8 ms·

What Google Learned from Wave and Buzz

152 points by cjoh 15y ago

wccrawford 15y ago
"Wave was released in "limited preview:" too few real users not soon enough. Google+ is in "field testing" right now. The language here is important. "Field test" implies that a significant number of real users outside of the plex's walls are putting Google+ through its paces, and will find confusing UI around sensitive items like privacy before the product gets released to the public." Using the right buzzword doesn't mean anything. And 'field testing' doesn't imply more users than 'limited preview'. In fact, I would have said it meant less, by my gut feeling. It probably doesn't have any relation at all in their minds. For the rest of it, I think I can summarize with: Keep it simple, while still implementing all the features necessary for social networks, especially Notifications and mobile access. The only non-obvious thing is the feedback mechanism, which is apparently pretty rich. I still say that it doesn't matter how nice a social network is if my friends aren't also on it. And if you let me in but make me wait too long for my friends, you'll lose us all 1 at a time, which is the same result as never having us in the first place.
- dpcan 15y ago
  It will be insanely foolish if ALL the first invites don't also get about 30 invites themselves, and for those we invite, allow us to send them whatever "share" of our invites we want them to have. So, I can invite a popular friend and give him 10 invites, and I can invite my other friend and give him 1 invite.
  - wccrawford 15y ago
    I think that would be a good compromise, but I'd rather see everyone start with 1 or 2 invites, and let things expand organically for a while, then add more invites to everyone when the capacity is there. Even giving everyone 1 invite every day would be better.
    - nextparadigms 15y ago
      An invite a day...that's an interesting proposition. It would make me want to find a new friend that I could convince to join Google+ everyday :)
    - masterzora 15y ago
      > I'd rather see everyone start with 1 or 2 invites, and let things expand organically for a while, then add more invites to everyone when the capacity is there. No, no, no. This is the problem I have with Diaspora. They gave me 5 invites. I used my first since I got mine as part of an invite chain. I have no clue how to best utilise the other four so as to maximise the usefulness of Diaspora (i.e. grow my own social network maximally). End result, I haven't used any of my other 4 invites due to analysis paralysis and my social network is basically dead. Google+ seems to be off to a pretty good start so far. I'm not exactly sure how the invite structure works, but somehow a significant portion of my social network seems to already be involved. I'm assuming this just means I know a lot of connected people (most of my network is from college and we all know people who do or have worked at Google), but it means that, even within the first 24 hours, activity has been pretty decent.
ryanisinallofus 15y ago
If they don't give people invites soon Google+ will be DOA. People will stop caring before anyone gets a chance to use it.
- cjoh 15y ago
  I'm in there -- Google Employees are playing a good ground game answering people's questions and such and from what I've heard, invitations are imminent.
  - Hostile 15y ago
    Can you elaborate on where you heard this? I've seen it implied that no invites are planned until after the "field test", and who knows how long that period might be.
    - nl 15y ago
      I can send invites now, and I only got my invitation a couple of hours ago
    - cjoh 15y ago
      I can send invites now. Floods of people joining. I think 6 hours counts as imminent.
      - Hostile 15y ago
        Indeed it does. I never called you wrong, just asked where you got your info. I'm in now, so I guess it doesn't matter any more.
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  I think they need to strike a balance between releasing invites very slowly, and releasing too many at once, making them pointless. But I'm also dying to get one and I can't even from Google employees because they don't have any invites to give right now. So hopefully they'll give the first batch some invites so they can invite everyone else who is eager to join. But they should have at least one more level of private-mode before they go public. They need to make sure the early adopter community is tight first, kind of like Quora did. Imagine what would've happened if Quora went public from like day one. It would've basically killed the product. Or what if everyone knew about HN from day one? Facebook, too, was once only for college students. The early community needs to be very strong before it gets diluted by the masses. The early adopters help shape the product before the "unwashed masses" join it, and I think they should give enough time to early adopters to get used to it, get to love it and have enough time to tell everyone how cool it is and how much they love it before they can actually invite everyone else and make it public.
ryanisinallofus 15y ago
Judging from the previews and looking over a co-worker's shoulder this finally looks like a social, singular interface for many of Google's products. Iv'e been hoping they would stop thinking of themselves as many different products and start viewing themselves as users do: just one Google. Each product is really just a feature. Facebook does this right and I hope Google does too.
mrschwabe 15y ago
You know what would be great? A new social network NOT created by Google. The company is the Wal-Mart of tech; the modern day Microsoft of the internet. Let's join something created by entrepreneurs, not conglomerates.
- sukuriant 15y ago
  Why? If someone produces a good product, and they have generally pleasant business practices (and don't have glaringly bad ones, too), why does it matter if it is a large company or a small one?
  - mrschwabe 15y ago
    Exactly, Google doesn't have generally pleasant business practices. Maybe the Google of 1998, but the Google of today is a much different beast.
