14 ms·

Google+ Demo

279 points by cskau 15y ago

andrewguenther 15y ago
There are several reasons I am hopeful for this. 1. It looks CLEAN While in my opinion one major reason Facebook ended up beating out Myspace was its wonderful interface, I feel like recent renditions have just lost that simplicity. I want connecting with my friends to be simple, not a bombardment of Farmville updates and a poorly designed messaging system. 2. Sparks Hopefully Google will succeed where Facebook has failed in actually making keeping track of your interests, well...interesting. 3. Circles Friend management in Facebook has always been one of my biggest complaints, Circles seems to be a legitimate approach to making organizing your friends a little bit more intuitive. I am very excited to see Google+ roll out to the masses, and I do hope it is successful. Not because I want it to take Facebook down, but I think it wouldn't hurt to make them break a little sweat and think about their users a bit more.
- checker 15y ago
  Circles is awesome. I can't believe Facebook hasn't done it yet. Hopefully you can drop friends into more than one circle. As far as Huddle goes, I hope it's easy to go from a normal text straight into a Huddle. Also, typing status is very helpful in a chat room to avoid the inevitable conflicts that occur when people happen to type responses at the same time. Sparks looks somewhat like Google News filtering. I'm not sure if I'll use it if that's all it ends up being. Hangouts could be interesting, but because it's many-many communication like Huddle, the conversation flow could be difficult to maintain. I hope it works out.
  - trickjarrett 15y ago
    > Hopefully you can drop friends into more than one circle. I noticed this too in the demo, I have to believe you'll be able to.
    - trickjarrett 15y ago
      For anyone who comes back across this, yes you can put people in an infinite number of circles.
  - WesleyJohnson 15y ago
    Based on the demo you can only put friends in one circle, but I hope that's going to change or just isn't properly reflected in the demo; I have plenty of people I would consider to be in multiple circles. The easiest example of which is a "co-worker" who is also a "friend".
    - mey 15y ago
      Oddly enough, I hope this maps to the gmail groups concept, since I already have people mapping along those lines in there, and winds into my android device as well. Google seems to run into the large corporation octopus issue where knowing what the left and right hands are doing is a difficult task.
  - andrewguenther 15y ago
    I'm sure you can put people in more than one circle. Mostly because huddle seems to be based off of circles. While not being able to put people into multiple circles would be inconvenient, not being able to put people into multiple "huddles" would just break the whole feature for most people. EDIT: Made it a little bit more clear
  - reneky 15y ago
    You can put people in as many circles as you want.
earle 15y ago
Flash instead of HTML5.......
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- karolist 15y ago
  Same thought too, but I think there must be a good reason for that. Maybe achieving same interactivity with html5 is just too much work yet.
- rexf 15y ago
  If the desktop/flagship UI all flash, then they are working on an Android app as well?
- whatever_dude 15y ago
  Just this "demo". Makes sense considering some of the animation and interactivity they have on the small windows. I doubt the actual product uses Flash for anything other than, maybe, sound and video (as does GMail/YouTube/etc).
- watty 15y ago
  I'm guessing they wanted animation AND didn't want to exclude a huge percentage of viewers
kno 15y ago
I think one of main Google problem is Brand Fatigue, people are tired of Google this and Google that. Why not call it friend something or give it a generic name like Baboo, Facebook or something fresh that will give the impression that it is something new.
- irahul 15y ago
  Had Google called it friend something, at least I won't have bothered. The only reason I am looking at it is because of brand Google. Granted that Google would have called it something else and I would have still used it, but that would be only because it's Google. Majority of people I know don't have Google brand fatigue - they love brand Google.
- OoTheNigerian 15y ago
  EXACTLY! http://oonwoye.com/2011/03/07/googles-social-problem-the-brand-name-google/ http://oonwoye.com/2011/03/07/googles-social-problem-the-bra...
- drivingmenuts 15y ago
  I'd be happer if they'd just stick to search and ads and drop all the social networking bullshit.
- yesimahuman 15y ago
  Like Orkut?
wiks 15y ago
Encountered Google Oops. "Internal server error – 500 The server encountered an unexpected condition which prevented it from fulfilling the request. Please go back and try again." Can anybody invite me?
mitrick2 15y ago
Tried to add myself to the waitlist, and got a 500 server error. When the waitlist fails, it doesn't inspire confidence.
markbao 15y ago
Really well done, interactive demo.
- levesque 15y ago
  Extremely well done. I didn't bother reading about all the features, but the demo made me go through all of it. I'm now excited about instant photos. Success, google. I liked the huddle text input, you don't choose what gets written... pogo boots vanilla beetroots?
