17 ms·
Google+ Project: It’s Social, It’s Bold, It’s Fun, And It Looks Good
- dfield 15y agoI'm very excited to try this out. Context (AKA "Circles") is the biggest feature Facebook still hasn't gotten right. By mirroring the way we think about our social graph in real life, Google is making a huge step toward converging Online and Offline identity. It will be very interesting to see how Facebook responds to this... they might finally have a competitor.
- jinushaun 15y agoFacebook has gotten increasingly harder and more convoluted to manage. Case in point: no direct way to edit the photos in an album. Used to be so easy.
- terinjokes 15y agoWhat do you mean? It's in the same place it's been in for a while. From the sidebar, Photos -> My Uploads -> Edit Album. Sure the light box makes it harder if you go that way. Click on the Album name -> Edit Album -> Edit Photos.
- eneveu 15y agoPaul Adams, the previous social research lead in the Google UX team, explained why context matters in this very interesting presentation (12 months old!): http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-network-v2 http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-networ... (discussed at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1867807 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1867807 ) According to his blog ( http://www.thinkoutsidein.com/blog/ http://www.thinkoutsidein.com/blog/ ), he now works at Facebook, and focuses "on researching and designing better ways for businesses and people to communicate and interact". My guess is that Facebook is already preparing its response...
- luu 15y agoUnlike on Facebook, people do not have to agree to be friends with one another. They can receive someone’s updates without sharing their own So it's like a reverse twitter, where you choose who can follow you?
- mvzink 15y agoYes, plus Circles. Circles are vital.
- munificent 15y agoThat depends on your definition of "follow". You can choose to add someone to your circle without them reciprocating. In that sense, you are following them. However, they choose which of their circles see the things they post. So you can follow whomever you want, but the people you follow may not necessarily broadcast to you if you do so.
- esrauch 15y agoSo then it will still work like twitter if a celebrity goes on and just publishes everything as "public", then anyone can subscribe to them.
- icarus_drowning 15y agoWell, I'm glad there are some significant new features that Google is trying to use as leverage. Group video chat comes to mind as something that most people don't like to deal with, but as an integral part of a social network, I can see it making more sense. Its clear they've tried not just to 'clone' Facebook, which I appreciate.
- Canopy 15y agoI'm not sure I really understand how this Group video chat works but it sounds like a very useful function for work groups as there aren't any efficient and freely available multi-point video-conferencing system working on all platforms (win, linux, mac).
- katieben 15y agoAwesome, can't wait to try it! Circles sounds like just what everyone wants. I think I'd switch to any half-decent social network made by Google. I do hope they provide a way to use the Facebook data export to make switching easy.
- Kadin 15y agoSame here. Although I don't necessarily envy them; Facebook has a huge advantage by virtue of network effects. I don't know anyone who really likes Facebook; they've alienated users with privacy missteps and stupid interface changes over and over and over. But everyone keeps using it because that's where everyone else is. Somehow you have to break that cycle. If anyone can do it though, it's probably Google. They effectively broke the back of the fat-and-lazy AOL Instant Messenger (at least in my experience) when they built chat into Gmail. Once they did that, AIM went from a "must-have" on most of my friends' computers to something they barely remember their login information to anymore. Here's hoping they can find some leverage to get a critical mass of users over from Facebook.
- zppx 15y agoFacebook's interface is much better than Orkut's interface, Orkut is a social network that was acquired by Google some years ago, and it does have the broadcast feature that made twitter popular, so Brazilians, were Orkut was really popular, loves Facebook. I think that Google can leverage adoption by targeting android users and creating a good application for them. EDIT: Orkut still is really popular here in Brazil but the majority of my friends migrated to Facebook and do not login in Orkut anymore.
- gfodor 15y agoOrkut afaik was a 10% project, and named after its author.
- scottkduncan 15y agoFacebook certainly benefits from network effects, but it will be interesting to see if Google can benefit from the potential of complementarity between its products that Facebook doesn't have. In my mind, two of Google's most valuable assets are Chrome and its affiliation with Android, both of which have been gaining marketshare. If they get a non-invasive Chrome toolbar and a sleek Android app out, you could get Google+ in front of a whole lot of users pretty quickly and make it a natural extension of people's mobile and browsing activity. Also, Circles might help mitigate the network effect advantage of Facebook. Even if only one of your real-life circles (say your early adopting tech nerd friends) sign up at first, it can provide some functionality while it is still being more widely adopted by other groups.
- rakkhi 15y agoFound a signup link that works: http://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/+/learnmore/forum/ http://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/+/learnmore/forum/
- terinjokes 15y agoIronically, the "Keep Me Posted" page has Javascript blocked by Chrome.
