better, everything else is just full of paper cuts and
annoys the hell out of me over time, so I'd rather stay with the iPhone.

So. If anybody from Google is seeing this, I admit it freely, rant: Please,
please, please, please fix this.

At least give us multiple sing-on on your mobile apps, at best let us stay
signed in with multiple accounts at once or, alternatively, give us the
Android Gmail app on iOS (it's not much more than a website anyways).

~~~
Jem
What's worse is that since "fixing" the apps accounts I now have different
services signed up with both my apps and (empty, useless) gmail account. I
have to play a guessing game and hope I'm logged in to the right one to find
what I need.

------
kadabra9
Too late, guys.

Facebook is already copying the features that make G+ cool/useful (circles,
etc), and the one big, inherent advantage you had in your favor (Your user
base, e.g every Google account) you alienated by keeping it "invite only" for
too long.

Either open it to everyone sooner, or hold off on this prolonged "invite
period" so you don't risk confusing / alienating people that want to try G+
but can't.

G+ feels like its the same 10 guys posting the same thing over and over, while
Facebook feels like, well.. Facebook.

~~~
brador
Agreed. I wouldn't use Google+, I would also recommend to everyone I know that
they never use Google+. The implications of loosing my gmail account over a
trivial name change are just too seemingly random and risky. It's just not
worth it.

Facebook won by default. Google+ had a chance, it really could have succeeded,
but something went terribly wrong with it's management. Piss poor execution
and hints that Google is really struggling to find good talent to run it's new
enterprises.

~~~
suivix
I agree with your reasoning. Everything you do on Google+ can be flagged, and
you're at risk of losing your Gmail account by using Google+. Even a name
change could put your whole account in jeopardy.

~~~
brador
The worst part is there's very little you can do to give your side of the
story. Their judgements are practically final unless you're sleeping with a
Google employee who can have an internal chat to clear your name. But like I
said, right now, you couldn't pay me to sign up to Google+. If it ever becomes
mandatory, I'm moving my emails out.

~~~
amartya916
I recommend setting up a local mail client (say Mail on the Mac, Thunderbird
etc.). I just recently did this; the rationale being that I'd at least get to
keep my e-mails and contacts. So even if GMail conks out or they throw me out
for whatever reason, the situation won't be that bad. I think Google's a great
company that provides really important services, but I'd rather hedge my bets
than rely on them completely.

------
naner
The whole "real names" fiasco[1] diminished my excitement for the platform.

1: [http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/08/04/real-
na...](http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/08/04/real-names.html)

~~~
andrewcooke
that's still not been fixed, has it?

~~~
syeren
I find this quite funny considering they are doing a world-wide unveiling of
one of their new Hangout features with such a profile:
<https://plus.google.com/u/0/109351399938437494273/posts>

~~~
ajross
You're missing the point, I think. "will.i.am" is a stage name, not an
anonymous handle. Whatever you think of the validity of the rule, surely you
agree that its spirit is to make sure you can always clearly associate the
account with the real person it belongs to. Surely you agree that the existing
name achieves that better than "William James Adams, Jr.", right?

~~~
Dylan16807
They don't accept "the name most people know you by" either unless you're
special enough. Look at Skud. [http://infotrope.net/2011/07/22/ive-been-
suspended-from-goog...](http://infotrope.net/2011/07/22/ive-been-suspended-
from-google-plus/)

~~~
ajross
The point was more subtle than that. It's not merely "most people" in this
case, it's a public account for a celebrity. The overwhelming majority of
people, and essentially all of the target market, have no earthly idea what
his real name is and don't care.

Regardless of what you think about whether this is a good or bad rule (and I
tend to agree it's a bad one), no one is served under any interpretation of
the rule by disallowing celebrities from posting under their stage names.

Basically, if it's an exception to the rule, then it's a sane and well-
justified one. If it's a subtle edge case, then so be it. I think it makes
very bad evidence of hypocrisy on Google's part.

------
sp332
Why is everyone complaining about Apps accounts not being able to sign up? It
says right on the "features" page
<http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/features.html> "99.9% uptime SLA"
which means that if they add a service with less than 99.9% uptime, they're
going to lose money. They haven't even finished writing Google+ for normal
users, there's no way they can make promises about support yet.

Edit: according to this, you're not even logging in to the same service.
[http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/static.py?page=gu...](http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/static.py?page=guide.cs&guide=29934&topic=29935)
That's... not optimal.

~~~
fortes
Non-apps services aren't subject to the same SLA. If you go into the domain
management UI, they are very explicit about this.

