

How Google Can Really Innovate / The Biggest Feature Missing in G+ - christophe971
https://plus.google.com/104656859697947622609/posts/2LHxjAnQw7u

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gfodor
Google+'s entire thesis here is based upon introducing another level of
abstraction, Circles, into social networking. It's risky. Users generally
don't want to learn new abstractions unless they provide a massive benefit or
can be mapped onto something they already understand.

Will this complexity be something users embrace? Facebook clearly thinks the
answer is "No." (And probably has evidence to prove it.) The adoption of G+ so
far is by techie types who love new abstractions and want absolute control,
and is no indication of how the world at large is going to react to it.

Crossing the chasm for this product is going to be particularly tough. The
population of early adopters (techy types) happens to overlap precisely with
the population that will not be turned off by the complexity introduced by
Circles. This is a deadly combination, and will likely put up a wall through
which the adoption of Google+ will not pass.

This post suggests yet another abstraction, tags, on top of everything else.
It's a common reaction: engineer sees a flaw in the degree of control in a
design, and introduces a new level of indirection to add the necessary
control. Of course, this translates into less adoption, since this makes the
product more complex and less approachable.

The Linux GUI is an example of this trap being fallen into over and over again
for decades. (It's come a long way, of course, and a large reason for that has
been the ability for people to learn how to say "No.")

~~~
ekidd
_Users generally don't want to learn new abstractions unless they provide a
massive benefit or can be mapped onto something they already understand._

With Circles, Google is touching right at heart of human social interaction:
You show different sides of your personality to different groups of people.
With your parents, you talk incessantly about the grandkids. With your
buddies, you talk about old times and shared hobbies. With your colleagues,
you talk about your industry. You occasionally mix things up a tiny bit, but
you don't go overboard.

I'm convinced that 99% of the human race _gets_ this. (The other 1% are
intolerable bores.)

Now, I'm not convinced Google has nailed the UI for Circles. For example, if
you want to know who can read your comments on somebody else's post, you need
to click on little blue "Limited" link, and try to make out the profile
photos. In real life, you would just look around the room.

So there's more work to be done. But I suspect that "social circles" _are_
something that users already understand, and which they'll value.

~~~
gfodor
Right, this is a fair point, and what I think G+ is banking on. The
abstraction and additional complexity is clearly there. On the one hand, the
_modelling_ part of the complexity is a wash, since as you state humans
generally already understand separating their social circles. It's the
_application_ of the model that people will find confusing, and will require a
learning curve. It might turn out that just getting through the modelling
phase successfully will be enough for enough people to sign up, and the
complexity of learning how to apply the model effectively can be optional and
left to the user to discover.

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robgough
Actually, this seems like a pretty good idea.

I presume that if G+ really is a collection of smaller projects, then this
functionality would sit neatly inside the stream area.

It's also one of those ideas that once you hear, seems obvious - so wouldn't
be too surprised if they're already working on this. It'd only really be
useful if/when there is a large amount of newsfeed traffic on there, similar
to how busy facebook is for most of us now.

~~~
christophe971
I hope they're working on it, but like I said, I'm mostly worried about the
politics of it.

Also, they might reject that idea just on the basis that their interface won't
be as simple with this...

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ender7
I think the tags idea might be a bit too complex, interface-wise.

I'd prefer an option next to every post in my stream called "fewer posts like
this (from this person)". Given enough feedback from me, G+ would
automatically start filtering out items for me. Since Gmail accomplishes a
similar feat already, this doesn't seem impossible.

However, more practically, I think they could probably just solve my problem
by allowing me to mute an entire contact or an entire person. Currently you
can "block" individuals, but that's not really what I want - I don't want to
block them from seeing me, I just don't want to see their stuff in my main
stream.

~~~
baq
that would be great, especially with multiple levels of visibility: shown in
full length like now, just a one-line note for maybe-relevant and outright
hidden for the really boring/annoying stuff.

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Jach
This seems useful. Hopefully they don't take too long coming out with the
Google Plus API, I predict there will be a lot of thirdparty addons/interfaces
like we saw with Twitter. I'd like to be able to use circles as venn diagrams
and perform more sophisticated unions/intersections/differences/joins on my
circles as well as generate them on the fly for one-use purposes.

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Anon84
Not exactly an innovation, but I would be happy if they let me merge my Buzz
contacts. Just create a "Buzz" circle, move everybody there and kill Buzz.

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daralthus
Great idea, distinction not on peoples but on the content for your feed.
Automagicaly.

I think twitter hashtags are the most close to this, but they lack the
automation you suggest.

I hope developers would be able to make bots for g+, like for Wawe.

~~~
jeffchuber
It is interesting how twitter has de-emphasized the obvious benefit to people
creating custom streams through #tags

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kissickas
Interesting idea but to me it's definitely not the biggest missing feature.

What Google+ needs is reddit or HN-style commenting, maybe not with downvotes
(for whatever reason they don't already have them, even though they're on
YouTube comments) but at least parent-child style commenting. It's been shown
all over the web that it's impossible to follow threads of comments when
they're all treated the same, Facebook-style, and Google employees should
definitely know better as many of them use these sites. I suggested it in the
"Send Feedback" area and really hope it gets implemented as it would be a
game-changer.

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jawns
Here's my solution to this problem, which I tried implementing when I designed
my own (now-defunct) social networking site:

[http://coding.pressbin.com/51/An-algorithm-for-self-
enforcin...](http://coding.pressbin.com/51/An-algorithm-for-self-enforcing-
post-importance-levels)

------
canistr
Personally, I would like to see something that filters out languages I don't
understand. Too often on Facebook my feed is filled up with posts in varying
languages that I simply don't know and I would prefer them not being there.

~~~
toyg
I've suggested a similar feature through their Feedback link, although the
other way around: G+ should detect your contacts' default languages (via
GMail, for example), and then automatically create circles for different
languages (you could amend them manually where you have bilingual people).
When you post, G+ should then detect the language (Translate can do that!) and
suggest the right circle. To work properly though, you'd also need an
"intersect" feature, so that you could share something with "people in
English-speaking circle AND people in Friends circle".

Edit: in any case, considering their experience with Orkut (which was overrun
by Brazilians and Indians using their own idioms), I bet Google is already
working on language filters of some sort.

------
jeffchuber
In reality - what we are saying is that structuring data is useful to saying
who we are and interacting with the right audiences. It amazes me how
unstructured the web continues to be. It's flexible, but is is valuable.

It is a fundamental paradigm shift - saying that the web should be structured
around people. I like it. (and working on it ;))

------
nek4life
Rather than tags I'd just like to see custom streams. Just like you select
circles and individuals to share with apply the same logic to building custom
streams. Then there is not yet another things to learn, interface remains
simple and you could filter your stream any way you want.

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dgudkov
Automated content tagging of any kind contradicts to core idea of social
communication. It's actually step back to AltaVista times.

What G+ needs is one simple checkbox - exclude circle/person from common
Stream. That's it.

PS. And #hashtags -- miss them badly in G+.

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dochtman
It also badly needs prettier URLs.

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rakkhi
Great minds think alike. I was saying exactly the same thing:
[http://www.rakkhis.com/2011/07/google-plus-because-i-hate-
be...](http://www.rakkhis.com/2011/07/google-plus-because-i-hate-being-put-
in.html)

