14 ms·

Spaces, a tool for small group sharing

201 points by el_duderino 10y ago

ocdtrekkie 10y ago
So this sounds kinda like Google+ Communities, but detached from Google+? It seems Google is now approaching social as "throw endless piles of new social apps out there until one actually becomes popular". They recently added chat capabilities directly into YouTube and Photos, rather than relying on Hangouts, for example.
- vertex-four 10y ago
  > It seems Google is now approaching social as "throw endless piles of new social apps out there until one actually becomes popular". That's precisely what they did before Google+, though.
- liso 10y ago
  I haven't played with Communities much, but as I was reading this I kept thinking it was Google's take on Slack.
  - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
    I suppose it depends whether it's more geared towards post-sharing or immediate chat.
  - ComodoHacker 10y ago
    Not Just Slack, but also WhatsApp/Telegram/etc.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  It seems to really be the strategy that was discussed early on for Google+ which was hampered by the existence of a special G+ app and, moreso, the need for an "enhanced" G+ account: the social layer is tying together existing Google accounts and products, with added social functionality both in the individual products and in new products which tie them together in new ways. Even FB has given up the "one app to rule them all" approach to social, and Google was never very good at that.
cshimmin 10y ago
"... getting friends into the same app can be challenging... so we made a new app called Spaces..." Obligatory xkcd reference... sigh. https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
- woot01 10y ago
  So, people should just stop trying to improve things? XKCD 927 should be considered harmful, as while it is true that's how things sometimes happen, to start quoting it everywhere is to try to shut down people from innovating, and that's anything but helpful.
Numberwang 10y ago
I'm getting more and more lost in the Google ecosystem these days. I will still try it out, but not sure what it can offer me unless it has actual features..
sashk 10y ago
Another service which Google will kill in X years?
- dontscale 10y ago
  More like VI months?
  - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
    From what I can recall or determine, I don't think Google's ever really given a product or service less than a year from release to shutdown. But a lot of them get killed between the one and two year marks.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > I don't think Google's ever really given a product or service less than a year from release to shutdown. Nexus Q might count.
      - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
        Maybe. They technically killed it before release though. Just some I/O owners such as myself had it before they decided it wasn't going to sell.
- awesomerobot 10y ago
  Despite the hype, they haven't really killed that many services.
  - dewiz 10y ago
    Check out https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discontinued_products_and_services https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Disc...
xd1936 10y ago
Hangouts, Google+, YouTube, Messenger, Photos, and now Spaces are all Google Products that have messaging built-in now. Remember when Hangouts was supposed to be the one chat service to rule them all?
- cloudwalking 10y ago
  What's Messenger?
  - chipperyman573 10y ago
    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.messaging&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
koolba 10y ago
Who here has any faith this will be around in 5 years? Might be more fun to pick 3 years instead. Unrelated, assuming there is some storage limit to each space, be funny to get an error, "Your space is out of space."
- ProAm 10y ago
  Start the timer, I give it 19 months before it's sunset.
- ccarter84 10y ago
  Glad I'm not the only skeptic here. It will likely find a way to count towards storage limits, or find some subtle way to try and monetize like charging for history or slapping ads similar to Twitter's discover or promotional stuff that requires add-ins to remove. Honestly once they went to the intrusive format of hangouts / killed gchat, I lost an valuable means of informal contact with a lot of folks who just turned it off entirely. Gonna nurse that one for a while longer.
andybak 10y ago
For me, the biggest downside of Google shutting down Reader is that from now until eternity every post to Hacker News about a new Google service will be chock full of comments pointing out that it will probably just get closed down. The actual number of genuinely useful services that Google has shuttered is relatively small. Their much bigger sin consists of either long-term neglect, re-launching a new version with half the features missing or as other commenters here have pointed out - launching something that confusingly overlaps with another service.
- koolba 10y ago
  > For me, the biggest downside of Google shutting down Reader is that from now until eternity every post to Hacker News about a new Google service will be chock full of witty comments about how it's going to get shut down. I'd argue that most of them aren't witty[1] and it's not just Reader either. Plenty of things shut down before and afterwards[2]. [1]: Obviously not counting my own rapier wit... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Discontinued_Google_services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Discontinued_Google_s...
  - andybak 10y ago
    Apologies - I edited my original post to take out the overly-sarcastic 'witty' just before you posted. I also added a touch more substance to my comment.
- codemac 10y ago
  I mean, it's not exactly a short list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discontinued_products_and_services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discon... I'd also add that it raises a serious point: if we cannot depend on products to exist past the team that creates them, are we really producing products at all? Or merely engineering time leased at the rate you consume advertising?
  - Flimm 10y ago
    Wow, that is longer than I expected. Here it is in one paragraph: Google Answers, Google Deskbar, Writely, Google Click-to-Call, Related Links, Public Service Search, Google Video Marketplace, Google Browser Sync (Firefox), Google Lively, Hello, SearchMash, Send to Phone, Audio Ads, Catalogs, Dodgeball, Google Ride Finder, Shared Stuff, Google Page Creator, Marratech e-Meeting, GOOG-411, Google Labs, Google Buzz, Google Dictionary, Google PowerMeter, Real Estate, Google Directory, Squared, Google Sets, Google Pack, Google Fast Flip, Desktop, Google Image Labeler, Aardvark, Directory, Gears, Google Notebook, Google Apps standard edition, Google Code Search, Google Health, Google Website Optimizer, TV Ads, Google Friend Connect, Google Insights for Search, Knol, Google Wave, Picnik, Jaiku, Nexus Q, Slide.com, Google Mini, Picasa Web Albums Uploader, Google Cloud Connect (Microsoft Office plugin), Google Building Maker, Google Calendar Sync, Meebo, Google Reader, Google Latitude, Google Talk, SMS service, iGoogle, GIS tools for Google Maps, Google Schemer, Google Notifier, YouTube My Speed, Orkut, QuickOffice, "discussion search", Google Moderator, Wildfire by Google, BebaPay, Google Helpouts, Google Code, Picasa, Google Compare.
mxuribe 10y ago
I really want to reserve judgement here...I want to wait and see how it actually functions, etc. But reading the description, (and my immediate reflex is to state that) it really looks extraneous, and definitely overlap for what G+ should/could be (or maybe is?). Unless i'm mis-reading, it basically is the definition of a type of social network: 1. Have/find content. 2. Have a desire to share/discuss content with friends, acquaintances. 3. Trigger some function/feature to share on a time line of sorts, so friends, acquaintances can see/interact with said content. Not to sound so dismissive, (I hate to be critical for someone's hard work) but is that all that this new product is? Basically another (centralized) social network? I think Google should instead develop an open source, federated protocol for maybe standardizing sharing via decentralized social networks. This would open it up to myriad apps/clients. Oh sure, there are some out there...but having it (the protocol) associated to Google would give it some authority - and by extension attract more devs to its ecosystem; though still keep it open/free. Side benefit, if Google sponsored and supported this federated protocol, they can begin to dive into the decentralized (dare i call it) movement. They could then position themselves to provide search (their original strength) across decentralized nodes, etc. Owners of their own decentralized nodes could choose to "play with Google" or not. Who knows, maybe Google developing a federated protocol may not be ideal...but anything seems better than what this new product appears to be. (Seriously trying not to judge too soon though. ;-)
