4 ms·

Lots of posts in this thread are trying to find a "reason" for why G+ isn't beating FB. I think they're overlooking the obvious: Good Enuf + Path Dependency = I

Lots of posts in this thread are trying to find a "reason" for why G+ isn't beating FB. I think they're overlooking the obvious: Good Enuf + Path Dependency = Inertia. Simply put, the most amazing social network the world has ever seen, that executed perfectly on every front, is not going to suddenly displace FB. It's like asking why no one disrupted Windows pre-Web/pre-Mobile. Was it because alternative operating systems sucked? IMHO, the big chance anyone had to disrupt FB was a paradigm shift away from social news feeds. That paradigm shift arrived with photo sharing and messaging on mobile, where increasingly people were just sharing pictures and text messages privately. However, Zuckerberg saw that one coming and acquired Instagram and WhatsApp to head off any disruption. That shouldn't stop people from trying to innovate. But we should not regard being smaller than the leader as a failure. I use G+, Twitter, and FB, but I have the best conversations on G+. Twitter discussions are an exercise in frustration, and I find the signal/noise on FB to be worse. There's a benefit sometimes to having a smaller audience.

ocdtrekkie 10y ago
This is also why Android still is winning over various better designed competitors. It's a clunky security nightmare with performance issues, but changing to another platform requires changing how you use your device, maybe finding different apps, etc.
- cromwellian 10y ago
  You're like the only person I know who is a Windows Phone fanboy. Perhaps you missed the part where none of the competitors were open source, or cheap to license, and shipped years later (Windows Phone in 2010, Android in 2008). The world is flooded with Android for the same reason it's flooded with Linux now, and not Windows kernel devices. Perhaps if Ballmer had stopped trying to make OS licensing a profit center on mobile, history would have been different.
  - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
    Not really a fanboy, just... finally no longer fighting with my phone. It's faster, it's more secure, it's supported properly by the developer. I'd honestly probably rather an Ubuntu phone or a Tizen phone or something, but Windows is the only third option I currently have on my carrier. And there's plenty of open source options out there now too, but it requires people step away from the coddled embrace of the existing monopolist.
    - cromwellian 10y ago
      Using a non-Google ecosystem phone is trivial. Hundreds of millions of people do it. I've lived on Chinese Android phones, it wasn't hard. In China, instead of being "coddled" by Facebook/Google/et al, you are "coddled" by BAT - Baidu/Alibaba/Tencent. Apps like WePay are indispensable, ergo, as long as your phone runs WePay, you can do lots of stuff. Arguing for more Android forks is really a counter to your complaints about security issues, since it will result in even more fragmented updating schedules, given carrier control. It also contradicts your usual pimping of Windows Phone, complaining about Google's "monopoly" on Android, but supporting a monopolist (Microsoft) who won't even open source their OS.
      - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
        Honestly, between the possibility of Microsoft open sourcing Windows and Google open sourcing Google Apps, I'd give ten times the odds to Microsoft. Microsoft is on the path of being more open from where they were. Google is on the path of being more closed then they were. This here wasn't persay an argument for more Android forks. As I said, Android is buggy and insecure. I'd rather many of the other open source options like Tizen or Ubuntu Touch get a chance to thrive. My view on Android itself is simple: As long as Google is incapable of updating it's own software, it's a joke. A literal joke.
        cromwellian 10y ago
        Every so often I decide whether or not I should bother engaging your posts thinking perhaps you have moderated your obsessive fixation and bias against Google, and I'm continually disappointed. One could easily claim my bias is obvious, given my employer, but outside that, there are simply facts that can be independently measured and verified by anyone by simply measuring amount of code, projects, shipped as open source by each company. While Microsoft should absolutely be commended for their turn around in recent times given their new CEO, the fact reminds, Google not only continues to ship more open source projects every year, but has actually been more open, not less, recently. And that doesn't even count the huge number of external commits that Googlers make to other open source projects that are not owned by Google. To say that Microsoft getting better than Google at openness is completely lacking in evidence, and only by bias and political spin can it be seen otherwise. As of right now, Google open source enables IHVs to make products and take them to market, saving enormous development costs, by forking Android or parts of it, or forking Chromium. Or taking V8 (as nodejs did) to spawn an entire development ecosystem. There's a thriving industry of startups and development ecosystem that exists because of these contributions. Right now, I can't go make say, a new wearable, IoT device, phone, or TV, and bootstrap it quickly by taking parts of Windows, but you can see tons of Kickstarter projects that do that with Google code, without involving any formal arrangement with Google, i.e. "permissionless" development. When cheap devices in India or China enable the worlds poor to get online by using Microsoft source, then maybe your statements can hold water.
nikofeyn 10y ago
my twitter news feed is hands down the most enriching feed i have. it beats hacker news, reddit, and instagram. it obviously beats facebook, which is normally trash, but that is deactivated at the moment. twitter is indeed bad for conversations, but it is excellent to get a feed of what's what, as long as you are following the right people. i am pretty selective in who i follow and it leads to a pretty high quality feed, at least in my opinion. also, where else are you going to get one of your idols (fumito ueda) to like a tweet/post of yours? haha.
- kkarakk 10y ago
  >it is excellent to get a feed of what's what, as long as you are following the right people social network people discovery shouldn't be work, twitter is. have one but don't really use it anymore for the same reason. it's just exhausting constantly curating your feed
dredmorbius 10y ago
You're leaving off a few additional factors: 1. Repeated self-sabotage. On multiple fronts, G+ actively dissuaded large, initially positive, early-adoptor groups. 2. Founding cohort. Googlers were OK, as were the early techies. Google's position as the world's leading ad agency meant that marketing types, particularly the sub-breed known as SEO, were a large initial cohort. Until users learned to block them on site, this was a net negative. 3. Fighting users' interests. There were several use-cases, but one that many sought was a long-form content posting space. Google+ supports this in some ways (posts can be quite long), but offered far too little by way of preview. One of my few heeded suggestions: to insert a word count on post previews. 4. Forced mergers of unrelated products. I really don't want random people off the Web popuulating my email contacts, or writing to my calendar, or tracking my YouTube views. I and I don't want my personal and private online activities broadcast to co-workers, family, friends, and others. I don't want to have G+ nags following me across all other Google properties, and actively sought out alternatives to Search, Maps, and other tools simply to no have a Persistent Red Dot appear everywhere I went. Abysmal search (no search when the product was first launched), abysmal filtering, abysmal response to privacy, abysmal record of unilaterally joining up multiple independent accounts against users' express wishes. Abysmal experience in locking people out of all of their Google services for perceived misdeeds on a single one. This was a massive shitshow from start to finish.
- cromwellian 10y ago
  And yet, even if all of those hadn't occurred, do you really think it likely people would switch en-mass? What would be the benefit? Circles? What is the major pain point of Facebook that another social network would solve so convincingly to cause their users to bear the costs of switching? That have been dozens of other networks launched besides G+, none of them have garnered significant traction. Only mobile chat products that utilize phone numbers and contacts to build a network have really made a dent. The vast majority of users of G+ never experienced blocking, didn't care about nymwars, etc. These are edge-user complaints. It causes distress in early adopters and the technorati but is meaningless to most people. If you look at WhatsApp and Instagram, it turns out the majority of Facebook's users didn't care about 90% of their features. They just want to share photos and sent short messages. My point is, those who are deeply about these things focus on edge case features that make a ton of difference to them, but are invisible to most people. Hell, I've rarely used Facebook search to search for anything other than a Contact. I suspect most people don't use the Search feature much, or lists, or groups, and all of the other dials and knobs. Much of the world's communications by average people now runs on WhatsApp, iMessenger, WeChat, LINE, etc, because the use case for most people is not to be a public persona with a subscriber base, to conduct arguments and discussions with them.
cookiecaper 10y ago
Let us not overlook that online incumbents are cemented by massively overzealous copyright and network access laws. One of the internet's great promises -- mobility -- is neutered by things like the CFAA and unreasonable interpretations of copyright. If these laws were fixed, companies like Facebook would have to compete on the merit of their platform instead of simply keeping people around by holding their data and personal networks hostage.