- zavulon 15y ago
  I got an opposite reaction... Seems like whenever I opened that page, the only thing I could was drag things around, Google Maps style. And I really wasn't sure what to do next, took me a while to find the "Take the tour" button. From the tour itself, a lot of things take more than the whole screen, so scrolling is required. Could be that I'm looking at it on a 13' Macbook though. And as far as features itself, I honestly couldn't get excited about any of them. "Hang out - quickest thing until teleportation is invented"? If I want to talk to friends I actually hang out with, I will call/text - for everyone else, there's Facebook/Email. Sparks - so the only purpose of this is for them to send me relevant ads? How nice. Even Facebook is not that blatant. The only feature I'm kind of excited about is 'Huddle'. It's very difficult to pull of correctly and even MORE difficult (almost impossible) to get all your friends to use it. If they can do that correctly, I'll start using this ASAP. Overall - can't say I was too excited by this demo, but I'll give it a try once it goes live.
kyro 15y ago
I'm really looking forward to trying this out, and here's why: With Facebook, I felt as if I was on this huge football field with all of my 'friends.' I could lean in to whisper with a friend here and there, or even put on some face paint and huddle together with like-faced friends to form a group. But everyone could still see me, and I could see them – I just had to peer down the field. I can't really say things to my group that I'd normally say in private because with all these people on the field with me, someone would certainly overhear us! With Google+ the structure is different. Rather than a field, it's more like a big building with many rooms. Each room can be decorated and tailored to a specific group of friends who hang out there. Best part is once I'm in the room, I can close the door and be myself! I can go up two levels, change hats, and walk into a different room. tl;dr Google+ lets me fully engage my various social sides, whereas Facebook never really let you as you were always in the eye of the public. Edit: One thing I did notice that I wish they would change is that it seems as if a friend can only be placed into one circle. Often times there's a lot of overlap among my social circles and friends may be part of at least two different groups.
- chc 15y ago
  I feel like this could be a real selling point. Different relationships call for different social etiquette, but Facebook only has "friendship" with some really shoddy support for grouping friends. It's not even about being deceptive or ashamed of yourself, any more than you're deceiving your boss by not smoking in the office and speaking more respectfully than you would to your drinking buddies.
  - barista 15y ago
    It is possible to do what you are trying to do (Say things to a private group) on facebook even today but I don't know why they have made it so hard to use. I literally had to spend 15 minutes figuring it out and spend time to configure it. But even with all that I am fairly confident that Google+ will fail to take off just like many of Google products lately. All they have introduced is a small set of features that facebook lacks. FB can add those in a matter of few months and then take out the whole reason for users to switch. Social networks are very very sticky.
Vraxx 15y ago
Honestly, I'd be open to trying this JUST for the circles. Too many times I've had to restrain myself from posting certain things because of the wide range of "friends" I have on facebook.
crag 15y ago
Good luck. When my grandma joins I'll take a look. She's on Facebook. ;)
- txxxxd 15y ago
  Hah, I had the opposite reaction. Finally a social network where I don't have to accept friend requests from my relatives =)
  - tvorryn 15y ago
    And even if you do accept them, it should be much more convenient and less awkward. That's what I'm looking forward to. I still want to keep up with my family but they don't care about machine learning and don't need to know everything that I'm doing with my friends. Circles sounds great for all of that.
Dove 15y ago
This looks to me like Don't Be Evil showing up as a competitive advantage. Facebook seems want my data and my network for its own exploitation; Google seems to actually be thinking about what's best for me.
- pbhjpbhj 15y ago
  "seems" Let the market[er]ing continue.
- naner 15y ago
  Facebook makes advertising money through user profiling and only from within their site. Google makes advertising money just from the fact that you're using the web. Google is able to do more though profiling, but they have the flexibility and hindsight to do it less intrusively. Remember, Google's properties are more spread out than Facebook's (and AdSense is almost everywhere). So with Google you don't even have to be logged in for them to advertise to you.
bennesvig 15y ago
The functionality feels really similar to Prezi.
rheide 15y ago
Can't put 1 friend into 2 circles? Great job on simplifying my social life..
- levesque 15y ago
