Honestly, while the UI looks nice, I don't see any major advanage in switching.
Facebook: Proprietary network without federation
Google Plus: Proprietary network without federation
So great, I can now jump from one locked-in network into another locked-in network.
Personally I think that Google Plus was the worst thing that can happen to networking in general, as it pretty much killed the chance of an open XMPP-based alternative.
Right, I don't either yet. I've only just started with it but I see nothing in "circles" that is mind-blowing or amazing. I already heavily use Facebook's lists so this is not that much better/different.
I agree with you that Google is pretty good about letting you export data. I just exported my Picasa pictures a few days ago. I use POP3 to keep a local copy of GMail. I also periodically take a local snapshot of my Blogger based blog.markwatson.com.
All that said, I also used Facebook's export facility several weeks ago. It worked fine, but then I realized that I didn't care about backing up my Facebook data and deleted it :-)
Earlier this morning I sent a review of Google+ to my customers as a FYI. I made the same point that Scoble did: techies will like the fine grained control, most people will not care.
Of my friends, the list of people who have been somehow burned by misconfigured or misunderstood Facebook privacy settings is growing steadily.
In general, I'm bullish on G+. A reviewer linked here made the best viral case for it I've seen so far: He hadn't made a profile or put any information out there on G+ but his friends with Gmail accounts added him to their various circle's and he, even having not yet chosen to participate in G+, got a big red notification stream in the top-right corner of every other Google service he uses.
I wouldn't be surprised to see Google set up federation, considering that Google Talk started out without federation and they were trying to get Wave to have federation.
One good thing about Google+ might be that I don’t see it getting private messaging that is not email. So at least the messaging will stay open and you won’t be stuck with inboxes that don’t work on your phone etc.
The article isn't bad, and I more or less agree with a lot of it, but I feel like this individual is dramatically underestimating normal people vs. Silicon Valley folk.
Namely: Being a geek doesn't mean you don't have a developed social graph. I've got several friends who don't really mess around with the techy side of anything, who range from 400-1000 friends. Mostly, they're women, but there are one or two men there.
Basically, good article, but presumptuous attitude.
Scoble can come off that way, but he advocates for new and exciting technology and loves to share it with like minded individuals. I met Scoble last week at the 6sight Social Imaging conference in San Jose. He's a talker, and when you get him started he makes sure to leave you with his opinion. Presumptuous is not a word I would describe him with, however I see how that can be interpreted from his blog. I found him to be a nice guy, well informed and willing to talk to anyone about anything.
> Oh, and that’s not even considering the new "Hangout" videochat feature
I've just realized that lots of "normal" FB users browse it from work, where chances are close to 0 that they'd use any videochat service whatsoever (you don't want your boss overhearing your discussion with your best friend about how stupid Rihanna is or about how Mark fucked up his entire life because he married Sue, just to give a few examples). So, yeah, Hangout is cool to power/media-guru users, like Scoble is, but I fail to see how Google is supposed to make a shitload of money on the back of them only.
Since everyone in my department at work managed to get invitations to Google+, we've been using the hangout feature between our offices in different cities.
I can honestly say it just revolutionized the way we connect as a distributed group. We just leave a hangout open, and anytime someone feels like dropping in, they do. It's like a virtual lounge that everyone has access to.
It is best to first ship a product to early adopters and keep a healthy feedback loop as you expand to more people. I am not saying that it will succeed, but they have a good rollout strategy.
Agree with this assessment. G+ is geeky enough to dissuade the non-tech people so mom-and-pop users will probably not switch en-mass from Facebook.
The real question is, is this enough for Google to not kill it (like Wave)? Or are they in the Social scene domination business and a core geeky consumer base is not enough to sustain G+ and they move on to the next Social "thing"?
Please explain how G+ is more geeky than Facebook. It's a much more intuitive product. It enables features in such an easy way that Facebook can't even dream about.
Did you even read the Post that we are commenting on? There is a whole section that starts with " There are pieces of Google+ that are mighty geeky....".
It is ok to be passionate but as a minimum courtesy - please read before commenting
Google+ may have geeky aspects to it, but Scoble saying it doesn't make it so.
It does seem like Google+ could use a little bit of polish, but Scoble's examples are pretty poor. Non-geeks don't want to organize their friends into groups? I'd guess some will want to, and some won't. But it doesn't seem like enough of a barrier to keep people from joining if everyone else is.