~~~
zmmmmm
But then I have to imagine that the tentacles of all these services intertwine
in such a way that introducing G+ to Apps may not only cause G+ to fail but
also supported Apps services.

------
hasanove
I find it interesting that out of ~50 comments in supposedly early adopter
crowd, there is not a single positive comment about Google+. As much as I want
them to succeed, this looks like a pretty bad sign.

And yes, I am one of those who cannot participate with my Google Apps account.

~~~
belthesar
I really wanted to like G+ too, but I think most news.yc users have migrated
their email in one forum or another to Google Apps... muchly because it was
the perfect thing for us bleeding edge users who fell in love with Gmail to be
able to use a properly branded address for our mail.

------
0x12
This is like the person that plays 'hard to get' for 15 years, then finds out
everybody's taken.

Windows of opportunity come and they go just as fast. Google+ had a chance, I
think they've missed their connection.

------
calloc
I've been using Google+ since it was first made available, I've got may main
personal account on there, and several accounts for fake persona's and a
business account for my business (still hasn't been tagged or removed by
Google for not being a real name).

The only people who I've seen are affected by the "nymwars" seem to be
celebrity accounts or people that like to go by pen names on social networks.
With my various fake accounts I have had no issues yet, most likely because
they don't get a ton of traffic and fly under the radar. It is not like
Facebook hasn't had these issues either, whereby they will lock people out of
their account until they send in a photo ID (locking out out of your Facebook
mail/text messaging stuff as well).

I keep hearing stories about how people consider it a desert or that certain
articles and stories are claiming that there is 40% less activity. I've
noticed that I have started to become more careful as to who gets to see my
posts and if they are allowed to share them. More information is shared in
specific circles rather than publicly. I've also found that there is much more
engagement on Google+ than any other social service.

When I post something on Google+ I get more feedback, more people commenting
on my posts and more people having intelligent discourse than on Facebook or
Twitter, or even my blog. Since I can target specific circles I am able to
categorise my friends based on what I think they would be interested in, so
instead of having non-tech friends get techy stuff from me and thus becoming
disinterested they only get my personal stuff that they might find
interesting, like how it is going in my life.

Yes, Facebook has had that for a while as well, however it was always more
tedious to set it up, get people into the various circles, and now that it has
been made easier they have cocked it up royally:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3018403>

For me so far Google+ has become more interesting, more targeted and has much
less noise compared to the signal. Will that change as more people join?
Maybe, I'm not so sure, as I think people will realise that with circles they
don't have to include me in a conversation (nor will it show up in my stream)
with a mutual friend... (public walls ...)

~~~
sssparkkk
About posting techy stuff: what do you when you don't want to bother your non-
tech friends with posts like that, but you _do_ want all the people (that you
don't know) following you to be able to read these posts? Have you manually
put everyone of those in a circle as well?

~~~
calloc
I post very little in public, I try to keep it to a minimum, I don't think it
is fair to dominate a single persons stream. If and when I do want to publicly
post something I do so knowing that everyone gets to see it, including those
in my tech circles.

I just get more selective of what posts I do that with. Generally I try to
keep it short, or just a link to a blog post so that it is easier to skim over
it and realise that it is not of interest.

Google+'s feature of allowing people to mute a post is absolutely fantastic as
well, and allows people to control whether or not their stream gets my content
that is actively being commented on.

Would I love a feature that would allow me to post publicly but not include
certain circles (or rather, not force it into their stream), absolutely. Have
some way of doing soft suggestions when posting publicly, as in, this circle
may be interested in it, and those following me may be interested in it, but
my family isn't interested in it so don't push it to their stream.

------
jsz0
Is anyone actually using Plus? My stream is so dead I don't even bother
checking it anymore. It's a ghost town over there.

~~~
jasonwilk
my stream is dead too. I've since left.

------
thunga
Google+ Opens to All other than for people with google app accounts...

------
carterparks
Except for Google Apps users

~~~
suivix
Could you please explain what this means? The blog post says that anyone can
join the project.

~~~
goldensaucer
You can host Google Apps on your own domain, like s.archer@isis.org, but you
can't register for a G+ account using that email address. You can only use
gmail addresses, and not everyone uses or wants to use a gmail address as
their primary account.

~~~
seabee
I actually set up another Google profile using an email account managed by
Apps, and this works fine for me. But it's not the solution I want since you
have to switch users whenever you want to use Plus.

~~~
suivix
It's advantageous to have them on separate accounts in case you are
arbitrarily banned from Google Plus. This way it has no chance of affecting
your other services. It would devastate me if I lost my main email.