- fosco 10y ago
  I thought that was the goal of google wave? I keep a close eye on Apache wave but the movement needs some new vitality, I see it hanging on a small handful of courageous and incredible volunteers albeit, needs more devs.
  - mxuribe 10y ago
    Good point fosco, thanks! While I don't recall Wave being specifically designed for social network, I did used to think how innovative it was for its time as a platform for many types of communication and interaction paradigms. Further, there is even an open source social network platform based on it, namely Kune: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kune_(software)#Technical_details https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kune_(software)#Technical_deta... And, of course: http://kune.cc http://kune.cc Definitely, very cool!
Bushra8 10y ago
That's what i was thinking, this is totally a google+ feature they had planned (which others are pointing out is similar to Waves) but took off the platform. Which kinda does make sense. Instead of forcing G+ they basically made android more flexible allowing them to do this kind of feature without the G+ platform.
AznHisoka 10y ago
That's great, but I want to talk/share things with anonymous strangers who aren't my friends who share the same disease I have. That's my need, not this. This is superfluous.
- ArmandGrillet 10y ago
  Did you try to find a subreddit concerning the subject you're interested in?
  - gdulli 10y ago
    What a devastating one-two punch, (1) to have a disease and (2) to find out reddit is the place you have to turn.
    - npizzolato 10y ago
      Reddit has a lot of active, helpful communities hidden away in smaller subreddits. It's really only the default subreddits and other huge subreddits that are bad.
      - intoverflow2 10y ago
        It's the same people, check their comment histories some time
- arbre 10y ago
  Allowing anonymous users would be great. For example I would like to create such a group/space for my family even though some of them do not have google accounts.
iamben 10y ago
I hate to say, but this looks like a bunch of people sat around and went "everyone seems to be using WhatsApp, what's WhatsApp missing?" Except everyone uses WhatsApp, because it doesn't have all that stuff - it's just simple. And everyone else is on it. Case in point - Telegram is kinda nice. Has some good features, and it's pretty simple. But I probably wouldn't have it installed, if it wasn't for the one group I need to use it with. Literally everyone else I converse with daily with through WhatsApp. My friends, my colleagues, my relatives, my parents. Trying to persuade anyone to try something new is hard. Trying to get my parents to use something new, and then trying to explain how to set up an account, what this does, what that does - just not going to happen. Especially if everyone else is using something else. But good luck to Google, I look forward to giving it a try :-)
- A-F1V3 10y ago
  That WhatsApp vs Telegram user comparison is interesting... nearly everyone in my social group uses Telegram, I don't think I've ever even installed WhatsApp. I know WhatsApp has significantly more users worldwide, but for whatever reason my tribe has chosen Telegram.
  - eecks 10y ago
    Which is strange because as your tribe expands they'll interact with WhatsApp users. I bet you will eventually all use whatsapp.
    - reitanqild 10y ago
      I use both. They are both great and with modern smartphones having both installed is no problem. Whatsapp is a bit more secure by default it seems and Telegram keeps adding and improving features monthly it seems. I love both of them and have my inlaws on T and my stubborn family on W.
  - iamben 10y ago
    Whereabouts are you based? I'm UK - I think WhatsApp benefitted from a significant foothold before Telegram came along. Hard to disrupt that now.
aembleton 10y ago
Sounds like an attempt at competing against group chat on Facebook messenger except nearly all of my friends are already on Messenger and this doesn't seem to add anything new.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  No, compared to FB products, its more competing with Facebook Groups than group chat on Facebook Messenger. There's lots of UX issues with existing group-shared-content solutions that could be addressed, but until we actually see this I'm not sure what it offers new in the space.
kristianc 10y ago
I'm not sure what, if any value this adds. If I want to bring together a group of people, I have lots of options, from very structured - "I have a Facebook group for the sports team / political campaign I run and want to share information with players, get them to do things" - to the very ad hoc "I have a group of buddies who I get together with once in a while and to save time we've got a WhatsApp group." Both of these work well because they're linked with something I use all the time anyway - Facebook and WhatsApp. If I want to connect with random people on subjects I care out, there are subreddits. The use case for this, on the other hand, is what? "I'm going to use a specific service that I'm going to have to persuade all of my friends to use, with no real added benefit?". I just don't get it.
- dimino 10y ago
  > with no real added benefit? Are you sure? Edit: Think study groups, DnD sessions, or other document-collaboration type use cases. Facebook does not make that particularly easy, and how mature is Facebook's enterprise support? Facebook For Work is much less of a sure thing than their personal offerings. People already use the heck out of Google Docs for collaboration, this provides a bit of formality and structure to that collaboration. Before, Docs sharing was a bit of a Docs + Hangouts + informal process around discussion. Now it's... whatever this does. I'm excited to see how this works out. I'm using Docs collaboration to help plan a trip I'm going on in a few months, I might try to use this to enhance that collaboration.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- lallysingh 10y ago
  AFAICT, Google's current strategy is, on a plane of the social and chat axes, put one product at every integral (x,y) coordinate.
- incepted 10y ago
  From my understanding, Spaces doesn't require any kind of membership anywhere. No accounts. This could become a big deal if true and possibly rival Twitter for when you suddenly have an interest in something for a few hours/days but want to drop out later.
dontscale 10y ago
Another project Google with kill in 6 months.
amolgupta 10y ago
Given the potential and success of Facebook groups [http://alexmuir.com/facebook-is-the-new-excel http://alexmuir.com/facebook-is-the-new-excel] Google had to come up with something to compete. Wont be surprised by "I need Spaces invite" all over the internet in coming days but personally wont rush into using it.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Wont be surprised by "I need Spaces invite" all over the internet in coming days Per the announcement, Spaces is enabled for all Gmail accounts at launch. Gmail doesn't require invites. Therefore, Spaces doesn't require invites.
- Nullabillity 10y ago
  Doesn't seem to require invites.
- intoverflow2 10y ago
  >"I need Spaces invite" Think they learnt their lesson that invite only no longer builds hype with the G+ launch.
blisterpeanuts 10y ago
Based on the very preliminary website, this seems to be a way to quickly set up invite-only ad hoc interest groups, bypassing the infrastructure and membership requirements of a full networking service like Facebook, Yahoo!Groups, and old style chatboards. This could be useful for people who boycott or otherwise have no use for social networks. I'm not sure how big that market really is, but my own parents come to mind, plus some curmudgeonly old friends who only do email. Another Google experiment that will run its course and either succeed or be relegated to the attic which is full of interesting but unsuccessful ideas. I'm glad someone's trying to think ahead of the curve and bypass the social networks, which are such a time sync for me at least.
- gk1 10y ago
  Aside: I misclicked and downvoted when I meant to upvote. There's no undo from what I can tell.
- mgiannopoulos 10y ago
  So, it won't require a Google account? I guess it will, so we're back to the same point.
  - blisterpeanuts 10y ago
    I agree, probably would require a Google account, but what if it's only for the group founder? If it requires everyone to have a Google login then it's just like Plus. If not, then it's actually a rather appealing idea. "Join my group, and you're not required to set up an account." Just a quick, spur of the moment thing.