Nobody in my family uses Facebook. We all have the same sort of privacy concerns. For us, there is no switching cost. At the same time, all of us use gmail. From what I've seen, Google+ looks like it has better privacy features built in (although it's privacy from the public, not private to teh Google). So, I hope my momma will use Google+ because it make sharing things with family a lot easier.
>From what I've seen, Google+ looks like it has better privacy features built in (although it's privacy from the public, not private to teh Google). So, I hope my momma will use Google+ because it make sharing things with family a lot easier.
// Can you expand on that please. What privacy features does G+ have that FB does not (now) have? How did Google make sharing easier?
G+ asks you to decide who is going to see all your posts by default. It begins from an assumption that you want privacy, and lets you affirmatively remove it, rather than the other way around.
You can go to your profile at any time and easily see what you're sharing with others by typing in the name of any person or circle, and see how you appear to them, so there's never any question about what you're sharing.
Sharing on G+ is asynchronous, meaning that you can follow unilaterally like Twitter if you want to.
Google makes its privacy policies much easier to find and read than Facebook, and works from the default position that you want your data to be private, making it up to you to share, rather than the other way around, which is what Facebook does.
Perhaps most important of all is that Facebook has a history of being a bad actor, changing their policies without notice and always defaulting to exposing personal data. Google has had its stumbles in the past, but their history shows them to be a more trustworthy custodian of your data.
They might not always adhere as well as they should to their motto of "don't be evil," but at least they have that starting point to go from.
I believe the quote Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg is best known for is "They trust me — dumb fucks."
Google appears to have learned from the Buzz backlash. G+ pushes privacy by default from the first person you put into a circle. You can't 'friend' someone without first thinking about who they are, what they mean to you, and what you want them to see. This alone is a big step up from FB where groups are a hidden, not often used feature.
Content that you post to Google+ seems to be more private by default. I have to choose who I want to see it. It takes a lot of effort figure out privacy settings on Facebook. Plus, it feels like Facebook is trying to game you into sharing more personal information than you really want.
Sharing with family would be easier with Google+ than without it, not necessaryily easier than Facebook.
I think he's trying to make his wife what she isn't: an early adopter. The mainstream wants something that their other mainstream (not early adopter) friends are also using. The early adopters are revolutionaries. The mainstream likes status quo. But that's true about every single technology. Facebook has gone through this, too. Twitter, as well. Would your mom or wife use Twitter in the first year after Twitter launched? But I think Google+ transition to mainstream will be pretty smooth, because it's a great and easy to use product, and it's just a matter of having enough early critical mass to get everyone to hear about it.
You raise some good points about Facebook and Twitter going through the same cycle. I can't think of a service that people adopted immediatelyl; strangely, I can think of a few devices.
it's just a matter of ... get[ting] everyone to hear about it.
That's very true as well, but Google+ has something Facebook (and Twitter et al) didn't -- google.com integration and exposure [1].
Yes, deep integration with all other Google-services gives it advantage over others. Gmail, Calendar with social.. sounds awesome (Really like hangouts)
No matter how awesome Hangout is (and I thinks it's very cool), I can't use it yet with a lot of people I talk to. Skype is more ubiquitous and thus I can call "normal" people. If this guys prediction is true, and Google+ won't have widespread adoption outside of geeky communities, then it will fail. I need something like Skype that can bridge from geeks -> non-geeks.
My Mom is already on it. The first thing I thought when I saw hangouts is "My Mom will be on this a lot chatting with relatives." She wanted the group video chat on Skype but it only works if everyone else pays for it. No barrier with Google+
Google doesn't need Skype. Their Google Talk voice and video chat is robust and more stable than Skype's infrastructure. Heck they don't even need to compete with Skype, as Skype is self-destructing from the inside out. Maybe Google could have come up with some migration plan from Skype to Google+, but it would have been too much trouble and then they'd also have a lot of technology overlap.
IMO Google Talk, Chat, and Voice are already superior to Skype.
Why not? Give it time and soon enough, everybody will be in Google+. The video conferencing is a huge attraction. If you want a social network non-geeky types will not go, you go to rstatus.com or identi.ca where they don't have features for mass consumption.
I read an interview with a record executive a long time ago and he answered the question, "How do you find the next big thing?"