------
muyuu
Google+ first didn't let me to use a different name for my account, and then
showed me a nice dialog, in words to this effect: "do you want to link Picasa
to your account? (yes) (cancel Google+ account creation)"

So long, Google+

~~~
calloc
Picasa is what is used for Google+'s photo backend. You are not required to
share anything from Picasa on Google+ and vice-versa.

~~~
muyuu
Google has it though. Well, this made me go to Picasa and delete everything
except for random funny internet pics. Same as youtube made me go and delete
all my personal flicks when they forced me to link it to my gmail account.
After creating another gmail account to link it to.

------
BvS
For me the public Hangouts (Hangouts On Air) seem even more interesting.

------
infinite_snoop
Great! It's just a shame that all of my friends have died of old age waiting
for the invite period to finish.

Seriously, what was the reasoning for this? It's not like Google don't have
the infrastructure/capability to scale quickly.

------
w1ntermute
Too little, too late. Facebook already aped all of their innovations.

~~~
calloc
Yeah, with a circles implementation that absolutely sucks.

When my co-worker placed me in his "work" circle on Facebook I automatically
received a request to verify that I indeed do work at "Company X" with "John
Smith", when I clicked that this was correct it automatically added it to my
profile.

I keep my profile on Facebook clean. I don't have many page "likes" nor do I
have my full employment history on there, I don't want it there either, I've
got LinkedIn for that, or my personal portfolio site.

Why did Facebook consider it a good idea to automatically send me
notifications when my co-worker categorises what "circles" I should be in?

This is not limited to just work, if you add someone to your family "circle"
they get asked what relationship they have to you (parent, sibling, stuff like
that).

As a friend of a friend said:

"So if I add someone to my douche bag does it ask them to confirm they are a
douche bag? Or does it just scan their photo for aeropostale and their
comments for their use of, "bro"."

------
joelhaus
If Google+ doesn't become a much more integral part of future Android
releases, it will be a huge surprise. For me, the Google+ Android app has a
killer feature: instant upload of pics/video taken with your phone to a
Google+/Picasa folder that you can set to private or share with select
circles.

To the extent that Google does integrate these two products, G+ will greatly
benefit from having the huge Android user base as a source of growth and
content, attracting many more engaged users to the platform.

------
glhaynes
Not at all sure if it was stupid of them to wait this long to let everybody in
(you want socializing on your social network!) or brilliant because now
they'll get a lot more press right when the buzz seemed to be dying down.

One also wonders how this route will affect their demographics long-term...
it's got a bit of a "geeky" slant so far, which seems to be working for them,
but might not be in their best interests against Facebook.

Edit: kadabra9 makes a good point in saying that Facebook can (and rapidly
seems to be!) copying/nullifying any advantage that Google+ provided so
perhaps they shot themselves in the foot by not growing as big and as fast as
they could. Time will tell.

~~~
RegEx
The hype from weeks ago is long past over. Google plus came out of nowhere,
took everyone by surprise. They instilled a sense of scarcity through invites
in order to make the people want it. Eventually the people just forgot about
it. I wanted Google plus to work, but it lost momentum long ago.

------
pycassa
google plus is like the bing of social networks

~~~
noarchy
I'm almost willing to be that more people are using Bing, relative to Bing's
main competition. G+ has to get the buzz back, or this risks becoming Wave,
Part 2.

Edit: I deserve some flack for using the word "buzz", I know ;)

~~~
SandB0x
> G+ has to get the _buzz_ back

Not a great choice of words there!

------
Jun8
I didn't have a bad experience with G+. I didn't have a uniquely good
experience either, though. My only friends over there are techie types. For my
circles, after the initial chatter, the postings have decreased significantly,
and coming to HN is better than the technology news posted there.

Many people talk about how quickly G+ achieved N million users, but the import
part is the engagement from users. I don't think G+ has achieved anything like
that yet. Many people start using it due to the integration with Gmail but
then just stop and go back to FB and Twitter.

------
twidlit
Here is why Facebook will not lose any momentum over Google+. They are too
agile, well-run and nimble at the moment. That and google+ architecture is too
similar to Facebook.

Facebook is doing a good job matching Circles, improving photos on the feed,
improving chat, etc. Almost every unique features of G+ are now competing with
a 'good enough' counterpart on Facebook. Expect Facebook to match any new ones
popping up from Google's camp all the while rolling out more new stuff around
music, videos and photos.

------
sssparkkk
I got all excited when I saw 'Huddle' had been replaced by 'messenger';
thinking this would mean google talk and huddles had been integrated. I mean,
wouldn't it be great to have an alternative to the closed stuff like
whatsapp/kik/etc? Google would have to start by releasing a native google talk
client for the iphone (why isn't there one yet?!).

