Those communities are interesting. They have subcategories. It means they are like a forum.
If one day Google release an API we would be able to sync a community with a forum.
It would make a forum with superpower with entry point anywhere on the web (via the +1 button)
if you start a search in google+ and press ht..it will automagically autocomplete to the HTML5 community page, if thats not too hard for you ;), if your friends posts about whatever is valuable to you so be it but I see more value in a community filled with like-minded individuals, to each his own! Reddit has no faces and real names and we all know how ugly anonymous posting can become, youtube now looks like google+ with faces and real names. Progress.
Maybe I'm missing something important here, but right now it looks like a long list of posts concerning the topics, uncurated and free for everyone ( who is part of the group) to post. Are popular posts put on top or something?
So far I've found that the best communities are the ones that have very good categories on the left. Being able to separate your posts like that is great.
Agreed. I think Google has enough interaction data (between +1's, comments, and shares) to know what the top posts in any community are. They need to slap the volume control slider that they use on other parts of the site onto the community pages to make it easy to view the top 10, 50, or ... recent posts. Similarly, it would be nice if they allowed the cream of the crop posts from the communities to bleed through to the main page. Discoverability of communities needs a lot of work to, but that's another comment. :)
There's at least one major design issue with it - the communities have pictures, but no names or descriptions (unless it's in the picture), and mousing over doesn't give an alt-text description either.
Am I missing something, or does G+ expect us to open every community in a new tab to see what it is?
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 85.0 ms ] threadIt would make a forum with superpower with entry point anywhere on the web (via the +1 button)
https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/10329986720787532658...
Compare to http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/
Anyway, I joined. Hoping sometime in the future google+ becomes useful for me. Last post from a friend was 3 months ago.
I know they are 'coming' and some people supposedly have them. But would it not make sense for their own properties to have them?
http://google.com/+youtube
http://google.com/+android
http://google.com/+motorola
http://goo.gl/QhrXs
But it still doesn't matter. Just because you can produce a pretty URL using a 3rd party service doesn't mean it's going to be utilized.
For example, check out "3D Printing" in "Makers, hackers, artists & engineers" https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/11284500688414839186...
https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/11653218726074934687...
https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities
There's at least one major design issue with it - the communities have pictures, but no names or descriptions (unless it's in the picture), and mousing over doesn't give an alt-text description either.
Am I missing something, or does G+ expect us to open every community in a new tab to see what it is?