ocdtrekkie 10y ago

This is also why Android still is winning over various better designed competitors. It's a clunky security nightmare with performance issues, but changing to another platform requires changing how you use your device, maybe finding different apps, etc.

cromwellian 10y ago
You're like the only person I know who is a Windows Phone fanboy. Perhaps you missed the part where none of the competitors were open source, or cheap to license, and shipped years later (Windows Phone in 2010, Android in 2008). The world is flooded with Android for the same reason it's flooded with Linux now, and not Windows kernel devices. Perhaps if Ballmer had stopped trying to make OS licensing a profit center on mobile, history would have been different.
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  Not really a fanboy, just... finally no longer fighting with my phone. It's faster, it's more secure, it's supported properly by the developer. I'd honestly probably rather an Ubuntu phone or a Tizen phone or something, but Windows is the only third option I currently have on my carrier. And there's plenty of open source options out there now too, but it requires people step away from the coddled embrace of the existing monopolist.
  - cromwellian 10y ago
    Using a non-Google ecosystem phone is trivial. Hundreds of millions of people do it. I've lived on Chinese Android phones, it wasn't hard. In China, instead of being "coddled" by Facebook/Google/et al, you are "coddled" by BAT - Baidu/Alibaba/Tencent. Apps like WePay are indispensable, ergo, as long as your phone runs WePay, you can do lots of stuff. Arguing for more Android forks is really a counter to your complaints about security issues, since it will result in even more fragmented updating schedules, given carrier control. It also contradicts your usual pimping of Windows Phone, complaining about Google's "monopoly" on Android, but supporting a monopolist (Microsoft) who won't even open source their OS.
    - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
      Honestly, between the possibility of Microsoft open sourcing Windows and Google open sourcing Google Apps, I'd give ten times the odds to Microsoft. Microsoft is on the path of being more open from where they were. Google is on the path of being more closed then they were. This here wasn't persay an argument for more Android forks. As I said, Android is buggy and insecure. I'd rather many of the other open source options like Tizen or Ubuntu Touch get a chance to thrive. My view on Android itself is simple: As long as Google is incapable of updating it's own software, it's a joke. A literal joke.
      - cromwellian 10y ago
        Every so often I decide whether or not I should bother engaging your posts thinking perhaps you have moderated your obsessive fixation and bias against Google, and I'm continually disappointed. One could easily claim my bias is obvious, given my employer, but outside that, there are simply facts that can be independently measured and verified by anyone by simply measuring amount of code, projects, shipped as open source by each company. While Microsoft should absolutely be commended for their turn around in recent times given their new CEO, the fact reminds, Google not only continues to ship more open source projects every year, but has actually been more open, not less, recently. And that doesn't even count the huge number of external commits that Googlers make to other open source projects that are not owned by Google. To say that Microsoft getting better than Google at openness is completely lacking in evidence, and only by bias and political spin can it be seen otherwise. As of right now, Google open source enables IHVs to make products and take them to market, saving enormous development costs, by forking Android or parts of it, or forking Chromium. Or taking V8 (as nodejs did) to spawn an entire development ecosystem. There's a thriving industry of startups and development ecosystem that exists because of these contributions. Right now, I can't go make say, a new wearable, IoT device, phone, or TV, and bootstrap it quickly by taking parts of Windows, but you can see tons of Kickstarter projects that do that with Google code, without involving any formal arrangement with Google, i.e. "permissionless" development. When cheap devices in India or China enable the worlds poor to get online by using Microsoft source, then maybe your statements can hold water.

