From how much of it I have used so far it is apparent that they have been listening to complaints about Facebook and other social networking sites. It is a far better venture than Buzz ever was, but even now Buzz appears as a view able tab and I am not sure why.
Though I must say I am having more fun causing the animations on the circles to happen then anything else.
With all the hype surrounding google+ it's a crying shame it's not openly available. Within a couple of days my interest will have subsided and it will be nothing but a distant memory .. which I can imagine will be the case for a lot of people.
Hopefully if it is any good, it will claw it's way back into the media spotlight, but how many people will try for a second time to sign up. IMHO the invite only plan will kill it before it gets any kind of real traction.
Edit: I'm aware gmail done well using invite only to begin with. But gmail was a leap ahead of it's competitors.
Making it invite-only forces people to talk about it. Gmail's slow launch was done really well, and probably drove interest more than harmed it. If Google handles this well, the same thing could happen for Google+.
I haven't seen any hype surrounding google+ except for HN and other similar communities. I don't think the regular FB user is even aware that google+ is in testing phase, or that google is even working on anything like it.
Heck, how many have heard of google wave outside of the geek circle?
I've been sent an invite, thanks to whoever sent that, but it turns out I can't use the damn thing because I have a google apps account set up for my domain, just like everyone else here probably does.
Plus requires a google profile in order to use it, and Apps accounts can't have profiles. Apparently someone from google has said this will be coming "soon."
WTF google? Hasn't it occurred to you that the set of power users/evangelists/early adopters and the set of people who have their own apps account on their domain might overlap a bit?
This isn't so much dropping the ball, it's bordering on an own goal.
Any googlers reading this: sort it out. Or go and bother the nearest person responsible for sorting it out, lest my disappointment spill over into murderous rage.
Agreed, and the 'gmail did this' argument fails. If gmail was only substantially useful with other gmail users, a slow launch would not have made any kind of sense.
About the only justification for a slow launch is to avoid buggering up the scaling or having the entire world discover some massive UX flaw almost immediately - so it's tough for them. I hope they hit a good balance.
It started to get overloaded and throw errors right before they shut down email invites again last night, so I think they're likely trying to scale up as quickly as they can.
I used to think that it matters, but you can create circles with people who don't have plus (as long as you have their email) so I don't think it will hamper adoption.
I definitely agree. Google+ isn't that revolutionary that people will continue talking about it months from now when it's open to the public. They should've made it open to anyone and capitalized on all the press happening.
And I don't think Google+ will come anywhere close to overthrowing Facebook. Yes, the circles thing sounds cool and all, but it sounds cool to us rationalized hackers. For normal people, they just want a place to see what others are up to, to showcase their narcissistic profile, and to make witty comments. That's all. We don't need Circles. We don't even care about privacy.. it's just something us geeks cry about. The one thing Google probably didn't give as much thought to is how the user profile will look like. They probably put too much effort on the Circles feature.. well the Circles feature ain't gonna help make you look good to other people.. a fancy profile page will though, so there goes your traction.
Invites are so bloody rare. Gmail was groundbreaking (and empirically offered way more space, etc) so people were going nuts for invites. This is, at best, a "bit better than Facebook". And much as people dislike it, Facebook is a pretty powerful tool, as opposed to webmail before Gmail, which majorly sucked.
We're working on a startup with an app that functions very similarly to the Sparks feature of Google+. The app will recommend new things for you to read and watch based on your interests (which are stored long-term, but can be ordered, edited, removed). Now that Google+ has a very similar feature in Sparks, I need to think long and hard on whether to continue with the idea. (We are a small team with three developers and a couple other members.)
Do you think we should continue to work on this? Would you use something like Google Sparks as a stand-alone Website or mobile app? If we continue, what would be significant differentiating functionalities that Google can't easily copy and deploy? (I am considering showing a different style of recommended results from Google Sparks, e.g. long-term, evergreen articles versus newsflash, but of course Google can do that too.)
I am torn right now. Thanks a bunch for any ideas and opinions on this.