  I doubt that's how the circles will work in final. Google uses labels much more than folders for classifying stuff (e.g. gmail).
- willscott 15y ago
  You can put people into as many circles as you want.
- shriphani 15y ago
  I just tried this out. Yes I can add people to more than 1 circle easily.
RyanMcGreal 15y ago
Bad sign: > 404. That’s an error. > The requested URL /intl/en-GB/+/learnmore/notifyme.html was not found on this server. That’s all we know.
v21 15y ago
That's the best web demo I've ever seen. I'm a jaded person, but I clicked on all the things and did all the stuff and felt pride at using their (impressively easy) interface. Serious unexpected design chops from Google!
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
fastfinner 15y ago
Yesss, finally I'll be able to get off Facebook! Even though I use Facebook lists, circles seems a lot simpler and functional. For me, photos, and comments and discussions generated off photos is really important, so I need a social network that my friends are also on. The only other service that all my friends share is GMail, so this is really great.
whatever_dude 15y ago
Whatever can make them close down Orkut faster, I'm down.
vibrunazo 15y ago
I'm specially interested in the potential of a developer API for this new Google Sparks. Since users explicitly list their interests. If google let's developers access user's interest graph with AppEngine. Then we can do some really really cool customized user experience with it. My brain is going crazy with ideas after reading about this. Just imagine the possibilities... hmmmmm :)
Pistos2 15y ago
The "Keep Me Posted" button brings me to https://www.google.com/intl/en-GB/+/learnmore/notifyme.html https://www.google.com/intl/en-GB/+/learnmore/notifyme.html which is a 404. I had to manually delete "-GB" to get a 200.
- JulianMorrison 15y ago
  It worked for me after coming back a minute later, perhaps they had a transient fault.
mattwdelong 15y ago
A little tangent here, but does anyone else find it increasingly difficult to manage multiple sessions on the Google platform? I keep having difficulty not knowing which google account I'm logged into, having issues enabling/disabling features before I have access to a feature X and then, I find out feature X is not available with google apps hosted account; but it's available with my gmail account. There really isn't a solution other than using chrome, incognito window and n browsers per google account. I sure it's a minority of the google user base having this issue, or I'm sure it would be dealt with. Anyone else experience this, and have a solution? I'm just short of abandoning data in all my accounts but one, and moving everything over to it (and forward emails).
- pbhjpbhj 15y ago
  >I sure it's a minority of the google user base having this issue, or I'm sure it would be dealt with. / Presumably it's better for Google to have you use one account and hold your real identity there converging all your work and social online aspects in the same place. I see it as broken for the user but better for Google as it pushes users towards single accounts and real identity.
- whatusername 15y ago
  Firefox = Primary, Chrome=Secondary, IE9=test. Generally works OK. Still a bit painful though. Especially now that Apps/gmail are consolidated.
- r00fus 15y ago
  Separate browsers, or separate profiles (namely Firefox profiles). An app-specific browser like MozillaPrizm/Fluid/etc might be your best bet, just create specific apps for each user/session. btw, I generally use 2 google profiles (google-apps vs. google) and they coexist in one browser for me. The concept of fluid multi-identity in any device or OS has long been difficult to manage, and I don't think it's done well on any UI-based system.
- seabee 15y ago
  'Switch account' works well for me - is there a use case where this is not an option for you?
signa11 15y ago
this is very nice, although seems to be overlapping with couple of independent offerings. to me, for example, sparks == instapaper, instant-upload == path/color etc.
kylemaxwell 15y ago
Very slick use of Google Maps underlying tech, it looks like. Similar to Prezi, too.
alorres 15y ago
This is great. The circle groups and the group chat is awesome. But I'm wondering how many groups you'd be able to create (would there be a limit?) and how the center stage of group chat works? It said in demo that the person talking or the loudest would be center but what if 3+ people hit the same volume level, or if like tinychat, there are multiple people talking? Would love to get a reply from someone in Google+ beta.
JanezStupar 15y ago
I adamantly insisted through the whole Facebook is a Google killer period, that when Google decides and turns its eye towards FB's turf - they won't be able to compete. For two simple reasons: 1. Google has more of everything. 2. When Google commits to something they don't give up after a failed attempt. They learn and come back meaner and badder. What I like about this service is that it offers (not in beta mind you) actual value as it seems. And I mean that in a productivity sense, not just vanity shots and addictive "click like an automaton" games. I believe that it is time for someone to hire me as a strategist.
curiousfiddler 15y ago
Loved the hangout feature. Really!