    - mgiannopoulos 10y ago
      Tried it out, you need a Google account to join.
- fredgrott 10y ago
  its not how many unsuccessful ones, its how big of success is the successful one..
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
andreapaiola 10y ago
Wait,is it a my space? MySpace? Oh, wait... :D
- mxuribe 10y ago
  No, no, its SpaceBook. Wait, no its Space+. Well, let's hope they get plenty of users...else it will turn into a SpaceGhostTown...yeah, acknowledged it was a cheesy joke (what can i say, i'm a Dad ;-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Ghost_Coast_to_Coast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Ghost_Coast_to_Coast
anentropic 10y ago
can I share photos? That's what I used to use Google+ for... sharing personal stuff with small group (i.e. family) then they rebuilt the photo albums from G+ as Google Photos, regressed all the features, and redesigned G+, regressing the photo sharing story even further I don't know wtf they're trying to do at Google but it seems after G+ failed to dislodge Facebook they don't know what to do and just make everything worse
- blisterpeanuts 10y ago
  They broke Photos out from Plus because it was the most successful aspect of the product.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    Only after they broke Hangouts out from Plus, because it was the most successful aspect of the product.
- fuck_google 10y ago
  Perhaps the academic monoculture at Google is a poor fit with effective product management and fostering creativity. That seems to be a common problem with most research focused organizations in my experience.
MistahKoala 10y ago
I won't bother taking the time to find out more about it, let alone download and use it, because it'll only disappear in a few years' time. I've already had my fingers burned by integrating previous Google services into my workflow.
- wnevets 10y ago
  seeing this comment for every google announce is getting real old.
  - steego 10y ago
    The fact that you're tired of people complaining about Google discontinuing products tells me that Google may have a problem convincing people to adopt new services. If the majority of people don't believe Google is really invested in products until it's successful, it's going to be an uphill battle for Google when it comes to launching new services. Google's strategy to discontinue services comes with natural consequences. One of those consequences is it burns bridges with certain types of early adopters and creates distrust when those early adopters complain in popular forums like Hacker News. UPDATE: It may be in Google's best interest to start publically committing to a service's life span and support to preemptively address the leftover feelings of abandonment from other discontinued services.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > It may be in Google's best interest to start publically committing to a service's life span and support For paid services, they often do this, its called the "deprecation policy". For other services, they may not at launch. Then again, the complaints may be from a loud group on internet fora, but they may not represent, despite their loudness, a significant barrier to adoption in Google's experience, so addressing them may not be something worthwhile for Google to do.
      - steego 10y ago
        > but they may not represent, despite their loudness, a significant barrier to adoption in Google's experience You might be right, but I'd argue that measuring for this is probably trickier than it seems. Complaints from loud groups may not initially represent quieter groups, but persistently loud groups have a tendency to shape the thinking of quieter people. Influence is usually slow and gradual at first, but with enough persistence, the message tends to sound more true over time. Repeated ideas tend to quickly overtake if nobody has a vested interest in challenging them. They become these subconscious truisms that people parrot when they hear keywords. By the time that's spread, it's probably too late.
gizmodo59 10y ago
2018: We are discontinuing Spaces.
surge 10y ago
Google+ circles + Hangouts + Docs + whatever does this for me now
msutherl 10y ago
Happy to finally have a viable alternative to Facebook Groups, not particularly bothered about overlapping functionality with G+ (which nobody I know uses).
- mgiannopoulos 10y ago
  But Google+ already has a feature like Facebook Groups, called Communities. It actually has a few more features like separate categories for posts. I'm not sure how Google Spaces is different from Google+ Communities, this is confusing
kbenson 10y ago
One of the top comments had a reply that mentioned a site that tracked Google retired products[1], so I figured I would take a look to see what portion of them were out of beta. I suspect it's generally beta projects that get retired. Google tends to keep things in beta a long time, but I think that's a somewhat separate problem. I noticed that a lot of the retired products actually have become successful companies: - Sidewiki - Seems similar to Genius, as it's becoming, where you can annotate any site. - Jaiku - Micro-blogging and life-streaming, apparently comparable to twitter, founded a month before Twitter was founded, launched the same month Twitter launched. - Dodgeball - Like Foursquare. It's founder left to form foursquare. I'm sure there's more in there. 1: http://www.wordstream.com/articles/retired-google-projects http://www.wordstream.com/articles/retired-google-projects
- fuck_google 10y ago
  Are you trying to say that product management at Google sucks and competitors outrun them despite Google having practically unlimited resources? I agree.
po1nter 10y ago
Opening this URL: http://get.google.com/spaces/ http://get.google.com/spaces/ in Firefox Developer Edition crashes it instantly. Edit: seems like I'm not the only one: https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/4jlgxg/introducing_spaces_a_tool_for_small_group_sharing/d37k9lh https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/4jlgxg/introducing...
rch 10y ago
Sounds like Pinterest. I'd be interested if focused more on sharing Drive content across personal and business accounts.
BinaryIdiot 10y ago
I feel like I keep getting burned by using Google things. Unless it's Gmail, Chrome or Android I always worry that whatever I use of theirs is just going to go away almost overnight. This is why I don't use Google Keep and while I've been thinking about moving domains out of Google Domains. I mean it's an interesting concept though it takes me out of my normal flow of using a web browser or getting my news through various apps so I can't see how I would ever get a chance to use it. I like how it's a more integrated experience, however. Good integrations always trump multiple apps as far as usability is concerned. Btw I love the lack of self awareness with the blog entry. > Group sharing isn’t easy. From book clubs to house hunts to weekend trips and more, getting friends into the same app can be challenging. So here is yet another app to get your friends into!
drhayes9 10y ago
The best online communities I've been a part of have been the focused ones built around concrete discussions. I have problem X, let's talk about some solutions A, B, and C, that kind of thing. There doesn't seem to be a way of involving small groups of people in small discussions that don't require a lot of attention. Someone else mentioned D&D groups -- that's exactly my use case. I don't want to send out tons of email to my players about stuff they might not be interested in. I do want a place that I can dump interesting things that they can later choose to participate in, low attention kind of stuff. Making a G+ community for five people feels like overkill. This could be perfect for that.
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  For me and most of my friends, Slack has filled that gap - but more for groups of friends, with overlapping subsets of interests. (e.g., I'm in a NYC redditors slack team with 52 people, and we have over a dozen channels.) For smaller interests, a lot of people tend to use Google Hangouts - I'm in one with mostly people I know focused on the game Star Realms.
  - andybak 10y ago
    Slack's harsh message retention limits and steep slope from free to paid surely are going to limit it's reach for many communities that a) can't persuade participants to pay £5/month and b) grow to the point that 10000 messages means almost no retention at all. It's happened to more than two Slack groups I've been part of and they are both looking for a new platform.
    - wstrange 10y ago
      Agree. I think Spaces is aimed at Slack. If they keep unlimited message history that is going to be a really compelling feature.
      - andybak 10y ago