Ditto, I had a side project that was evolving in the same direction as the way Google circles' deals with photosharing.
I had heard of circles previously when they leaked things last year, but I assumed it would be vapourware or a half-start like Buzz or Wave. Now that they have actually come out with the product, I'm going to have to pivot away to plan B.
If you're a startup building another social network, I think the question to ask yourself is: what's our business model?
Unless you are well connected in the valley, have insane traction already, have boatloads of cash, don't like or need money or are doing it for charity, it's not a startup, it's just a hobby.
I think the smart thing to do now is ride the social networking wave and build something on top of it.
This will be an app to help people follow their favorite topics. Think RSS, but filter by topics instead of websites. Or think Reddit, but with only links on your favorite topics. (The topics can be more fine-grained and flexible than putting existing subreddits together.)
Of course, there will be social components on it, but the key functionality is the links to interesting articles/videos/books instead of chattering with your friends.
Can I try it? If there was something good like this, I would probably use it.
Sparks doesn't do anything interesting right now. It's like Google search results but from a tiny subset of the web, so at least right now, you need not worry about it.
On one hand, there are always going to be people who don't get on Google+, and Sparks is very basic so there's always room for someone to do it better.
On the other hand, I'm not sure it would be possible to make any money on it, other than getting acquired. I don't know that people would pay money for something like Sparks.
Don't be concerned because Google is competing. Be concerned because everyone I've talked to agrees that Sparks sucks, and is by far the weakest part of Google+.
Can you please elaborate on this? How does Sparks suck? It's gonna be great to know some more details so we can avoid bad design decisions and possible product failure.
I haven't used Sparks, but I can say this: my primary use for a social network isn't discovering new content. There are already so many awesome ways of doing that. Google Reader or StumbleUpon or Reddit or Delicious seem like better ways of discovering new and interesting content about a certain topic. But maybe Sparks will succeed because it will be a lot simpler to use than these other options and it will be built into some people's primary social network.
Here's a quote about Sparks from the Wired article on Google+:
The signals that Google looks for in determining Sparks content is freshness, a visual component (videos will rank highly), and the degree to which the content is virally spreading on the net.http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/06/inside-google-plus-so...
It throws up a bunch of content out there when I choose a spark. I don't know how they rank the content or how relevant it is to my spark. For example, I tried "Soccer" and it threw up a bunch of results - one them was a link to http://kelviniransomes.blogspot.com/2011/06/eastern-district....
I'd imagined that when you add a spark, you get a bunch of stuff grouped under various categories and various types of information like News, Companies, Products, Blogs, etc. And in case of Soccer, I'd have wanted to see scores, league standings, etc. Basically be intelligent about the topic.
I'd be a little bit concerned if I were building a web content recommendation system, and my competitor is the world's largest and best index of web content.
From what I can see (From demos, no invite yet, got one? :( ) Google got alot of things right that Facebook got wrong. Mostly concerning privacy and sharing. Now, like most people say, Facebook has all these settings to share stuff with the people you want to share with, but my problem is that the whole security settings thing is a MESS! If google can do that right, while providing a better android app than FB does, that's enough for me to ditch Facebook for Google+.
I do not have a Google+-shaped hole in my life right now.
If a) it starts to matter to non-technical Internet users and b) they tie it into search heavily (which is the Google go-to playbook for promoting properties of strategic importance), I will start caring with alacrity.
Facebook didn't really create anything new when it launched, it was simply less annoying and more grown up than myspace. I'm already a heavy user of the Google stack (gmail, docs, maps, translate), so if G+ offers me a way to better integrate that while getting away from facebook's annoying immaturity, I can see myself as a regular user. What facebook does have right now is a reason to check it multiple times a day. G+ will get that if a lot of my friends start using it, but it doesn't appear to have that draw yet.
What makes me hate facebook is that it is closed, So yes I would switch to G+ as I see in future all my google services[mail, calenader, maps, doc] integrated into my social networks and devices with the onset Android and the Google TV, and chrome browser all well intergated, privacy is not my concern. Rather I would love all my digital services intergated witha single vendor so that it can provide me with the kind of AI services google is known for[that too for free].