279 points by cskau 15y ago

There are several reasons I am hopeful for this. 1. It looks CLEAN While in my opinion one major reason Facebook ended up beating out Myspace was its wonderful interface, I feel like recent renditions have just lost that simplicity. I want connecting with my friends to be simple, not a bombardment of Farmville updates and a poorly designed messaging system. 2. Sparks Hopefully Google will succeed where Facebook has failed in actually making keeping track of your interests, well...interesting. 3. Circles Friend management in Facebook has always been one of my biggest complaints, Circles seems to be a legitimate approach to making organizing your friends a little bit more intuitive. I am very excited to see Google+ roll out to the masses, and I do hope it is successful. Not because I want it to take Facebook down, but I think it wouldn't hurt to make them break a little sweat and think about their users a bit more.

checker 15y ago
Circles is awesome. I can't believe Facebook hasn't done it yet. Hopefully you can drop friends into more than one circle. As far as Huddle goes, I hope it's easy to go from a normal text straight into a Huddle. Also, typing status is very helpful in a chat room to avoid the inevitable conflicts that occur when people happen to type responses at the same time. Sparks looks somewhat like Google News filtering. I'm not sure if I'll use it if that's all it ends up being. Hangouts could be interesting, but because it's many-many communication like Huddle, the conversation flow could be difficult to maintain. I hope it works out.
- trickjarrett 15y ago
  > Hopefully you can drop friends into more than one circle. I noticed this too in the demo, I have to believe you'll be able to.
  - trickjarrett 15y ago
    For anyone who comes back across this, yes you can put people in an infinite number of circles.
- WesleyJohnson 15y ago
  Based on the demo you can only put friends in one circle, but I hope that's going to change or just isn't properly reflected in the demo; I have plenty of people I would consider to be in multiple circles. The easiest example of which is a "co-worker" who is also a "friend".
  - mey 15y ago
    Oddly enough, I hope this maps to the gmail groups concept, since I already have people mapping along those lines in there, and winds into my android device as well. Google seems to run into the large corporation octopus issue where knowing what the left and right hands are doing is a difficult task.
- andrewguenther 15y ago
  I'm sure you can put people in more than one circle. Mostly because huddle seems to be based off of circles. While not being able to put people into multiple circles would be inconvenient, not being able to put people into multiple "huddles" would just break the whole feature for most people. EDIT: Made it a little bit more clear
- reneky 15y ago
  You can put people in as many circles as you want.

earle 15y ago

Flash instead of HTML5.......

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
karolist 15y ago
Same thought too, but I think there must be a good reason for that. Maybe achieving same interactivity with html5 is just too much work yet.
rexf 15y ago
If the desktop/flagship UI all flash, then they are working on an Android app as well?
whatever_dude 15y ago
Just this "demo". Makes sense considering some of the animation and interactivity they have on the small windows. I doubt the actual product uses Flash for anything other than, maybe, sound and video (as does GMail/YouTube/etc).
watty 15y ago
I'm guessing they wanted animation AND didn't want to exclude a huge percentage of viewers

kno 15y ago

I think one of main Google problem is Brand Fatigue, people are tired of Google this and Google that. Why not call it friend something or give it a generic name like Baboo, Facebook or something fresh that will give the impression that it is something new.

irahul 15y ago
Had Google called it friend something, at least I won't have bothered. The only reason I am looking at it is because of brand Google. Granted that Google would have called it something else and I would have still used it, but that would be only because it's Google. Majority of people I know don't have Google brand fatigue - they love brand Google.
OoTheNigerian 15y ago
EXACTLY! http://oonwoye.com/2011/03/07/googles-social-problem-the-brand-name-google/ http://oonwoye.com/2011/03/07/googles-social-problem-the-bra...
drivingmenuts 15y ago
I'd be happer if they'd just stick to search and ads and drop all the social networking bullshit.
yesimahuman 15y ago
Like Orkut?

wiks 15y ago

Encountered Google Oops. "Internal server error – 500 The server encountered an unexpected condition which prevented it from fulfilling the request. Please go back and try again." Can anybody invite me?

mitrick2 15y ago

Tried to add myself to the waitlist, and got a 500 server error. When the waitlist fails, it doesn't inspire confidence.

markbao 15y ago

Really well done, interactive demo.

