4 ms·

Google actually had a successful social network project, Orkut, they just continuously marginalised it for it to be too NIH for US headquarters.

chaz6 6y ago
As far as I can tell, Orkut was the original incarnation of a modern social network, but they failed to capitalize on it.
- lupire 6y ago
  Orkut was a clone of The social network created by the namesake's previous company. It was launched about the same time as Facebook and after Friendster.
daniellarusso 6y ago
Wasn’t it very popular in Brazil for some time?
- nojokes 6y ago
  Yes it was. Source - old Orkut user but not from Brazil.
  - hrishi 6y ago
    I'm guessing India - it's where I grew up and it was the network of choice for teens until we moved to Facebook
bemmu 6y ago
Also tried to band everyone (MySpace among them) together with OpenSocial, but too late.
GuB-42 6y ago
I don't know how they are doing it but Google manage to fail at anything social. By that I mean communication platforms, social networks and instant messengers. They have promising starts but they fuck it up later. Their only successes I'd say are GMail and YouTube. I'd say for GMail, it is just an email client they started out excellent, thanks in part to its huge storage space and good search features. And they didn't break it enough to make it unusable. As for YouTube, it is great for hosting video, but its social features are terrible. There are communities tied to popular channels, but it stays in a producer to consumer model, with no interaction between community members. The comment section is made in such a way that dialogue is almost impossible. Maybe they should hire a few people who understand human beings, because right now, it looks like the company is run by robots.
- gretch 6y ago
  disclosure: I work for google "People who understand human beings" and the have the ability to synthesize those insights into compelling technology products are exceedingly in demand in 2021. Rest assured, we hire as many as we possibly can and offer them a lot of money/benefits. However, they can pretty much get jobs anywhere and many choose to start their own venture. You seem to think it's quite easy though. Do you think you can do a better job at Gmail than the Gmail team currently? Or a better job with Youtube than the Youtube team? Maybe it's not as simple as 'understanding human beings'
  - baybal2 6y ago
    Can you make full text search work in Gmail? Can you make youtube to not to recompress video? Can you make Youtube search filtering by time work for at least few months? Having sorting by time fixed for at least few hundred search results will be good too.
  - joe_the_user 6y ago
    Respectfully, the thing is, back when G+ came out, myself and many others pointed-out how Google's real name policy combined with Google merging all the existing Google accounts into G+ sank the effort - 'cause lots of people didn't want all their youtube or other data available to their friends and lots of others didn't want strong real name policy enforced - and Facebook had a real name policy that was and is only mildly enforced. I don't think I'm a genius here since many others said similar things. Rather, the G+ action felt like corporate policy stepping on sensible thinking. Yeah, youtube, gmail and etc are hard to run, hard to alter and so they weren't going to change. But someone also felt they need to leverage all those desperate things - that just feels like what middle management does, not simply what people with not that much understanding do.
BlueTemplar 6y ago
gReader also had a social network component...

chaz6 6y ago

As far as I can tell, Orkut was the original incarnation of a modern social network, but they failed to capitalize on it.

lupire 6y ago
Orkut was a clone of The social network created by the namesake's previous company. It was launched about the same time as Facebook and after Friendster.

daniellarusso 6y ago

Wasn’t it very popular in Brazil for some time?

nojokes 6y ago
Yes it was. Source - old Orkut user but not from Brazil.
- hrishi 6y ago
  I'm guessing India - it's where I grew up and it was the network of choice for teens until we moved to Facebook

bemmu 6y ago

Also tried to band everyone (MySpace among them) together with OpenSocial, but too late.

GuB-42 6y ago

I don't know how they are doing it but Google manage to fail at anything social. By that I mean communication platforms, social networks and instant messengers. They have promising starts but they fuck it up later. Their only successes I'd say are GMail and YouTube. I'd say for GMail, it is just an email client they started out excellent, thanks in part to its huge storage space and good search features. And they didn't break it enough to make it unusable. As for YouTube, it is great for hosting video, but its social features are terrible. There are communities tied to popular channels, but it stays in a producer to consumer model, with no interaction between community members. The comment section is made in such a way that dialogue is almost impossible. Maybe they should hire a few people who understand human beings, because right now, it looks like the company is run by robots.

gretch 6y ago
disclosure: I work for google "People who understand human beings" and the have the ability to synthesize those insights into compelling technology products are exceedingly in demand in 2021. Rest assured, we hire as many as we possibly can and offer them a lot of money/benefits. However, they can pretty much get jobs anywhere and many choose to start their own venture. You seem to think it's quite easy though. Do you think you can do a better job at Gmail than the Gmail team currently? Or a better job with Youtube than the Youtube team? Maybe it's not as simple as 'understanding human beings'
- baybal2 6y ago
  Can you make full text search work in Gmail? Can you make youtube to not to recompress video? Can you make Youtube search filtering by time work for at least few months? Having sorting by time fixed for at least few hundred search results will be good too.
- joe_the_user 6y ago
  Respectfully, the thing is, back when G+ came out, myself and many others pointed-out how Google's real name policy combined with Google merging all the existing Google accounts into G+ sank the effort - 'cause lots of people didn't want all their youtube or other data available to their friends and lots of others didn't want strong real name policy enforced - and Facebook had a real name policy that was and is only mildly enforced. I don't think I'm a genius here since many others said similar things. Rather, the G+ action felt like corporate policy stepping on sensible thinking. Yeah, youtube, gmail and etc are hard to run, hard to alter and so they weren't going to change. But someone also felt they need to leverage all those desperate things - that just feels like what middle management does, not simply what people with not that much understanding do.

BlueTemplar 6y ago

gReader also had a social network component...