"That's pretty easy," he said, "I just look for something that parents will hate."
That this is a successful strategy is self-evident. (American) kids want to differentiate themselves from their parents and will pay money to do so. They'll probably latch on in some form to anything as long as it fits the criteria that their parents don't like it.
I think it's a safe bet that the social networking site that replaces Facebook will have fewer features, be ugly, be more difficult to use, and have no redeeming qualities other than nobody's parents are going to participate in it, and kids will identify with it as the cool thing for that reason.
There was also a period of a few years where facebook was college-only. Now everyone's mom is on it and some aren't fans of being FB friends with their parents, or friend's parents. They keep them on limited profiles, or even decline to friend them.
Grandparent might have been saying that while that is close enough for now, as you pointed out with your allusion to Facebook, that won't be enough to keep it excursive for long (ie. its not exclusive because of a core feature, but rather because most people haven't heard of it and can't be bothered).
If it does become popular, everyone's mom will be on it, because she will have heard of it, and someone will take the time to explain it.
> I think it's a safe bet that the social networking site that replaces Facebook will have fewer features, be ugly, be more difficult to use, and have no redeeming qualities other than nobody's parents are going to participate in it, and kids will identify with it as the cool thing for that reason.
Ugly or not, it will happen. Since human time is limited, a smart social strategy is all about identifying the right "circle" of people you want to join, and then performing activities that increase the chances of your interacting with people from that circle while reducing the chances of your interacting with people from outside.
What this means is that even when your social site is small (compared to say Facebook), if you have all the right people in it (meaning people with high social favorability factor), you will succeed.
Some people make the mistake of assuming that the larger their site is, the better off they are. It's not only about quantity, but also about quality. Low quality eventually leads to decline in quantity by driving people away. That's what happened to MySpace and what will happen to Facebook.
> Since most of the people who are on Google+ so far are geeks, insiders, social media stars, journalists, and other people
This is what I fear the most with +. I'm just as nerdy as the next guy, but I like to have some good un-clean fun with my friends, and Google+ comes off as conservative and parental. If Google stays too clean it won't draw the non-technical users I converse with on Facebook, and enjoy conversing with. Part of the fun of Facebook is the college atmosphere where few things are off-limits.
Our experiences are opposite. My friends do not know the existence of the lists features. And because they have coworkers in their audience they just post political correct content. Read: farm & shit.
As their personal technical advisor, I am going to promote google+ for their freedom speech qualities. Ie. I made them migrate from hotmail to gmail. I predict an easy 20% migration and 50% dual usage.
As the op tells, I'm not going to convince my gossip, spammer, trash talk (i luv u guuuuuuys) friend, nor i'm going to try hard.
It is a pretty big jump to say that since Google+ is geeky, therefore the masses won't adopt it. We are talking about an online social networking site. No matter how slick and friendly it looks, the early days of any website are bound to be geeky. Sure, Facebook was never really that geeky (you know, as ungeeky as a Harvard social network can be), but Twitter sure as hell was. That is the lifecycle of these sites. More importantly, yo momma may not have much of a choice. Google is making it pretty clear with all of the redesigns that the Google+ tail will be wagging the Google services dog. Once yo momma starts googling her friends and seeing their profile pop up in search results, looks up directions and see recommendations in the area from her friends, and so on, I'll bet she'll start using it.
Now whether that is good or bad is another question, but Google does seem to have it set up so your mom being on there won't hold you back much.
Exactly! If I told my family that the grandkid photos were moving from Flickr to Google+, that would be the end of it. I'm thinking about doing just that too.
Your momma doesn't have to be there to see the grandkid pics. You can add people to circles on Google+ with only an email address (doesn't have to be Gmail) and it will just email them updates/pics.
I don't believe he has the required evidence to make this claim.
(1) I have a lot of non-techie friends that are interested in using this just to try it out -- they are early adopters but consumers instead of creators; they do not have technical ability.
(2) Whether or not Plus gains market traction is dependent on how it fits into the current social application space. 'Hangouts' and 'Circles' will help differentiate them but to gain a foothold the network effect is of greater importance. Google are making a very calculated move by inviting people with higher quality social graphs as this will help them here!
Plus' success will depend on:
(a) whether they can keep non-techie early-adopters interested in the new features they are providing.