        Hmmmm. As much as I wish Slack would become more attractive to non-commercial communities - Spaces doesn't even come close. No integrations, no @mentions, none of the UI niceties, no 'presence'.
mohsinr 10y ago
Believe me I want to have any tool I can get for Collaboration and Sharing... however Spaces from Google, I worry so much that they may kill it someday , FAST. That is the first thought came to my mind when i saw this story. I feel bad to have this thought really. I want to give it a try but just a feeling...
clay_to_n 10y ago
Does anyone remember Facebook Rooms? Seems to be taking that app and throwing in better share functionality. Rooms died for the reasons many others are mentioning here - why would you use a new app, when the functionality (kinda) exists between FB groups, Whatsapp, Messenger? I'm not sure if this will have a web client, but if it does maybe this can be a group-based Pocket / Pinboard competitor?
neves 10y ago
Drowned by a dozen WhatsApp groups, I'm for anything that improves small groups communication. Unfortunately, to make people adopt it will be really difficult. When I'm managing something, I can't even make people fill a simple Google Form.
mattikus 10y ago
This doesn't seem to work with Google Apps for Domains accounts. Another interesting service I can't use. At this point I wish they'd release a tool or some mechanism for me to move my account to a normal GMail account.
- jakebasile 10y ago
  At this point I just assume that any new Google service won't work for me. There's no rhyme or reason for the exclusions so there's no way to predict them aside from a roll of the dice.
- e12e 10y ago
  I'd be very curious why this is? How are the Apps for Domain accounts (technically) different from standard Google accounts? I honestly thought the only motivation Google had for all these various services was user growth, it seems like a bit of a wast not to force-feed Gmail accounts down everyone's throats. They explicitly say that they'll keep all metadata on your use, and index all your content, as far as I know, for all their services -- so I can't imagine there's all that many reasons to the difference be anything more than a tag/group membership to flag any old google user as also an Apps for Domain user?
ssahoo 10y ago
Reminds me of Windows Live Spaces by Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Live_Spaces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Live_Spaces Google seems to be trying to pivot G+ into small individual services focused on mobile first. I find photos very useful after split from G+ though.
eecks 10y ago
Like any of these products (including FB), they are great when everyone uses them but if you don't have enough friends/people you know using them then they are absolutely useless.
nikolay 10y ago
Now on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.social.spaces https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
Numberwang 10y ago
I have now tried it. I'm calling it. Google is officially dead.
tucif 10y ago
It seems they are doing some clever analysis of the data stored. I created a space and added a link to the foursquare page of a local coffee shop that doesn't have "coffee" in the name or url. Then searched for "cafeteria" and got that result back. Tried the same with a local bar.
- fuck_google 10y ago
  Invasion of privacy seems to be a built-in feature of every Google service. No suprise there. You are the product.
gd2 10y ago
A space about space. Right now almost empty. https://goo.gl/spaces/wYK3coJ6Mb5c5CMv6 https://goo.gl/spaces/wYK3coJ6Mb5c5CMv6
gd2 10y ago
A space about space. Right now a Ghost town. https://goo.gl/spaces/wYK3coJ6Mb5c5CMv6 https://goo.gl/spaces/wYK3coJ6Mb5c5CMv6
brohoolio 10y ago
I'd be inclined to think this would be successful if Google used it internally. As a Google Apps admin I spent quite a bit of time arguing with Google product folks about hangouts and Google+ only to find out they didn't use either of the services internally. It's the only way you can explain some of the terrible ideas about either of those products.
- spankalee 10y ago
  We use both Hangouts and Google+ pervasively, every single day. Seriously every single chat in the company goes over Hangouts. Who told you this?
  - aiiane 10y ago
    Confirming that Hangouts and Google+ are both used internally.
- Morgawr 10y ago
  As somebody working at Google... how don't people at G use hangouts? Like, we use it every day. It's the #1 tool we use to communicate with our coworkers in an async way (other than emails). Are there actually people at the company that never use Hangouts?
smitec 10y ago
Perhaps not its intended purpose but to me it looks like an upgraded version of Google Keep. As someone who likes to collect resources and notes on topics for both research papers and personal projects I see this as a useful tool for that. I don't imagine any of my 'spaces' having more than one or two other people in them. In reference to all the 'Google will kill this soon' posts. I agree there seems to be a growing list of discontinued products but their Takeout [1] service almost always lets you get your content out. While things like social interactions on G+ might hold value on the platform itself, as long as I have my notes/photos/data at the end of the day, I am happy to treat these products like I would a text editing app, just a tool to work with the data. [1]: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout
- nevster 10y ago
  My immediate thoughts are how slow and heavyweight it feels. It needs to be snappy like Trello.
est 10y ago
Yet another Resume-Driven Development product from Google. I mean how would possibly this product bring a dime to Google's multi-billion dollar revenue?
- swsieber 10y ago
  How? Yet another look into what people want / are interested in / preferences. That can definitely be used to sell more ads.
Jommi 10y ago
Isn't this like Kippt?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
martior 10y ago
I think it is very smart to go after Facebook Groups. To me that looks like the sticky feature of Facebook that makes people keep using it and it brings in people not really using the service. If you want to keep up on the activities in your own or your kids soccer teams, you have to be on Facebook. Groups is the feature that will keep us on Facebook for the next 10 years. But to me Spaces seem to take the usual too complicated approach from google. Making a new text post is two clicks away before you can start typing? Both Google search and youtube get more prominent positions then text when creating posts. They call it a group sharing service, so maybe they did the right thing and maybe this is what their mvp should be. Feature requests: - Events, and add to users calendar if they rsvp. - Integration with google docs. And let it sync/control the permissions from within the spaces app.
dzink 10y ago
Tried it - they are unbundling social. It's group sharing as simple as starting a Google doc. You open a new one and add them by email or FB invite. A lot of people have gotten disgruntled with FB due to unclear privacy and people who aren't using FB yet, so this might work better. I may try it for sharing stuff with close family - stuff I wouldn't share on facebook because the context is too personal. Finding myself emailing and texting people in too many environments lately, if they can keep my stuff private (and I don't mean get ads for furniture if I share a funny video about ikea private), it might work.
- dave2000 10y ago
  Glad you described it because I wasn't making any sense out of that blog. Won't be using it because it's not a core part of Google and so at a high risk of being cancelled. Also noone else is using it (yeah yeah, I know, but that's not my problem) and i don't do unpaid Google evangelism.
  - dzink 10y ago
    It came out a blink ago and their landing page doesn't even work (the button to get started wasn't clickable for me on Chrome, another google product). I managed to see the product by somehow finding an internal link to it. Reserving judgement till after I've seen its use by non-techie friends. Not even close to being a google advocate, but Facebook is riding the coat-tails of network effects and I'm betting money and time that they won't be the last social network there is. All experiments in the space are interesting to me till the underlying problem's solved.
travis_bickle 10y ago
A better alternative : http://cubeit.io http://cubeit.io
Flenser 10y ago
Sounds a lot like Ray Ozzie's Talko, which he sold to Microsoft at the end of last year: http://fortune.com/2015/12/21/microsoft-buys-ray-ozzie-talko/ http://fortune.com/2015/12/21/microsoft-buys-ray-ozzie-talko...
Aissen 10y ago
It looks like a rebranding/spin-off of G+ communities. Why not, they did it for Photos, they could do it for communities.