nikofeyn 10y ago

my twitter news feed is hands down the most enriching feed i have. it beats hacker news, reddit, and instagram. it obviously beats facebook, which is normally trash, but that is deactivated at the moment. twitter is indeed bad for conversations, but it is excellent to get a feed of what's what, as long as you are following the right people. i am pretty selective in who i follow and it leads to a pretty high quality feed, at least in my opinion. also, where else are you going to get one of your idols (fumito ueda) to like a tweet/post of yours? haha.

kkarakk 10y ago
>it is excellent to get a feed of what's what, as long as you are following the right people social network people discovery shouldn't be work, twitter is. have one but don't really use it anymore for the same reason. it's just exhausting constantly curating your feed

dredmorbius 10y ago

You're leaving off a few additional factors: 1. Repeated self-sabotage. On multiple fronts, G+ actively dissuaded large, initially positive, early-adoptor groups. 2. Founding cohort. Googlers were OK, as were the early techies. Google's position as the world's leading ad agency meant that marketing types, particularly the sub-breed known as SEO, were a large initial cohort. Until users learned to block them on site, this was a net negative. 3. Fighting users' interests. There were several use-cases, but one that many sought was a long-form content posting space. Google+ supports this in some ways (posts can be quite long), but offered far too little by way of preview. One of my few heeded suggestions: to insert a word count on post previews. 4. Forced mergers of unrelated products. I really don't want random people off the Web popuulating my email contacts, or writing to my calendar, or tracking my YouTube views. I and I don't want my personal and private online activities broadcast to co-workers, family, friends, and others. I don't want to have G+ nags following me across all other Google properties, and actively sought out alternatives to Search, Maps, and other tools simply to no have a Persistent Red Dot appear everywhere I went. Abysmal search (no search when the product was first launched), abysmal filtering, abysmal response to privacy, abysmal record of unilaterally joining up multiple independent accounts against users' express wishes. Abysmal experience in locking people out of all of their Google services for perceived misdeeds on a single one. This was a massive shitshow from start to finish.

cromwellian 10y ago
And yet, even if all of those hadn't occurred, do you really think it likely people would switch en-mass? What would be the benefit? Circles? What is the major pain point of Facebook that another social network would solve so convincingly to cause their users to bear the costs of switching? That have been dozens of other networks launched besides G+, none of them have garnered significant traction. Only mobile chat products that utilize phone numbers and contacts to build a network have really made a dent. The vast majority of users of G+ never experienced blocking, didn't care about nymwars, etc. These are edge-user complaints. It causes distress in early adopters and the technorati but is meaningless to most people. If you look at WhatsApp and Instagram, it turns out the majority of Facebook's users didn't care about 90% of their features. They just want to share photos and sent short messages. My point is, those who are deeply about these things focus on edge case features that make a ton of difference to them, but are invisible to most people. Hell, I've rarely used Facebook search to search for anything other than a Contact. I suspect most people don't use the Search feature much, or lists, or groups, and all of the other dials and knobs. Much of the world's communications by average people now runs on WhatsApp, iMessenger, WeChat, LINE, etc, because the use case for most people is not to be a public persona with a subscriber base, to conduct arguments and discussions with them.

cookiecaper 10y ago

Let us not overlook that online incumbents are cemented by massively overzealous copyright and network access laws. One of the internet's great promises -- mobility -- is neutered by things like the CFAA and unreasonable interpretations of copyright. If these laws were fixed, companies like Facebook would have to compete on the merit of their platform instead of simply keeping people around by holding their data and personal networks hostage.