- thirdsun 15y agoI have to admit that the stuff shown on Googles demo page looks really good. I really appreciate the focus on social circles as I really don't want to share everything with everyone but rather address different groups of friends. Overall this seems to be very well thought through with some fresh ideas.
- rch 15y agoIf G+ knows individuals, then search results served to other known (or unknown) individuals could reflect the subject individual's 'circles' settings. Ergo, individuals in general have a significant, possibly material, incentive to take part in G+ to the greatest extent possible. search > social
- paganel 15y ago> If G+ knows individuals, then search results served to other known (or unknown) individuals could reflect the subject individual's 'circles' settings Yeah, it would be really interesting to see which of my other friends would make it into the "Midget porn" circle, or into the "How do you kill yourself?" circle or the "How do I get rich?" circle, all these based on our collective Google searches.
- rch 15y agoI think the idea is that you could share pics of your latest furry costume with your 'fur-friends' circle, without your parents or potential employers even knowing that circle exists. What's even better, is that there is technically nothing stopping Google from keeping your employer from finding all the great ideas you've been giving away on HN, if you've somehow associated your HN account with a circle... unless said employer comes directly to HN, obviously.
- genericbrandx 15y agoAnyone want to wager when Google Mindmaps will debut?
- presty 15y agoI wonder what huddle.com has to say about Google's Huddle..
- ChrisArchitect 15y agoit feels so closed off. Silo'd. Makes me shudder.
- joebadmo 15y agoThat's one of the first things I noticed, too. I imagine something this full-featured will be hard to open-source/make open protocols for/federate like they tried with Wave and Buzz, but I hope they aren't abandoning those ideas after the disastrous way those turned out.
- scorpion032 15y agoIf the choice is between "closed and successful" or "open and failed", what would you choose?
- michaelchisari 15y ago"open and failed" at this point can provide a powerful proof-of-concept, whereas "closed and successful" doesn't necessary teach us anything new.
- commandar 15y ago> to open-source/make open protocols for/federate like they tried with Wave and Buzz What's funny is that everyone (Google included) got preoccupied with the tech demo UI for Wave, but the really interesting stuff was happening under the hood. If you look at what Wave was trying to do with sending arbitrary data between federated servers, all tied into contact management and privacy controls, it basically would have been the perfect foundation for a social network. In fact if you look at projects like OneSocialWeb[1] or Diaspora, they're similarly built on top of XMPP with an approach not entirely dissimilar to what Wave was doing. I really, really think Google missed the mark marketing wise with Wave, and I wonder how much, if any, code has carried over to Google+. [1] http://onesocialweb.org/ http://onesocialweb.org/
- william42 15y ago
- illumin8 15y agoIf they pull a Wave and only invite users in small groups it is doomed on arrival. This thing needs to be free and massively available like Gmail. Social is not like email - you need wide participation in order for it to succeed.
- oldstrangers 15y agoGmail used to be invite only.
- cmaggard 15y agoEmail isn't exactly this type of walled-garden social however, so it's not an apt comparison.
- illumin8 15y agoThat's why I said social is not like email. I'm more comparing the Google+ rollout to Wave, since some of the features seem to be similar to Wave.
- oldstrangers 15y agoI was referring to "This thing needs to be free and massively available like Gmail."
- illumin8 15y agoYeah massively available like Gmail - I meant after it opened up from invite-only status. Email is easy to bootstrap because any client can talk using SMTP. Social does not have a protocol - although that might be cool if it did so we didn't have the "all your data are belong to us" problems of Facebook and Google.
- muuh-gnu 15y agoGmail used to be infinitely better than everything else on the market. So closing it it off made it only more scarce and sought after than it already was. Now if plus is even finitely better than everything else, so that artificial scarcity will make it seem more valuable, is debatable. It's a rather risky bet Google has already lost once with Wave.
- Pistos2 15y agoI'd have to see these Circles in action, but if they're what I think they are (e.g. you'd make a "Work" circle, a "Family" circle, a "Casual Acquaintance" circle, etc.), then Diaspora has that concept: They call them "aspects". I must admit, "circle" seems like a better term than "aspect", though.
- michaelchisari 15y agoAppleseed (http:/opensource.appleseedproject.org) used "circles" to categorize friends a few years before Diaspora. It's not a very revolutionary concept, though. Livejournal had friends lists almost a decade ago, for instance.
- Pistos2 15y agoI would agree that it's not a very complex or innovative idea. I'm assuming Facebook is intentional in not doing the same sort of thing, aiming for simplicity (everyone in one circle).