201 points by el_duderino 10y ago

So this sounds kinda like Google+ Communities, but detached from Google+? It seems Google is now approaching social as "throw endless piles of new social apps out there until one actually becomes popular". They recently added chat capabilities directly into YouTube and Photos, rather than relying on Hangouts, for example.

vertex-four 10y ago
> It seems Google is now approaching social as "throw endless piles of new social apps out there until one actually becomes popular". That's precisely what they did before Google+, though.
liso 10y ago
I haven't played with Communities much, but as I was reading this I kept thinking it was Google's take on Slack.
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  I suppose it depends whether it's more geared towards post-sharing or immediate chat.
- ComodoHacker 10y ago
  Not Just Slack, but also WhatsApp/Telegram/etc.
dragonwriter 10y ago
It seems to really be the strategy that was discussed early on for Google+ which was hampered by the existence of a special G+ app and, moreso, the need for an "enhanced" G+ account: the social layer is tying together existing Google accounts and products, with added social functionality both in the individual products and in new products which tie them together in new ways. Even FB has given up the "one app to rule them all" approach to social, and Google was never very good at that.

cshimmin 10y ago

"... getting friends into the same app can be challenging... so we made a new app called Spaces..." Obligatory xkcd reference... sigh. https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/

woot01 10y ago
So, people should just stop trying to improve things? XKCD 927 should be considered harmful, as while it is true that's how things sometimes happen, to start quoting it everywhere is to try to shut down people from innovating, and that's anything but helpful.

Numberwang 10y ago

I'm getting more and more lost in the Google ecosystem these days. I will still try it out, but not sure what it can offer me unless it has actual features..

sashk 10y ago

Another service which Google will kill in X years?

dontscale 10y ago
More like VI months?
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  From what I can recall or determine, I don't think Google's ever really given a product or service less than a year from release to shutdown. But a lot of them get killed between the one and two year marks.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > I don't think Google's ever really given a product or service less than a year from release to shutdown. Nexus Q might count.
    - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
      Maybe. They technically killed it before release though. Just some I/O owners such as myself had it before they decided it wasn't going to sell.
awesomerobot 10y ago
Despite the hype, they haven't really killed that many services.
- dewiz 10y ago
  Check out https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discontinued_products_and_services https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Disc...

xd1936 10y ago

Hangouts, Google+, YouTube, Messenger, Photos, and now Spaces are all Google Products that have messaging built-in now. Remember when Hangouts was supposed to be the one chat service to rule them all?

cloudwalking 10y ago
What's Messenger?
- chipperyman573 10y ago
  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.messaging&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...

koolba 10y ago

Who here has any faith this will be around in 5 years? Might be more fun to pick 3 years instead. Unrelated, assuming there is some storage limit to each space, be funny to get an error, "Your space is out of space."

ProAm 10y ago
Start the timer, I give it 19 months before it's sunset.
ccarter84 10y ago
Glad I'm not the only skeptic here. It will likely find a way to count towards storage limits, or find some subtle way to try and monetize like charging for history or slapping ads similar to Twitter's discover or promotional stuff that requires add-ins to remove. Honestly once they went to the intrusive format of hangouts / killed gchat, I lost an valuable means of informal contact with a lot of folks who just turned it off entirely. Gonna nurse that one for a while longer.

andybak 10y ago

For me, the biggest downside of Google shutting down Reader is that from now until eternity every post to Hacker News about a new Google service will be chock full of comments pointing out that it will probably just get closed down. The actual number of genuinely useful services that Google has shuttered is relatively small. Their much bigger sin consists of either long-term neglect, re-launching a new version with half the features missing or as other commenters here have pointed out - launching something that confusingly overlaps with another service.

koolba 10y ago
> For me, the biggest downside of Google shutting down Reader is that from now until eternity every post to Hacker News about a new Google service will be chock full of witty comments about how it's going to get shut down. I'd argue that most of them aren't witty[1] and it's not just Reader either. Plenty of things shut down before and afterwards[2]. [1]: Obviously not counting my own rapier wit... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Discontinued_Google_services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Discontinued_Google_s...
- andybak 10y ago
  Apologies - I edited my original post to take out the overly-sarcastic 'witty' just before you posted. I also added a touch more substance to my comment.
codemac 10y ago
I mean, it's not exactly a short list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discontinued_products_and_services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discon... I'd also add that it raises a serious point: if we cannot depend on products to exist past the team that creates them, are we really producing products at all? Or merely engineering time leased at the rate you consume advertising?
- Flimm 10y ago
  Wow, that is longer than I expected. Here it is in one paragraph: Google Answers, Google Deskbar, Writely, Google Click-to-Call, Related Links, Public Service Search, Google Video Marketplace, Google Browser Sync (Firefox), Google Lively, Hello, SearchMash, Send to Phone, Audio Ads, Catalogs, Dodgeball, Google Ride Finder, Shared Stuff, Google Page Creator, Marratech e-Meeting, GOOG-411, Google Labs, Google Buzz, Google Dictionary, Google PowerMeter, Real Estate, Google Directory, Squared, Google Sets, Google Pack, Google Fast Flip, Desktop, Google Image Labeler, Aardvark, Directory, Gears, Google Notebook, Google Apps standard edition, Google Code Search, Google Health, Google Website Optimizer, TV Ads, Google Friend Connect, Google Insights for Search, Knol, Google Wave, Picnik, Jaiku, Nexus Q, Slide.com, Google Mini, Picasa Web Albums Uploader, Google Cloud Connect (Microsoft Office plugin), Google Building Maker, Google Calendar Sync, Meebo, Google Reader, Google Latitude, Google Talk, SMS service, iGoogle, GIS tools for Google Maps, Google Schemer, Google Notifier, YouTube My Speed, Orkut, QuickOffice, "discussion search", Google Moderator, Wildfire by Google, BebaPay, Google Helpouts, Google Code, Picasa, Google Compare.

mxuribe 10y ago

I really want to reserve judgement here...I want to wait and see how it actually functions, etc. But reading the description, (and my immediate reflex is to state that) it really looks extraneous, and definitely overlap for what G+ should/could be (or maybe is?). Unless i'm mis-reading, it basically is the definition of a type of social network: 1. Have/find content. 2. Have a desire to share/discuss content with friends, acquaintances. 3. Trigger some function/feature to share on a time line of sorts, so friends, acquaintances can see/interact with said content. Not to sound so dismissive, (I hate to be critical for someone's hard work) but is that all that this new product is? Basically another (centralized) social network? I think Google should instead develop an open source, federated protocol for maybe standardizing sharing via decentralized social networks. This would open it up to myriad apps/clients. Oh sure, there are some out there...but having it (the protocol) associated to Google would give it some authority - and by extension attract more devs to its ecosystem; though still keep it open/free. Side benefit, if Google sponsored and supported this federated protocol, they can begin to dive into the decentralized (dare i call it) movement. They could then position themselves to provide search (their original strength) across decentralized nodes, etc. Owners of their own decentralized nodes could choose to "play with Google" or not. Who knows, maybe Google developing a federated protocol may not be ideal...but anything seems better than what this new product appears to be. (Seriously trying not to judge too soon though. ;-)

fosco 10y ago
I thought that was the goal of google wave? I keep a close eye on Apache wave but the movement needs some new vitality, I see it hanging on a small handful of courageous and incredible volunteers albeit, needs more devs.
- mxuribe 10y ago
  Good point fosco, thanks! While I don't recall Wave being specifically designed for social network, I did used to think how innovative it was for its time as a platform for many types of communication and interaction paradigms. Further, there is even an open source social network platform based on it, namely Kune: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kune_(software)#Technical_details https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kune_(software)#Technical_deta... And, of course: http://kune.cc http://kune.cc Definitely, very cool!