(b) how well they manage to cross-pollinate between each of the services in their eco-system: the changes in Gmail, the navigation bar, and UI across their services point towards them realising this.
(c) easing the move in-between other social applications by providing APIs that could be accessed by more generic desktop and mobile applications that users often use to interact with networks: Tweetdeck, etc... As I said, it's all about harnessing network effects and getting the right people on the service. At this point, I don't see any reason to doubt they have momentum and if they're smart they will continue to connect their eco-system together in a way that creates long-term growth long after the buzz dies.
(3) It's quite presumptuous to assume that since many early-adopters are techies that this is how it will remain: does anybody remember when Twitter was only used by techies?
Let's just see how it plays out and avoid creating mindless tech gossip...?
I know a bunch of non-techie xkcd fans that don't fit the tech geek stereotype. They tend to be nerds (ie, lawyers, biotech researchers,, etc). They also tend to be young.
xkcd is surprisingly accessible to folks who are brainy (more folks than you realize).
One thing that I haven't heard yet is that Google+ is the worst name they could ever come up with!
"+"? Are you kidding me?
On the other hand: here is a feature that would help G+ to take of: Tight integration with Android (2.1 and above at least!!! not 3.1) with android video hangout over wifi and 3G for free(!) international!
A tough move, I know, but without something on this scale, this could just be another wave.
The worst of it is, if you google "Google+", the site is the 4th result. If you google "Google +", it doesn't even show up. I guess Google doesn't hire SEO experts?
g+ is going to be like a "grown up" facebook - without the farmville games and the like. It'll be the social network for people who've avoided facebook over perceived privacy slights. It'll be somewhat like a cross between facebook and a friendlier linkedin.
It'll be a lot of things to a lot of people, but it won't be a 'facebook killer' any time soon. G+ is going to be expanding the social network user pie for a while, rather than siphoning off large chunks from facebook.
I think that you're fooling yourself if you don't think that G+ is going to have Farmville on it soon. It's too big of a draw and too big of a money maker for it to not have them.
I really dunno about that. I suspect there will be some, but they only flourish with network effects. If people on g+ don't play them now, they won't invite others to play, etc. And why would you leave facebook to play the same game in a different chrome setting?
If there's some g+-only games, I'd see that happening.
I just hope it doesn't degrade into what Facebook has become because of all the useless game shares. I'm probably ok with seeing a game on my feed that a friend +1'ed or shared something about it once, but I don't want to see 20 shares in a day with his achievements in the game.
Google doesn't need to enable that, because they don't really have to make money by taking a cut from the game developers. So I hope they are much more strict with what developers can enable for users to share.
I do think it's possible G+ will end up having farmville (google has done business IIRC with Zynga before).
However, if it shows up like on Facebook, I (and others) will likely leave G+ for that reason alone.
Google shouldn't try to "beat" Facebook (and I don't think they are trying to). Differentiation is key, since Google really makes it's money elsewhere.
Another commercial with Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber will get them around 10M users, that's for sure ;)
I haven't personally tried out Google+ (I wish i could), but if Google holds it back long enough to create enough buzz about it and people already invited keep saying that it is awesome, i believe they will have enough adopters to grow strong.
How do you bold and italicize on Facebook? I'm not aware of the ability.
Personally I think having a Word interface for a textarea is pretty darn geeky. Using Markdown or some other markup language is better solution since those who don't know just won't use it.
112 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 174 ms ] threadFacebook: Proprietary network without federation
Google Plus: Proprietary network without federation
So great, I can now jump from one locked-in network into another locked-in network.
Personally I think that Google Plus was the worst thing that can happen to networking in general, as it pretty much killed the chance of an open XMPP-based alternative.
All that said, I also used Facebook's export facility several weeks ago. It worked fine, but then I realized that I didn't care about backing up my Facebook data and deleted it :-)
Earlier this morning I sent a review of Google+ to my customers as a FYI. I made the same point that Scoble did: techies will like the fine grained control, most people will not care.
In general, I'm bullish on G+. A reviewer linked here made the best viral case for it I've seen so far: He hadn't made a profile or put any information out there on G+ but his friends with Gmail accounts added him to their various circle's and he, even having not yet chosen to participate in G+, got a big red notification stream in the top-right corner of every other Google service he uses.
Namely: Being a geek doesn't mean you don't have a developed social graph. I've got several friends who don't really mess around with the techy side of anything, who range from 400-1000 friends. Mostly, they're women, but there are one or two men there.