I'm amazed that after all these years there's still no real open standard for
instant messaging that is also actually the defacto standard.

~~~
lukesandberg
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Messaging_and_Presen...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Messaging_and_Presence_Protocol)

XMPP is pretty much the standard instant messaging protocol these days and it
is supported by google talk... im not sure about Huddle though... i assume it
is also through google talk just with a special ui for selecting circles.

------
goldensaucer
Why is there even a set number of invites left for each G+ user? I see that I
still have 94 Gmail invites even, and in both cases, I'm not seeing the point.

~~~
Lewisham
So that it can't be used as a spam vector: Gmail trusts all mail that comes
from Google.

------
yason
Is there a Facebook application already that posts from Google+ to Facebook
and imports replies and likes back to Google+? The mass of people on Facebook
is a barrier to entry and they have to consider it somehow.

------
zeratul
I wish there was a way to merge this post with a related one:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3018236>

Google+ offers quick and continuous iteration of new features.

------
Hyena
Time to see whether it will fly or the slowdown was a sign of trouble.

~~~
dredmorbius
I see too many bumps, particularly the Nymwars / privacy issues. My suspicion
is that the calculus was to allow more people in as a bid to keep momentum,
rather than fix the problems first.

The user experience is going to (or at least should) change very significantly
to fix numerous bugs. With more (and less sophisticated) users on board, this
will be more problematic.

~~~
Hyena
I'm of two minds about this. As a Nymwar veteran, I naturally see this as a
problem. But lots of people don't, especially outside early Internet app
adoption groups. Adding scale may make the problem less pronounced by
dilution. Privacy seems to be less concerning outside this group as well.

But I don't know how it will play out.

------
gurkendoktor
One thing that could maybe have won me over to G+ is a great iPad client.
Tablets are almost made to relax and scroll over your friends' updates. The
nymwars ruined it too, though.

------
zerostar07
They 've released a hangouts api, yet there's still no way to retrieve
someone's friends? (or is there such an API? couldn't find it). Come on
google, we haven't got all day!

------
eps
The line-up at the door must've been starting to thin out :)

------
tnorthcutt
Could a mod edit the title? As it is right now, it's rather misleading to
those of us hoping that they've finally made + open to apps accounts.

~~~
ElbertF
It's open for everyone, meaning you can sign up without an invitation.

------
samrat
And when will it be open for those under eighteen years of age?

------
sorennielsen
Open to all... Unless you're using Google Apps like I do ಠ_ಠ

------
radq
Looks like you still need to be "over a certain age"... :(

~~~
tomkarlo
That's true of Facebook, too. Complain to your legislators, it's because COPA
is so impractical that nobody bothers to attempt to comply with the measures
necessary to allow kids on a social media site.

~~~
bunnyhero
Facebook is 13+, but Google+ is currently limited to 18+.

~~~
tomkarlo
I believe they've (the G+ team) already publicly stated that's coming down to
13.

------
bad_user
It isn't open to Google Apps users.

------
badclient
Google+ is dead.

~~~
tintin
And why would a company bother to continue a services that is dead?

~~~
badclient
Desperation.

------
gamma_raj
Its high time they opened it. Google+ seemed like desert.

------
diamondhead
Everyone except the users of Google Apps. Nobody talks about this bullshit.

[http://www.google.com/support/+/bin/answer.py?answer=1407609...](http://www.google.com/support/+/bin/answer.py?answer=1407609&hl=en)
[http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google%20Apps/thread?t...](http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google%20Apps/thread?tid=08f56168a00dc731&hl=en)

They blocked lots of active users of many Google services, this way.

------
sheabarton
Except google apps users..

------
jigs_up
+1 for pissed off Google Apps users.

------
cwp
Well, everyone except Google Apps users.

------
willy1234x1
Maybe I'm just missing something but does anyone else here not give a flying
fuck about the "real name fiasco"? What's so damn bad about using your real
name? Can't be an internet tough guy when you have to use your real name? The
most I think all Google should do is allow you to use a screen name for
following purposes but still show your real name as well (kind of how Twitter
has the screen name and name fields.)

~~~
muyuu
\- Privacy considerations

\- Identity theft

\- Stalking

~~~
toyg
Yeah, because Facebook is SO private, and completely devoid of impostors and
stalkers.

Honestly, if this is the worst that anti-googlers can come up with, well... it
isn't much.

~~~
Jem
I'm not anti-Google; they virtually own my entire life (slightly scary). I
still think they fucked up over the real name issue.