- hollerith 15y agoI might delay learning anything about Google+ until I have some evidence that Google is not going to kill it in a few months :)
- joebadmo 15y agoNot sure what you'd consider evidence, but the Wired article by Steven Levy (the guy who wrote In the Plex) contains this quote: No one expects an instant success. But even if this week’s launch evokes snark or yawns, Google will keep at it. Google+ is not a product like Buzz or Wave where the company’s leaders can chalk off a failure to laudable ambition and then move on. “We’re in this for the long run,” says Ben-Yair. “This isn’t like an experiment. We’re betting on this, so if obstacles arise, we’ll adapt.” http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/06/inside-google-plus-social/all/1 http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/06/inside-google-plus-so...
- makthrow 15y agoVery bad marketing here. Whoever chose the name "Google+" should be fired. First, the name confuses people with google's +1 button. Second, what does "+" have anything to do with a social network? It gives you no information at all about the service. They should have called it "google circles" and emphasized that Google Circles let you compartmentalize your social network, as opposed to facebook. Bam, instant differentiation. Instead we have a product that tries to do too much and needs a demo to make people understand.
- tmvphil 15y agoI actually think not coming up with a clever or descriptive name is actually the right move here. Instead of setting it up as yet another new service from Google that you'll have to decide whether to invest time into or not, it advertises more as an enhancement of the features everyone uses already. Its not like Google's gonna get people to divest themselves of Facebook (not in the near future anyway), so they've got to position themselves as an auxiliary rather than an alternative.
- chalst 15y agoMy guess is that this is deliberate: the g+ sparks feature is meant to complement the +1 buttons, and at some point they hope to talk about +1 as part of g+.
- commandar 15y agoCan't seem to find it now, but I'm pretty sure I recall seeing +1 mentioned as a feature of Google+ in one of the about pages when I signed up for an invite.
- chalst 15y agoAh, good call. It's mentioned in the Google+ help centre: http://www.google.com/support/+/ http://www.google.com/support/+/
- johnrob 15y agoApparently another feature was to automatically set your gchat status to "available". That explains why I got a bunch of messages yesterday morning.
- jagbolanos 15y agoI have been an anti-wave, anti-buzz but I just tried Google+ and it's great. I think this time Google really can kick FB. Great, simple interface and integrated to my gmail, picasa, contacts, gtalk it is definitely great! I love the circles philosophy and UX. One problem is the restriction on invites. Google+ is valuable to me if I can share things with others, just like I do it in FB right now. They have to enable invites soon or the early adopters will get bored and leave forever.
- pkulak 15y agoWould you mind fielding some questions? I'm interested to know if the photo sharing is any good? Do the full-resolution versions stick around? Are the management features any good?
- metageek 15y agoI haven't looked closely at what happens when you upload an image to Google+, but I can tell you that it's trivially easy to share photos out of Picasa, which does let you get the originals.
- jagbolanos 15y agoIt reduces the dimensions of the picture, however it keeps a good quality. Album management is great and it pulls/pushes your pictures from Picasa. The album UI is also great. I just found that the navigation bar of gmail is now extended so I can see notifications and comment on them without going to Google+ It's a FB killer :o Things are going to get interesting in that space. If the people that I relate with get into Google+ I wouldn't need to check my FB. And they can get more people in by pluging it to Google Apps users.
- abrahamsen 15y agoDoes Google Circles show up as group tags in Google Contacts? And vice versa? From the presentation, Google Circles sounds like a great UI for the already existing group tags funcionality. The group tags are also already used for sharing in Picasa.
- rektide 15y agoI'm really excited I don't have to build my own XMPP Muji client[1]. Hang-outs are something I've wanted for a long long time; passive virtual spaces. Goonfleet used to go crazy with Stickam, but it was more event oriented, less passive. Hopefully this can be a good marker in helping people actually communicate and build community over the net, v. individual play. [1] http://telepathy.freedesktop.org/wiki/Muji http://telepathy.freedesktop.org/wiki/Muji
- nooneelse 15y ago"Passive virtual space", neat term. I've wanted something similar for my living-room screen for a while. In some towns, people used to see their neighbors out on their porch and go over for a chat... but my friends are all across town or state/country/globe. So when not in use for something else, why not let the big screen break that spatial and mental barrier to casual chats.
- rektide 15y agoI haven't heard anything about API's or developers. Another annoying case of "do no evil" not implying anything about actually pushing the state forward or helping. I'm not altogether that interested in the greater of the two silos, although I am excited by a state of play other than facebook moseying down the field palming the ball in one hand.