Bushra8 10y ago

That's what i was thinking, this is totally a google+ feature they had planned (which others are pointing out is similar to Waves) but took off the platform. Which kinda does make sense. Instead of forcing G+ they basically made android more flexible allowing them to do this kind of feature without the G+ platform.

AznHisoka 10y ago

That's great, but I want to talk/share things with anonymous strangers who aren't my friends who share the same disease I have. That's my need, not this. This is superfluous.

ArmandGrillet 10y ago
Did you try to find a subreddit concerning the subject you're interested in?
- gdulli 10y ago
  What a devastating one-two punch, (1) to have a disease and (2) to find out reddit is the place you have to turn.
  - npizzolato 10y ago
    Reddit has a lot of active, helpful communities hidden away in smaller subreddits. It's really only the default subreddits and other huge subreddits that are bad.
    - intoverflow2 10y ago
      It's the same people, check their comment histories some time
arbre 10y ago
Allowing anonymous users would be great. For example I would like to create such a group/space for my family even though some of them do not have google accounts.

iamben 10y ago

I hate to say, but this looks like a bunch of people sat around and went "everyone seems to be using WhatsApp, what's WhatsApp missing?" Except everyone uses WhatsApp, because it doesn't have all that stuff - it's just simple. And everyone else is on it. Case in point - Telegram is kinda nice. Has some good features, and it's pretty simple. But I probably wouldn't have it installed, if it wasn't for the one group I need to use it with. Literally everyone else I converse with daily with through WhatsApp. My friends, my colleagues, my relatives, my parents. Trying to persuade anyone to try something new is hard. Trying to get my parents to use something new, and then trying to explain how to set up an account, what this does, what that does - just not going to happen. Especially if everyone else is using something else. But good luck to Google, I look forward to giving it a try :-)

A-F1V3 10y ago
That WhatsApp vs Telegram user comparison is interesting... nearly everyone in my social group uses Telegram, I don't think I've ever even installed WhatsApp. I know WhatsApp has significantly more users worldwide, but for whatever reason my tribe has chosen Telegram.
- eecks 10y ago
  Which is strange because as your tribe expands they'll interact with WhatsApp users. I bet you will eventually all use whatsapp.
  - reitanqild 10y ago
    I use both. They are both great and with modern smartphones having both installed is no problem. Whatsapp is a bit more secure by default it seems and Telegram keeps adding and improving features monthly it seems. I love both of them and have my inlaws on T and my stubborn family on W.
- iamben 10y ago
  Whereabouts are you based? I'm UK - I think WhatsApp benefitted from a significant foothold before Telegram came along. Hard to disrupt that now.

aembleton 10y ago

Sounds like an attempt at competing against group chat on Facebook messenger except nearly all of my friends are already on Messenger and this doesn't seem to add anything new.

dragonwriter 10y ago
No, compared to FB products, its more competing with Facebook Groups than group chat on Facebook Messenger. There's lots of UX issues with existing group-shared-content solutions that could be addressed, but until we actually see this I'm not sure what it offers new in the space.

kristianc 10y ago

I'm not sure what, if any value this adds. If I want to bring together a group of people, I have lots of options, from very structured - "I have a Facebook group for the sports team / political campaign I run and want to share information with players, get them to do things" - to the very ad hoc "I have a group of buddies who I get together with once in a while and to save time we've got a WhatsApp group." Both of these work well because they're linked with something I use all the time anyway - Facebook and WhatsApp. If I want to connect with random people on subjects I care out, there are subreddits. The use case for this, on the other hand, is what? "I'm going to use a specific service that I'm going to have to persuade all of my friends to use, with no real added benefit?". I just don't get it.

dimino 10y ago
> with no real added benefit? Are you sure? Edit: Think study groups, DnD sessions, or other document-collaboration type use cases. Facebook does not make that particularly easy, and how mature is Facebook's enterprise support? Facebook For Work is much less of a sure thing than their personal offerings. People already use the heck out of Google Docs for collaboration, this provides a bit of formality and structure to that collaboration. Before, Docs sharing was a bit of a Docs + Hangouts + informal process around discussion. Now it's... whatever this does. I'm excited to see how this works out. I'm using Docs collaboration to help plan a trip I'm going on in a few months, I might try to use this to enhance that collaboration.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
lallysingh 10y ago
AFAICT, Google's current strategy is, on a plane of the social and chat axes, put one product at every integral (x,y) coordinate.
incepted 10y ago
From my understanding, Spaces doesn't require any kind of membership anywhere. No accounts. This could become a big deal if true and possibly rival Twitter for when you suddenly have an interest in something for a few hours/days but want to drop out later.

dontscale 10y ago

Another project Google with kill in 6 months.

amolgupta 10y ago

Given the potential and success of Facebook groups [http://alexmuir.com/facebook-is-the-new-excel http://alexmuir.com/facebook-is-the-new-excel] Google had to come up with something to compete. Wont be surprised by "I need Spaces invite" all over the internet in coming days but personally wont rush into using it.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> Wont be surprised by "I need Spaces invite" all over the internet in coming days Per the announcement, Spaces is enabled for all Gmail accounts at launch. Gmail doesn't require invites. Therefore, Spaces doesn't require invites.
Nullabillity 10y ago
Doesn't seem to require invites.
intoverflow2 10y ago
>"I need Spaces invite" Think they learnt their lesson that invite only no longer builds hype with the G+ launch.

blisterpeanuts 10y ago

Based on the very preliminary website, this seems to be a way to quickly set up invite-only ad hoc interest groups, bypassing the infrastructure and membership requirements of a full networking service like Facebook, Yahoo!Groups, and old style chatboards. This could be useful for people who boycott or otherwise have no use for social networks. I'm not sure how big that market really is, but my own parents come to mind, plus some curmudgeonly old friends who only do email. Another Google experiment that will run its course and either succeed or be relegated to the attic which is full of interesting but unsuccessful ideas. I'm glad someone's trying to think ahead of the curve and bypass the social networks, which are such a time sync for me at least.

gk1 10y ago
Aside: I misclicked and downvoted when I meant to upvote. There's no undo from what I can tell.
mgiannopoulos 10y ago
So, it won't require a Google account? I guess it will, so we're back to the same point.
- blisterpeanuts 10y ago
  I agree, probably would require a Google account, but what if it's only for the group founder? If it requires everyone to have a Google login then it's just like Plus. If not, then it's actually a rather appealing idea. "Join my group, and you're not required to set up an account." Just a quick, spur of the moment thing.
  - mgiannopoulos 10y ago
    Tried it out, you need a Google account to join.
fredgrott 10y ago
its not how many unsuccessful ones, its how big of success is the successful one..

