

Ask HN: Why doesn't Google get it? - vrikhter

Maybe I'm crazy, but why doesn't Google do something outlandish next time they try a social product?  How about instead of opening it up to everyone and replicating 98.2% of the features the other products have they actually try doing something useful for once?<p>Here's a ridiculous idea.  I'm not interested in creating 14 circles with 22 people in each one.  I don't want to group video chat with these people.  I don't want to IM with these people.  I sure as heck don't want to share photos from Picasa of all places with these people.  Stop taking other products that already do their job and do it well by bringing it all into one.  If an entrepreneur pitched me this idea, I'd tell him to slow down.  What problem is he solving for me with +?  I have no clue.  Sharing?  Not a problem.  Chatting?  Not a problem.  Video conferencing?  Not a problem.  Group sharing based on a common interest?  Not a problem.  Random news or information (sparks)?  Not a problem.<p>Focus on a product that enhances my actual social network.  My closes friends.  Maybe that's limited to 5 circles with 10 friends each, maybe it's less.  Maybe my friends from each circle belong in more than one circle.  Maybe I want to share information with just a cross section of those circles.<p>I know that's a lot of maybes, but I just wish Google would stop replicating and combining services that are already out there.<p>End of rant.  I'll try + again in a month when I'm proven wrong by all of my friends using  it.
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aufreak3
With G+, I'm seeing a change in emphasis that I like very much. In FB, when I
post something, I'm not thinking about who's going to see it. In G+, I spend a
little bit of time thinking about who this is for. I'm guessing this makes it
more likely to engage in interesting varied types of conversations on G+ than
the standard pub-like generic small talk that ends up happening on FB.

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nostrademons
So what problem _do_ you have with social networking?

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vrikhter
I actually don't have a problem with social networking. I know where FB and
Twitter sit in my world. I use both of them regularly. I don't see how + is
significantly different than either of those products. I've already hidden
most people I don't need to see on my FB feed and of course Twitter is curated
by people I'm interested in. What else am I missing here?

EDIT: Let me follow that up by saying that the majority of my conversations
that could be considered 'social', still happen in email. Is that a problem
someone could solve? Or is that too far fetched to be solved by a social
network?

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nostrademons
Then Google+ isn't for you. If you don't have a problem, why go looking for a
solution?

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vrikhter
That's a valid question. Maybe you're right. Let me explain it to you this way
if I may. I may not be sure if I have problem, until it's explained to me that
I'm missing something and thus a problem appears (isn't all marketing just
that?). For example, my Dad runs a small biz and every week collects his
employees time information by hand and calls Paychex to input the payroll. He
doesn't really have a problem doing this, although it takes up nearly one hour
if not more a week for him (or every other week). When I showed him tools that
automated this for him and saved him time, he was quite thankful. He didn't
realize he had a problem spending one hour every week (or every other week)
doing this work, until I showed him a solution that made his current system
seem problematic.

At the moment I feel like there is more to social than just FB, TW and email.
However, I can't quite pin point it myself - and I've tried. I was hoping
someone quite smarter than me would do it, but they missed, and a by a lot in
my opinion.

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waqf
They did something outlandish with Wave. How did that turn out?

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vrikhter
Was it? I thought wave was just a combination of chat, docs, email. It didn't
solve any particular problem I had, it just combined everything I used to
collaborate with people.

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tmbsundar
[http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-
networ...](http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-network-v2)

~~~
vrikhter
Yes yes yes. I saw that a while back and figured that's the only man on the
planet that could actually solve this problem intelligently :)