Just could not stop myself from posting this comment from 'lifebyexperimentation' .. the blogger[with hands on experience ] says my point in much better manner
"Everything is smoothly integrated into one place, from Google Chat to the notification center in the upper right. I wonder if I will be able to access my gmail and iGoogle widgets from Google+? If so, then it could provide a one-stop-shop for everything and take over as my browser homepage (something Facebook never had a chance at doing). One thing I have to be thankful for in that Google+ works well internationally because it remembers my Google settings. No other company could manage this.
Overall, like any social network, the #1 determining factor will be adoption. If my friends use it, I will use it. But adoption is based upon a good user experience and a service that solves a problem, and to my surprise Google+ seems to be accomplishing just that (I actually did not expect to like it).
"
Just watch as your friends and family drag you through the don't-need-it wall carving a Google+ shaped hole.
Google+ will succeed because it's an exact clone of Facebook, but faster, more open to search engines (shocking!), integrated right into Gmail and makes it easier than Facebook to spam people.
The feature which Google is claiming to be the revolutionary new thing (Circles) has already existed in Facebook for a long time (lists and I've been using them). The problem with Facebook lists is that they are hidden, so most people don't know about them or can't be bothered to create them.
At first I thought Circles will fail like lists because it's too much work. But after playing with it for a few seconds, I realised Circles is going to be a huge win. Why? Because it's too much work and people LOVE wasting time on the internet. And it's fun dragging and dropping people into circles.
Whether you're a techie or not, you already know how to use Google+. Even if you want to avoid it, you won't be able to for long because it's going to be everywhere you go from now on.
Excuse the awful pun, but this thing's a vicious Circle.
Facebook lists are pretty much useless. Yes, you can hide all your status updates from a selected bunch of people, but if you want to show them a single one you've got to make a bunch of additional clicks and then type in the lists' name (if you can recall it). It seems as if the feature was on purpose crippled so no one would bother to use it. Simplifying the whole process should be quite easy - and that's what Google did (I guess).
That's right. By making the feature opt-in (choose who should see this), instead of opt-out (choose who should not see this), Google has made a better version of Lists.
Though the rest of the features are relatively mild, I'm definitely a fan of the "hangout". I was just on a chat earlier with 4 friends - I'm in the pacific northwest, three of them were in the midwest in several cities and one was all the way on the other side of the world, in Calcutta. Quality was fantastic and smooth, especially considering our pal in India was on a tethered 1Mbps cellular connection. Needless to say, I'm sold. Google+ makes Skype look like some teenager's high school science project gone wrong.
While the UI is good with animations and a nice design, I don't see anything that will make me shift completely away from FB: I might use it for hangout as an alternative to calling over google chat/skype. That's about it.
I find I miss the simplicity of Facebook to a degree. With plus, it's not really clear who I'm sharing what with at any given time, or what the relationships I've set up are. Facebook has one kind of relationship (1-1) and one kind of sharing (to your friends or to everybody, depending on how your security settings are configured).
It's also missing a number of essential (at least for college students) facebook features, like events and richer profiles.
I'm playing with it for now, but I don't think I can manage two social networks and since nearly all of my friends are on Facebook it's not hard to choose one. Maybe some day that will change, but network effects augur otherwise.
Edit: I should note that hangouts are seriously cool, and they might be reason enough for people to start using it.
Have you ever clicked the little padlock next to the Share input widget? You can choose between Everyone, Friends of Friends, Friends only, or Customize. If you choose the last one, you can select groups of friends or individual friends, or everyone except a list of excluded friends. Facebook has gotten pretty complicated...
One of the comments I saw on Google+ is making a distinction between a "plaza" and a "warren". Facebook defaults to plaza though it can do warren with some contortion. Likewise, Google+ defaults to warren and can do plaza with some contortion.