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

andreapaiola 10y ago

Wait,is it a my space? MySpace? Oh, wait... :D

mxuribe 10y ago
No, no, its SpaceBook. Wait, no its Space+. Well, let's hope they get plenty of users...else it will turn into a SpaceGhostTown...yeah, acknowledged it was a cheesy joke (what can i say, i'm a Dad ;-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Ghost_Coast_to_Coast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Ghost_Coast_to_Coast

anentropic 10y ago

can I share photos? That's what I used to use Google+ for... sharing personal stuff with small group (i.e. family) then they rebuilt the photo albums from G+ as Google Photos, regressed all the features, and redesigned G+, regressing the photo sharing story even further I don't know wtf they're trying to do at Google but it seems after G+ failed to dislodge Facebook they don't know what to do and just make everything worse

blisterpeanuts 10y ago
They broke Photos out from Plus because it was the most successful aspect of the product.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  Only after they broke Hangouts out from Plus, because it was the most successful aspect of the product.
fuck_google 10y ago
Perhaps the academic monoculture at Google is a poor fit with effective product management and fostering creativity. That seems to be a common problem with most research focused organizations in my experience.

MistahKoala 10y ago

I won't bother taking the time to find out more about it, let alone download and use it, because it'll only disappear in a few years' time. I've already had my fingers burned by integrating previous Google services into my workflow.

wnevets 10y ago
seeing this comment for every google announce is getting real old.
- steego 10y ago
  The fact that you're tired of people complaining about Google discontinuing products tells me that Google may have a problem convincing people to adopt new services. If the majority of people don't believe Google is really invested in products until it's successful, it's going to be an uphill battle for Google when it comes to launching new services. Google's strategy to discontinue services comes with natural consequences. One of those consequences is it burns bridges with certain types of early adopters and creates distrust when those early adopters complain in popular forums like Hacker News. UPDATE: It may be in Google's best interest to start publically committing to a service's life span and support to preemptively address the leftover feelings of abandonment from other discontinued services.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > It may be in Google's best interest to start publically committing to a service's life span and support For paid services, they often do this, its called the "deprecation policy". For other services, they may not at launch. Then again, the complaints may be from a loud group on internet fora, but they may not represent, despite their loudness, a significant barrier to adoption in Google's experience, so addressing them may not be something worthwhile for Google to do.
    - steego 10y ago
      > but they may not represent, despite their loudness, a significant barrier to adoption in Google's experience You might be right, but I'd argue that measuring for this is probably trickier than it seems. Complaints from loud groups may not initially represent quieter groups, but persistently loud groups have a tendency to shape the thinking of quieter people. Influence is usually slow and gradual at first, but with enough persistence, the message tends to sound more true over time. Repeated ideas tend to quickly overtake if nobody has a vested interest in challenging them. They become these subconscious truisms that people parrot when they hear keywords. By the time that's spread, it's probably too late.

gizmodo59 10y ago

2018: We are discontinuing Spaces.

surge 10y ago

Google+ circles + Hangouts + Docs + whatever does this for me now

msutherl 10y ago

Happy to finally have a viable alternative to Facebook Groups, not particularly bothered about overlapping functionality with G+ (which nobody I know uses).

mgiannopoulos 10y ago
But Google+ already has a feature like Facebook Groups, called Communities. It actually has a few more features like separate categories for posts. I'm not sure how Google Spaces is different from Google+ Communities, this is confusing

kbenson 10y ago

One of the top comments had a reply that mentioned a site that tracked Google retired products[1], so I figured I would take a look to see what portion of them were out of beta. I suspect it's generally beta projects that get retired. Google tends to keep things in beta a long time, but I think that's a somewhat separate problem. I noticed that a lot of the retired products actually have become successful companies: - Sidewiki - Seems similar to Genius, as it's becoming, where you can annotate any site. - Jaiku - Micro-blogging and life-streaming, apparently comparable to twitter, founded a month before Twitter was founded, launched the same month Twitter launched. - Dodgeball - Like Foursquare. It's founder left to form foursquare. I'm sure there's more in there. 1: http://www.wordstream.com/articles/retired-google-projects http://www.wordstream.com/articles/retired-google-projects

fuck_google 10y ago
Are you trying to say that product management at Google sucks and competitors outrun them despite Google having practically unlimited resources? I agree.

po1nter 10y ago

Opening this URL: http://get.google.com/spaces/ http://get.google.com/spaces/ in Firefox Developer Edition crashes it instantly. Edit: seems like I'm not the only one: https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/4jlgxg/introducing_spaces_a_tool_for_small_group_sharing/d37k9lh https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/4jlgxg/introducing...

rch 10y ago

Sounds like Pinterest. I'd be interested if focused more on sharing Drive content across personal and business accounts.

BinaryIdiot 10y ago

I feel like I keep getting burned by using Google things. Unless it's Gmail, Chrome or Android I always worry that whatever I use of theirs is just going to go away almost overnight. This is why I don't use Google Keep and while I've been thinking about moving domains out of Google Domains. I mean it's an interesting concept though it takes me out of my normal flow of using a web browser or getting my news through various apps so I can't see how I would ever get a chance to use it. I like how it's a more integrated experience, however. Good integrations always trump multiple apps as far as usability is concerned. Btw I love the lack of self awareness with the blog entry. > Group sharing isn’t easy. From book clubs to house hunts to weekend trips and more, getting friends into the same app can be challenging. So here is yet another app to get your friends into!

drhayes9 10y ago

The best online communities I've been a part of have been the focused ones built around concrete discussions. I have problem X, let's talk about some solutions A, B, and C, that kind of thing. There doesn't seem to be a way of involving small groups of people in small discussions that don't require a lot of attention. Someone else mentioned D&D groups -- that's exactly my use case. I don't want to send out tons of email to my players about stuff they might not be interested in. I do want a place that I can dump interesting things that they can later choose to participate in, low attention kind of stuff. Making a G+ community for five people feels like overkill. This could be perfect for that.

pavel_lishin 10y ago
For me and most of my friends, Slack has filled that gap - but more for groups of friends, with overlapping subsets of interests. (e.g., I'm in a NYC redditors slack team with 52 people, and we have over a dozen channels.) For smaller interests, a lot of people tend to use Google Hangouts - I'm in one with mostly people I know focused on the game Star Realms.
- andybak 10y ago
  Slack's harsh message retention limits and steep slope from free to paid surely are going to limit it's reach for many communities that a) can't persuade participants to pay £5/month and b) grow to the point that 10000 messages means almost no retention at all. It's happened to more than two Slack groups I've been part of and they are both looking for a new platform.
  - wstrange 10y ago
    Agree. I think Spaces is aimed at Slack. If they keep unlimited message history that is going to be a really compelling feature.
    - andybak 10y ago
      Hmmmm. As much as I wish Slack would become more attractive to non-commercial communities - Spaces doesn't even come close. No integrations, no @mentions, none of the UI niceties, no 'presence'.