Basically, good article, but presumptuous attitude.
I've just realized that lots of "normal" FB users browse it from work, where chances are close to 0 that they'd use any videochat service whatsoever (you don't want your boss overhearing your discussion with your best friend about how stupid Rihanna is or about how Mark fucked up his entire life because he married Sue, just to give a few examples). So, yeah, Hangout is cool to power/media-guru users, like Scoble is, but I fail to see how Google is supposed to make a shitload of money on the back of them only.
I can honestly say it just revolutionized the way we connect as a distributed group. We just leave a hangout open, and anytime someone feels like dropping in, they do. It's like a virtual lounge that everyone has access to.
The real question is, is this enough for Google to not kill it (like Wave)? Or are they in the Social scene domination business and a core geeky consumer base is not enough to sustain G+ and they move on to the next Social "thing"?
It is ok to be passionate but as a minimum courtesy - please read before commenting
It does seem like Google+ could use a little bit of polish, but Scoble's examples are pretty poor. Non-geeks don't want to organize their friends into groups? I'd guess some will want to, and some won't. But it doesn't seem like enough of a barrier to keep people from joining if everyone else is.
// Can you expand on that please. What privacy features does G+ have that FB does not (now) have? How did Google make sharing easier?
You can go to your profile at any time and easily see what you're sharing with others by typing in the name of any person or circle, and see how you appear to them, so there's never any question about what you're sharing.
Sharing on G+ is asynchronous, meaning that you can follow unilaterally like Twitter if you want to.
Google makes its privacy policies much easier to find and read than Facebook, and works from the default position that you want your data to be private, making it up to you to share, rather than the other way around, which is what Facebook does.
Perhaps most important of all is that Facebook has a history of being a bad actor, changing their policies without notice and always defaulting to exposing personal data. Google has had its stumbles in the past, but their history shows them to be a more trustworthy custodian of your data.
They might not always adhere as well as they should to their motto of "don't be evil," but at least they have that starting point to go from.
I believe the quote Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg is best known for is "They trust me — dumb fucks."
Sharing with family would be easier with Google+ than without it, not necessaryily easier than Facebook.
http://www.quickmba.com/marketing/product/diffusion/
it's just a matter of ... get[ting] everyone to hear about it.
That's very true as well, but Google+ has something Facebook (and Twitter et al) didn't -- google.com integration and exposure [1].
[1] http://www.allfacebook.com/the-one-google-plus-feature-faceb...
Immediately, they will have more than 500M+ users from Skype only, not to mention Gmail.
IMO Google Talk, Chat, and Voice are already superior to Skype.
"That's pretty easy," he said, "I just look for something that parents will hate."
That this is a successful strategy is self-evident. (American) kids want to differentiate themselves from their parents and will pay money to do so. They'll probably latch on in some form to anything as long as it fits the criteria that their parents don't like it.
I think it's a safe bet that the social networking site that replaces Facebook will have fewer features, be ugly, be more difficult to use, and have no redeeming qualities other than nobody's parents are going to participate in it, and kids will identify with it as the cool thing for that reason.
There was also a period of a few years where facebook was college-only. Now everyone's mom is on it and some aren't fans of being FB friends with their parents, or friend's parents. They keep them on limited profiles, or even decline to friend them.
If it does become popular, everyone's mom will be on it, because she will have heard of it, and someone will take the time to explain it.
Ugly or not, it will happen. Since human time is limited, a smart social strategy is all about identifying the right "circle" of people you want to join, and then performing activities that increase the chances of your interacting with people from that circle while reducing the chances of your interacting with people from outside.
What this means is that even when your social site is small (compared to say Facebook), if you have all the right people in it (meaning people with high social favorability factor), you will succeed.
Some people make the mistake of assuming that the larger their site is, the better off they are. It's not only about quantity, but also about quality. Low quality eventually leads to decline in quantity by driving people away. That's what happened to MySpace and what will happen to Facebook.
Quoting Joshua Ellis's piece on the grim meathook future:
> Feeding poor people is useful tech,
> but it’s not very sexy
> and it won’t get you on the cover of Wired.
> Talk about it too much
> and you sound like an earnest hippie.
> So nobody wants to do that.