With my wide-ranging interests and extremely, sometimes mutually-exclusive perspectives, personal beliefs, pet philosophies and operating paradigm, I prefer a social network that defaults to a "warren".
FWIW, I have created a HN stream and added ~40 of you who sent emails. You should be able to signup to google+ using that. If it tells you to retry later, please do that. It works - eventually.
I feel hangout is gonna be the dark horse feature. Imagine coming back from a hard day's work, logging in to plus, and finding 3 of your best friends hanging out over a beer ;)
While hangout does sound, I think people will still prefer to actually "hangout" with their buddies over beer than watching their buddies drinking beer over g+.....
I can see the attraction - it's a sensible idea, it's just that I can also think of it being stressful: who did I just tell I'm going to quit my job? Who should I tell that we're moving? Is someone going to get offended if those circles leak and they've been placed in the 'wrong' one?
155 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 292 ms ] thread-Edit- I was unaware of the real meaning of the black bar on top of HN. Joke removed..
Uh, what is it? I made a similar joke.
update: got one :)
Thanks!
Many thanks in advance. [edit] Thanks to my sponsor!
Strange that googlers haven't properly discovered HN yet.. would of been nice to spread some invites to the HN crowd.
Thanks
I'd very much appreciate a look at Google+
"electrotype" followed by "@gmail.com"
Highly appreciated!
:)
Hopefully if it is any good, it will claw it's way back into the media spotlight, but how many people will try for a second time to sign up. IMHO the invite only plan will kill it before it gets any kind of real traction.
Edit: I'm aware gmail done well using invite only to begin with. But gmail was a leap ahead of it's competitors.
Suspense is all very well, but Google really need to let us in soon or they're going to miss out on the wave of free hype.
Anyone who fancies sending me an invite, my email is jonnie at cleverna dot me
Plus requires a google profile in order to use it, and Apps accounts can't have profiles. Apparently someone from google has said this will be coming "soon."
WTF google? Hasn't it occurred to you that the set of power users/evangelists/early adopters and the set of people who have their own apps account on their domain might overlap a bit?
This isn't so much dropping the ball, it's bordering on an own goal.
Any googlers reading this: sort it out. Or go and bother the nearest person responsible for sorting it out, lest my disappointment spill over into murderous rage.
About the only justification for a slow launch is to avoid buggering up the scaling or having the entire world discover some massive UX flaw almost immediately - so it's tough for them. I hope they hit a good balance.
And I don't think Google+ will come anywhere close to overthrowing Facebook. Yes, the circles thing sounds cool and all, but it sounds cool to us rationalized hackers. For normal people, they just want a place to see what others are up to, to showcase their narcissistic profile, and to make witty comments. That's all. We don't need Circles. We don't even care about privacy.. it's just something us geeks cry about. The one thing Google probably didn't give as much thought to is how the user profile will look like. They probably put too much effort on the Circles feature.. well the Circles feature ain't gonna help make you look good to other people.. a fancy profile page will though, so there goes your traction.
You could actually get in if you refreshed the main page, they seemed to let people sign up through some magical formula.
Do you think we should continue to work on this? Would you use something like Google Sparks as a stand-alone Website or mobile app? If we continue, what would be significant differentiating functionalities that Google can't easily copy and deploy? (I am considering showing a different style of recommended results from Google Sparks, e.g. long-term, evergreen articles versus newsflash, but of course Google can do that too.)
I am torn right now. Thanks a bunch for any ideas and opinions on this.
I had heard of circles previously when they leaked things last year, but I assumed it would be vapourware or a half-start like Buzz or Wave. Now that they have actually come out with the product, I'm going to have to pivot away to plan B.
Unless you are well connected in the valley, have insane traction already, have boatloads of cash, don't like or need money or are doing it for charity, it's not a startup, it's just a hobby.
I think the smart thing to do now is ride the social networking wave and build something on top of it.
Think Zynga, not Facebook.
This will be an app to help people follow their favorite topics. Think RSS, but filter by topics instead of websites. Or think Reddit, but with only links on your favorite topics. (The topics can be more fine-grained and flexible than putting existing subreddits together.)