levesque 15y ago
Extremely well done. I didn't bother reading about all the features, but the demo made me go through all of it. I'm now excited about instant photos. Success, google. I liked the huddle text input, you don't choose what gets written... pogo boots vanilla beetroots?
zavulon 15y ago
I got an opposite reaction... Seems like whenever I opened that page, the only thing I could was drag things around, Google Maps style. And I really wasn't sure what to do next, took me a while to find the "Take the tour" button. From the tour itself, a lot of things take more than the whole screen, so scrolling is required. Could be that I'm looking at it on a 13' Macbook though. And as far as features itself, I honestly couldn't get excited about any of them. "Hang out - quickest thing until teleportation is invented"? If I want to talk to friends I actually hang out with, I will call/text - for everyone else, there's Facebook/Email. Sparks - so the only purpose of this is for them to send me relevant ads? How nice. Even Facebook is not that blatant. The only feature I'm kind of excited about is 'Huddle'. It's very difficult to pull of correctly and even MORE difficult (almost impossible) to get all your friends to use it. If they can do that correctly, I'll start using this ASAP. Overall - can't say I was too excited by this demo, but I'll give it a try once it goes live.

kyro 15y ago

I'm really looking forward to trying this out, and here's why: With Facebook, I felt as if I was on this huge football field with all of my 'friends.' I could lean in to whisper with a friend here and there, or even put on some face paint and huddle together with like-faced friends to form a group. But everyone could still see me, and I could see them – I just had to peer down the field. I can't really say things to my group that I'd normally say in private because with all these people on the field with me, someone would certainly overhear us! With Google+ the structure is different. Rather than a field, it's more like a big building with many rooms. Each room can be decorated and tailored to a specific group of friends who hang out there. Best part is once I'm in the room, I can close the door and be myself! I can go up two levels, change hats, and walk into a different room. tl;dr Google+ lets me fully engage my various social sides, whereas Facebook never really let you as you were always in the eye of the public. Edit: One thing I did notice that I wish they would change is that it seems as if a friend can only be placed into one circle. Often times there's a lot of overlap among my social circles and friends may be part of at least two different groups.

chc 15y ago
I feel like this could be a real selling point. Different relationships call for different social etiquette, but Facebook only has "friendship" with some really shoddy support for grouping friends. It's not even about being deceptive or ashamed of yourself, any more than you're deceiving your boss by not smoking in the office and speaking more respectfully than you would to your drinking buddies.
- barista 15y ago
  It is possible to do what you are trying to do (Say things to a private group) on facebook even today but I don't know why they have made it so hard to use. I literally had to spend 15 minutes figuring it out and spend time to configure it. But even with all that I am fairly confident that Google+ will fail to take off just like many of Google products lately. All they have introduced is a small set of features that facebook lacks. FB can add those in a matter of few months and then take out the whole reason for users to switch. Social networks are very very sticky.

Vraxx 15y ago

Honestly, I'd be open to trying this JUST for the circles. Too many times I've had to restrain myself from posting certain things because of the wide range of "friends" I have on facebook.

crag 15y ago

Good luck. When my grandma joins I'll take a look. She's on Facebook. ;)

txxxxd 15y ago
Hah, I had the opposite reaction. Finally a social network where I don't have to accept friend requests from my relatives =)
- tvorryn 15y ago
  And even if you do accept them, it should be much more convenient and less awkward. That's what I'm looking forward to. I still want to keep up with my family but they don't care about machine learning and don't need to know everything that I'm doing with my friends. Circles sounds great for all of that.

Dove 15y ago

This looks to me like Don't Be Evil showing up as a competitive advantage. Facebook seems want my data and my network for its own exploitation; Google seems to actually be thinking about what's best for me.

pbhjpbhj 15y ago
"seems" Let the market[er]ing continue.
naner 15y ago
Facebook makes advertising money through user profiling and only from within their site. Google makes advertising money just from the fact that you're using the web. Google is able to do more though profiling, but they have the flexibility and hindsight to do it less intrusively. Remember, Google's properties are more spread out than Facebook's (and AdSense is almost everywhere). So with Google you don't even have to be logged in for them to advertise to you.

bennesvig 15y ago

The functionality feels really similar to Prezi.

rheide 15y ago

Can't put 1 friend into 2 circles? Great job on simplifying my social life..

levesque 15y ago
I doubt that's how the circles will work in final. Google uses labels much more than folders for classifying stuff (e.g. gmail).
willscott 15y ago
You can put people into as many circles as you want.
shriphani 15y ago
I just tried this out. Yes I can add people to more than 1 circle easily.