> They want to make cell phones
> that can scan your personal measurements
> and send them real-time
> to potential sex partners.
> Because, you know,
> the fucking Japanese teenagers love it,
> and Japanese teenagers
> are clearly the smartest people on the planet.
The full text is at http://zenarchery.com/?page_id=1180. It's short. Read it.
The idea is that, to the extent their kids are 'hip', you could also seek out the parents who are having a mid-life crisis.
- Preview ahead of next week to steal FB's thunder about their "big announcement"
- Invites quickly pulled
- Everybody who doesn't have a G+ invite begging around for one, they're even up for sale on eBay - everyone's just waiting to get onto G+
- On same day as the FB announcement, G+ goes public, everyone invited
- Zuck makes his "big announcement" (I dunno, maybe video chat or something) and everyone shrugs.
This is what I fear the most with +. I'm just as nerdy as the next guy, but I like to have some good un-clean fun with my friends, and Google+ comes off as conservative and parental. If Google stays too clean it won't draw the non-technical users I converse with on Facebook, and enjoy conversing with. Part of the fun of Facebook is the college atmosphere where few things are off-limits.
As their personal technical advisor, I am going to promote google+ for their freedom speech qualities. Ie. I made them migrate from hotmail to gmail. I predict an easy 20% migration and 50% dual usage.
As the op tells, I'm not going to convince my gossip, spammer, trash talk (i luv u guuuuuuys) friend, nor i'm going to try hard.
"We are announcing these fantastic new features to Facebook users: <copy-paste G+ features here>"
Now whether that is good or bad is another question, but Google does seem to have it set up so your mom being on there won't hold you back much.
(1) I have a lot of non-techie friends that are interested in using this just to try it out -- they are early adopters but consumers instead of creators; they do not have technical ability.
(2) Whether or not Plus gains market traction is dependent on how it fits into the current social application space. 'Hangouts' and 'Circles' will help differentiate them but to gain a foothold the network effect is of greater importance. Google are making a very calculated move by inviting people with higher quality social graphs as this will help them here!
Plus' success will depend on:
(a) whether they can keep non-techie early-adopters interested in the new features they are providing.
(b) how well they manage to cross-pollinate between each of the services in their eco-system: the changes in Gmail, the navigation bar, and UI across their services point towards them realising this.
(c) easing the move in-between other social applications by providing APIs that could be accessed by more generic desktop and mobile applications that users often use to interact with networks: Tweetdeck, etc... As I said, it's all about harnessing network effects and getting the right people on the service. At this point, I don't see any reason to doubt they have momentum and if they're smart they will continue to connect their eco-system together in a way that creates long-term growth long after the buzz dies.
(3) It's quite presumptuous to assume that since many early-adopters are techies that this is how it will remain: does anybody remember when Twitter was only used by techies?
Let's just see how it plays out and avoid creating mindless tech gossip...?
http://xkcd.com/918/
thanks, time to lose another 10 hours of my life to xkcd (hooray for 3 day weekend)
xkcd is surprisingly accessible to folks who are brainy (more folks than you realize).
I am entirely unsurprised non-geeky brainy folks might enjoy it.
"+"? Are you kidding me?
On the other hand: here is a feature that would help G+ to take of: Tight integration with Android (2.1 and above at least!!! not 3.1) with android video hangout over wifi and 3G for free(!) international! A tough move, I know, but without something on this scale, this could just be another wave.
Go to google.com and G+ is at the top before you even have to search.
It'll be a lot of things to a lot of people, but it won't be a 'facebook killer' any time soon. G+ is going to be expanding the social network user pie for a while, rather than siphoning off large chunks from facebook.
If there's some g+-only games, I'd see that happening.
Google doesn't need to enable that, because they don't really have to make money by taking a cut from the game developers. So I hope they are much more strict with what developers can enable for users to share.
However, if it shows up like on Facebook, I (and others) will likely leave G+ for that reason alone.
Google shouldn't try to "beat" Facebook (and I don't think they are trying to). Differentiation is key, since Google really makes it's money elsewhere.
I haven't personally tried out Google+ (I wish i could), but if Google holds it back long enough to create enough buzz about it and people already invited keep saying that it is awesome, i believe they will have enough adopters to grow strong.
Personally I think having a Word interface for a textarea is pretty darn geeky. Using Markdown or some other markup language is better solution since those who don't know just won't use it.