Of course, there will be social components on it, but the key functionality is the links to interesting articles/videos/books instead of chattering with your friends.
Sparks doesn't do anything interesting right now. It's like Google search results but from a tiny subset of the web, so at least right now, you need not worry about it.
On the other hand, I'm not sure it would be possible to make any money on it, other than getting acquired. I don't know that people would pay money for something like Sparks.
Your comment would be appreciated.
Here's a quote about Sparks from the Wired article on Google+: The signals that Google looks for in determining Sparks content is freshness, a visual component (videos will rank highly), and the degree to which the content is virally spreading on the net. http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/06/inside-google-plus-so...
I'd imagined that when you add a spark, you get a bunch of stuff grouped under various categories and various types of information like News, Companies, Products, Blogs, etc. And in case of Soccer, I'd have wanted to see scores, league standings, etc. Basically be intelligent about the topic.
Many thanks.
I'm at gmail dot com.
I know it's closed, but I'd like one in case they open again, thanks a million.
If a) it starts to matter to non-technical Internet users and b) they tie it into search heavily (which is the Google go-to playbook for promoting properties of strategic importance), I will start caring with alacrity.
Neither do I but the only hope for G+ is not plugging known holes - FB does that already. They need to create new possibilities instead.
"Everything is smoothly integrated into one place, from Google Chat to the notification center in the upper right. I wonder if I will be able to access my gmail and iGoogle widgets from Google+? If so, then it could provide a one-stop-shop for everything and take over as my browser homepage (something Facebook never had a chance at doing). One thing I have to be thankful for in that Google+ works well internationally because it remembers my Google settings. No other company could manage this.
Overall, like any social network, the #1 determining factor will be adoption. If my friends use it, I will use it. But adoption is based upon a good user experience and a service that solves a problem, and to my surprise Google+ seems to be accomplishing just that (I actually did not expect to like it). "
Google+ will succeed because it's an exact clone of Facebook, but faster, more open to search engines (shocking!), integrated right into Gmail and makes it easier than Facebook to spam people.
The feature which Google is claiming to be the revolutionary new thing (Circles) has already existed in Facebook for a long time (lists and I've been using them). The problem with Facebook lists is that they are hidden, so most people don't know about them or can't be bothered to create them.
At first I thought Circles will fail like lists because it's too much work. But after playing with it for a few seconds, I realised Circles is going to be a huge win. Why? Because it's too much work and people LOVE wasting time on the internet. And it's fun dragging and dropping people into circles.
Whether you're a techie or not, you already know how to use Google+. Even if you want to avoid it, you won't be able to for long because it's going to be everywhere you go from now on.
Excuse the awful pun, but this thing's a vicious Circle.
It's also missing a number of essential (at least for college students) facebook features, like events and richer profiles.
I'm playing with it for now, but I don't think I can manage two social networks and since nearly all of my friends are on Facebook it's not hard to choose one. Maybe some day that will change, but network effects augur otherwise.
Edit: I should note that hangouts are seriously cool, and they might be reason enough for people to start using it.
One of the comments I saw on Google+ is making a distinction between a "plaza" and a "warren". Facebook defaults to plaza though it can do warren with some contortion. Likewise, Google+ defaults to warren and can do plaza with some contortion.
With my wide-ranging interests and extremely, sometimes mutually-exclusive perspectives, personal beliefs, pet philosophies and operating paradigm, I prefer a social network that defaults to a "warren".
In the end, it is probably a case of the "Evil Twin": http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/09/17/your-evil-twins-and-how...
As for social tools twitter is ok.
Now can we have github replace twitter and have that timeline do something for us devs - now that would be awesome
Please say Google+ in the subject and it would be helpful if you spell out your email in the body.
I will add it once they re-open invite.
https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/PhJFJqLy...
(Aussie expat in Japan)
Personally I think circles is the biggest part of the +. I can finally interact properly with my Family, Buddies, Coworkers and so on.