- jneal 15y agoOkay, there are way too many posts on Google+ on HN right now, but I do have an opinion I would like to share and this thread seems to be the most appropriate. When I first heard the news about Google+ today, my initial reaction was wow, Google is going to fail again. I mean, with Wave, and then Buzz, and I figured this was just another in the line of failures. However, after looking into it and reading about it, it is actually very cool looking. I look forward to trying it out live when it's ready.
- robgough 15y agoI get the feeling everyone was expecting their effort to be rather, dare I say it... rubbish. But, it looks nice and I think a lot of people are pleasantly surprised by that. Buzz was a blatant twitter clone, and I disabled it as quickly as I enabled it - whereas I'm actually finding myself excited to try this.
- zephjc 15y agoThing's I noticed trying out the demo: - You can only have add a person to one "circle". If I wanted to add someone to two or more, I'm SOL. Maybe they will change this. - A "circle" can only contain a certain number of users before it runs out of room. I haven't seen how it deal with this - does it shrink the circles as you add more? What happens if there are 500 people in one, would they be a bunch of 1 x 1 pixel dots? Or does the circle just say "You can't add any more people"?
- beck5 15y ago1) I saw this elsewhere, apparently its a demo limitation. 2) I also thought this and decided the circles probably just get really big. We will see however!
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- robgough 15y agoThe demo has a number in the middle of the circle, I'm guessing the faces are just subset of the users in that circle.
- zephjc 15y agoThat seems reasonable, but how do you do anything useful with the faces if you can only see a subset? This is why I am a sorted lists man :)
- robgough 15y agoI'm hoping they're doing something clever with it. Like showing the last people online or the most frequently interacted with etc.
- jagbolanos 15y agoI tried it and you can have people in several circles. Perhaps your interface is giving you some problems.
- MetallicCloud 15y ago> "Everyone has high-speed networks these days" Oh really? Tell that to a bunch of my friends who are either forced onto dial up, or 1.5Mb internet. Not everyone lives in a big city.
- hiena03 15y agoI actually have 256Kb adsl
- Ryanmf 15y agoFacebook launched at schools not called Harvard the Summer preceding my freshman year of college. It went live at my school a few weeks into that first semester. I enjoyed it immensely and observed it carefully, but sometime in 2007 it really began to wear on me. Later, (~2 or 3 years ago) I more or less withdrew from using it altogether. Circles addresses something like 70% of my gripes with Facebook. Of course, we still haven't seen Google successfully build a social network, so nothing's really been addressed until everyone joins the party (or doesn't). Google+ looks interesting though. Too bad my primary Google account is my Apps account for my primary domain, and since Apps accounts don't have associated Profiles anymore, I don't get to play. Then again, I'm still dealing with the fallout of the transition to "The New" Google Apps, having already used my domain email as a Google account to sign up for really exotic things like Google Reader, so perhaps I don't need yet another new plaything at the moment. I will add that I think the Huddle and Hangout components may offer—in the case of the former—good competition both on Android and in general to iOS Messaging/BBM (the only hang-up that has me short of sold on iOS messaging is people don't yet think of their Apple IDs as communication accounts/channels, their Gmail accounts on the other hand...), and—in the case of the latter—someone not only to compete with Foursquare, but perhaps to answer the question from normal folks: Why "check in" anywhere to begin with? (Because you've arrived at the "anywhere" you just "Huddled" over meeting at, your phones already know it, and if you acknowledge their requests to "Hangout" together, even more of your friends may show up. Or something. That last part's a little hazier for me. What if you want to broadcast to the world that you're enjoying your new favorite tea spot, but you don't want to say which 5 people you're with and risk persons 6 and 7 whom were specifically not invited showing up? In any event it seems to me a more human workflow than "Go places, check in, get points/kittens/whatevr."
- lparry 15y agoI see they're using their 'winning' wave strategy again. 1. launch a social platform, but restrict signups to the point where nobody with access has any contacts on the service 2. keep it locked down until the buzz/hype is all gone 3. open it up to everyone and let them wonder why there was any buzz/hype in the first place If they dont let early adopters use the platform and give the crucial early feedback, they might as well throw in the towel now.
- zmmmmm 15y agoActually this is the first sign I've seen that Google has actually learned some lessons from their failures. First, this seems much more carefully thought out. The promotional material is beautiful, simple, well targeted and clear. Restraining from a full public launch shows they have learned from Buzz which failed in part because they got things wrong early and didn't correct fast enough. This shows a much needed loss of arrogance. One other thing that makes it different: 500k Android activations per day. It will be very interesting to see if this gets pushed out as a default installed app to Android devices. Google never leveraged Android well to promote Buzz and I never understood why. Hopefully they won't be so shy this time around.
- olalonde 15y agoI hope it won't be blocked in China.