RyanMcGreal 15y ago

Bad sign: > 404. That’s an error. > The requested URL /intl/en-GB/+/learnmore/notifyme.html was not found on this server. That’s all we know.

v21 15y ago

That's the best web demo I've ever seen. I'm a jaded person, but I clicked on all the things and did all the stuff and felt pride at using their (impressively easy) interface. Serious unexpected design chops from Google!

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

fastfinner 15y ago

Yesss, finally I'll be able to get off Facebook! Even though I use Facebook lists, circles seems a lot simpler and functional. For me, photos, and comments and discussions generated off photos is really important, so I need a social network that my friends are also on. The only other service that all my friends share is GMail, so this is really great.

whatever_dude 15y ago

Whatever can make them close down Orkut faster, I'm down.

vibrunazo 15y ago

I'm specially interested in the potential of a developer API for this new Google Sparks. Since users explicitly list their interests. If google let's developers access user's interest graph with AppEngine. Then we can do some really really cool customized user experience with it. My brain is going crazy with ideas after reading about this. Just imagine the possibilities... hmmmmm :)

Pistos2 15y ago

The "Keep Me Posted" button brings me to https://www.google.com/intl/en-GB/+/learnmore/notifyme.html https://www.google.com/intl/en-GB/+/learnmore/notifyme.html which is a 404. I had to manually delete "-GB" to get a 200.

JulianMorrison 15y ago
It worked for me after coming back a minute later, perhaps they had a transient fault.

mattwdelong 15y ago

A little tangent here, but does anyone else find it increasingly difficult to manage multiple sessions on the Google platform? I keep having difficulty not knowing which google account I'm logged into, having issues enabling/disabling features before I have access to a feature X and then, I find out feature X is not available with google apps hosted account; but it's available with my gmail account. There really isn't a solution other than using chrome, incognito window and n browsers per google account. I sure it's a minority of the google user base having this issue, or I'm sure it would be dealt with. Anyone else experience this, and have a solution? I'm just short of abandoning data in all my accounts but one, and moving everything over to it (and forward emails).

pbhjpbhj 15y ago
>I sure it's a minority of the google user base having this issue, or I'm sure it would be dealt with. / Presumably it's better for Google to have you use one account and hold your real identity there converging all your work and social online aspects in the same place. I see it as broken for the user but better for Google as it pushes users towards single accounts and real identity.
whatusername 15y ago
Firefox = Primary, Chrome=Secondary, IE9=test. Generally works OK. Still a bit painful though. Especially now that Apps/gmail are consolidated.
r00fus 15y ago
Separate browsers, or separate profiles (namely Firefox profiles). An app-specific browser like MozillaPrizm/Fluid/etc might be your best bet, just create specific apps for each user/session. btw, I generally use 2 google profiles (google-apps vs. google) and they coexist in one browser for me. The concept of fluid multi-identity in any device or OS has long been difficult to manage, and I don't think it's done well on any UI-based system.
seabee 15y ago
'Switch account' works well for me - is there a use case where this is not an option for you?

signa11 15y ago

this is very nice, although seems to be overlapping with couple of independent offerings. to me, for example, sparks == instapaper, instant-upload == path/color etc.

kylemaxwell 15y ago

Very slick use of Google Maps underlying tech, it looks like. Similar to Prezi, too.

alorres 15y ago

This is great. The circle groups and the group chat is awesome. But I'm wondering how many groups you'd be able to create (would there be a limit?) and how the center stage of group chat works? It said in demo that the person talking or the loudest would be center but what if 3+ people hit the same volume level, or if like tinychat, there are multiple people talking? Would love to get a reply from someone in Google+ beta.

JanezStupar 15y ago

I adamantly insisted through the whole Facebook is a Google killer period, that when Google decides and turns its eye towards FB's turf - they won't be able to compete. For two simple reasons: 1. Google has more of everything. 2. When Google commits to something they don't give up after a failed attempt. They learn and come back meaner and badder. What I like about this service is that it offers (not in beta mind you) actual value as it seems. And I mean that in a productivity sense, not just vanity shots and addictive "click like an automaton" games. I believe that it is time for someone to hire me as a strategist.

curiousfiddler 15y ago

Loved the hangout feature. Really!