mohsinr 10y ago

Believe me I want to have any tool I can get for Collaboration and Sharing... however Spaces from Google, I worry so much that they may kill it someday , FAST. That is the first thought came to my mind when i saw this story. I feel bad to have this thought really. I want to give it a try but just a feeling...

clay_to_n 10y ago

Does anyone remember Facebook Rooms? Seems to be taking that app and throwing in better share functionality. Rooms died for the reasons many others are mentioning here - why would you use a new app, when the functionality (kinda) exists between FB groups, Whatsapp, Messenger? I'm not sure if this will have a web client, but if it does maybe this can be a group-based Pocket / Pinboard competitor?

neves 10y ago

Drowned by a dozen WhatsApp groups, I'm for anything that improves small groups communication. Unfortunately, to make people adopt it will be really difficult. When I'm managing something, I can't even make people fill a simple Google Form.

mattikus 10y ago

This doesn't seem to work with Google Apps for Domains accounts. Another interesting service I can't use. At this point I wish they'd release a tool or some mechanism for me to move my account to a normal GMail account.

jakebasile 10y ago
At this point I just assume that any new Google service won't work for me. There's no rhyme or reason for the exclusions so there's no way to predict them aside from a roll of the dice.
e12e 10y ago
I'd be very curious why this is? How are the Apps for Domain accounts (technically) different from standard Google accounts? I honestly thought the only motivation Google had for all these various services was user growth, it seems like a bit of a wast not to force-feed Gmail accounts down everyone's throats. They explicitly say that they'll keep all metadata on your use, and index all your content, as far as I know, for all their services -- so I can't imagine there's all that many reasons to the difference be anything more than a tag/group membership to flag any old google user as also an Apps for Domain user?

ssahoo 10y ago

Reminds me of Windows Live Spaces by Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Live_Spaces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Live_Spaces Google seems to be trying to pivot G+ into small individual services focused on mobile first. I find photos very useful after split from G+ though.

eecks 10y ago

Like any of these products (including FB), they are great when everyone uses them but if you don't have enough friends/people you know using them then they are absolutely useless.

nikolay 10y ago

Now on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.social.spaces https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...

Numberwang 10y ago

I have now tried it. I'm calling it. Google is officially dead.

tucif 10y ago

It seems they are doing some clever analysis of the data stored. I created a space and added a link to the foursquare page of a local coffee shop that doesn't have "coffee" in the name or url. Then searched for "cafeteria" and got that result back. Tried the same with a local bar.

fuck_google 10y ago
Invasion of privacy seems to be a built-in feature of every Google service. No suprise there. You are the product.

gd2 10y ago

A space about space. Right now almost empty. https://goo.gl/spaces/wYK3coJ6Mb5c5CMv6 https://goo.gl/spaces/wYK3coJ6Mb5c5CMv6

gd2 10y ago

A space about space. Right now a Ghost town. https://goo.gl/spaces/wYK3coJ6Mb5c5CMv6 https://goo.gl/spaces/wYK3coJ6Mb5c5CMv6

brohoolio 10y ago

I'd be inclined to think this would be successful if Google used it internally. As a Google Apps admin I spent quite a bit of time arguing with Google product folks about hangouts and Google+ only to find out they didn't use either of the services internally. It's the only way you can explain some of the terrible ideas about either of those products.

spankalee 10y ago
We use both Hangouts and Google+ pervasively, every single day. Seriously every single chat in the company goes over Hangouts. Who told you this?
- aiiane 10y ago
  Confirming that Hangouts and Google+ are both used internally.
Morgawr 10y ago
As somebody working at Google... how don't people at G use hangouts? Like, we use it every day. It's the #1 tool we use to communicate with our coworkers in an async way (other than emails). Are there actually people at the company that never use Hangouts?

smitec 10y ago

Perhaps not its intended purpose but to me it looks like an upgraded version of Google Keep. As someone who likes to collect resources and notes on topics for both research papers and personal projects I see this as a useful tool for that. I don't imagine any of my 'spaces' having more than one or two other people in them. In reference to all the 'Google will kill this soon' posts. I agree there seems to be a growing list of discontinued products but their Takeout [1] service almost always lets you get your content out. While things like social interactions on G+ might hold value on the platform itself, as long as I have my notes/photos/data at the end of the day, I am happy to treat these products like I would a text editing app, just a tool to work with the data. [1]: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout

nevster 10y ago
My immediate thoughts are how slow and heavyweight it feels. It needs to be snappy like Trello.

est 10y ago

Yet another Resume-Driven Development product from Google. I mean how would possibly this product bring a dime to Google's multi-billion dollar revenue?

swsieber 10y ago
How? Yet another look into what people want / are interested in / preferences. That can definitely be used to sell more ads.

Jommi 10y ago

Isn't this like Kippt?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

martior 10y ago

I think it is very smart to go after Facebook Groups. To me that looks like the sticky feature of Facebook that makes people keep using it and it brings in people not really using the service. If you want to keep up on the activities in your own or your kids soccer teams, you have to be on Facebook. Groups is the feature that will keep us on Facebook for the next 10 years. But to me Spaces seem to take the usual too complicated approach from google. Making a new text post is two clicks away before you can start typing? Both Google search and youtube get more prominent positions then text when creating posts. They call it a group sharing service, so maybe they did the right thing and maybe this is what their mvp should be. Feature requests: - Events, and add to users calendar if they rsvp. - Integration with google docs. And let it sync/control the permissions from within the spaces app.

dzink 10y ago

Tried it - they are unbundling social. It's group sharing as simple as starting a Google doc. You open a new one and add them by email or FB invite. A lot of people have gotten disgruntled with FB due to unclear privacy and people who aren't using FB yet, so this might work better. I may try it for sharing stuff with close family - stuff I wouldn't share on facebook because the context is too personal. Finding myself emailing and texting people in too many environments lately, if they can keep my stuff private (and I don't mean get ads for furniture if I share a funny video about ikea private), it might work.

dave2000 10y ago
Glad you described it because I wasn't making any sense out of that blog. Won't be using it because it's not a core part of Google and so at a high risk of being cancelled. Also noone else is using it (yeah yeah, I know, but that's not my problem) and i don't do unpaid Google evangelism.
- dzink 10y ago
  It came out a blink ago and their landing page doesn't even work (the button to get started wasn't clickable for me on Chrome, another google product). I managed to see the product by somehow finding an internal link to it. Reserving judgement till after I've seen its use by non-techie friends. Not even close to being a google advocate, but Facebook is riding the coat-tails of network effects and I'm betting money and time that they won't be the last social network there is. All experiments in the space are interesting to me till the underlying problem's solved.

travis_bickle 10y ago

A better alternative : http://cubeit.io http://cubeit.io

Flenser 10y ago

Sounds a lot like Ray Ozzie's Talko, which he sold to Microsoft at the end of last year: http://fortune.com/2015/12/21/microsoft-buys-ray-ozzie-talko/ http://fortune.com/2015/12/21/microsoft-buys-ray-ozzie-talko...

Aissen 10y ago

It looks like a rebranding/spin-off of G+ communities. Why not, they did it for Photos, they could do it for communities.