    - Hostile 15y ago
      To my knowledge, Google has never offensively used a patent. A large percentage of their products are open source. They develop a lot of open technologies in an attempt to make the web better/faster for everyone (which, in theory, will be good for their business in the long run). Their privacy practices are going to be audited by a third party for the next 20 or so years. Where exactly is the walmart/microsoft likeness?
      - mrschwabe 15y ago
        The parallel between Google and Wal-Mart is how they both appeal to the lowest common denominator. And how their customers are oblivious (or knowingly apathetic) to the negative impact these conglomerates are perpetuating. As for Microsoft, they were the dominant conglomerate of yesteryear. Today it's Google. Both companies wield different powers, and both have been abusing them in different ways.
        15y ago
rubergly 15y ago
I will love Google+ when and if all my friends show up and stick around. Isn't the phrase usually "if and when"? I wonder if this was switched on purpose.
- krmmalik 15y ago
  Yeah, i thought the same thing too. I did if the phrase was switched. Not sure why you got down-voted on this, its a fair point.
  - chc 15y ago
    It was probably downvoted because it seems like, if you'll excuse the bluntness of the term, pointless pedantry. The reversed word order doesn't make any obvious major difference to the phrase's meaning, so whether it was done intentionally or by accident comes across as pretty academic. (I hope this doesn't come across as overly hostile. I don't mean it as an attack. I'm just explaining my guess since I hate mystery downvotes.)
uast23 15y ago
It's surprising when people find it difficult to understand the importance of email/some kind of notification for the activity on your social profile, but the this cannot be the only reason to be credited with the failure of Wave. I still feel that Wave is a great product and it could not catch up just because it was ahead of its time. And the few admirers could not use it because others were not ready to use it. A lot of new age collaboration tools do the same what Wave did long time ago.
xster 15y ago
Google Profiles is not available for your organization. nuff said
- cpeterso 15y ago
  The lack of Profiles for Google Apps (for organizations) is a big annoyance. If I try sharing RSS fiends with friends in Google Reader, everyone shows up as "Anonymous". Many people complained about these problems on the Google Reader support forums last year, but Google still hasn't responded or fixed anything.. :(
raganwald 15y ago
In one paragraph, the author lauds the fact that Google+ will send email to people who aren't on it, effectively spam for your friends: G+'s email notification handling is particularly elegant. It gives you the choice—on by default—to let your friends who aren't on yet know there's something going on. In another paragraph, the author lauds how Google+ doesn't clutter your mail inbox: Don't mess with the Gmail inbox. When Buzz invaded my Gmail inbox with a flood of social-networky conversations, my first instinct was "Turn it off!" I guess the message is that if you sign up, Google+ won't annoy you, but it will give you the tools to annoy your friends so their product can be "viral."
- chc 15y ago
  Gmail also allows you to send email to people who aren't Gmail users. I don't see how it's necessarily worse when Google+ does it. It doesn't sound like it's talking about Farmville here — more like what Apple does with iMessage, where it sends an iMessage to other users of Apple's service and a text to others. (I'm not on Google+, so I don't speak from experience. That's just how it sounds to me.)
  - raganwald 15y ago
    To be perfectly candid, I am not sure if I have an issue with Google+, with my friends who think I want to throw a custard pie at them, or with the author who both praises and lambastes products that send you unsolicited email. Perhaops I should have simply said, "Hmmm, that's odd..."
    - Symmetry 15y ago
      His criticism of Buzz didn't have anything to do with unsolicited email, but rather with the fact that Google integrated it into its gmail UI.
      - stanleydrew 15y ago
        Correct, although the author is a her.
kin 15y ago
Slightly off topic from the article, I'm curious when they're going to integrate their gaming platform into this, or any 3rd party development for that matter.
nextparadigms 15y ago
1. Does Google have a "broadcast mode"? Because I think it's vital. The problem with Facebook is that it only had a broadcast mode and not a "circles" mode. But does Google+ have only the Circles mode and not a broadcast one as well? All social networks need a broadcast mode (AND a circles mode). 2. Does it have a real time communication tool, such as Gtalk, or maybe another chat program that works across the entire network like Facebook chat. I think IM features are important for a social network, too. If it does, how does it work? Does a different chat appear in each Circle? Or do I see all at once? I'm not sure I'd like to see all at once. It's acceptable in the beginning, but what if you have 10 groups of ~20 people each? I think I'd prefer to just go into each Circle when I want to talk to that group, rather than see them all at once, and having them all see me when I'm online.
- jedc 15y ago
  1 - Yes. You can share to specific circles, specific people, OR "Public" to everyone. 2 - Sort of. Through the "Huddle" functionality on the mobile client, you can do real-time group chats. But that might not be what you're referring to.
  - jedc 15y ago
    Sorry, answer to 2 is "YES". There's a chat bar, and you can select an entire Circle to chat with.
  - robflynn 15y ago
    To add to this, there is also a "your circles" option, which generates a post that is not fully public, but does post to ALL of your circles. So, it's some where in between the two options mentioned in point one.
trustfundbaby 15y ago
... but they still force you to make your profile public http://j.mp/jQJ0LE http://j.mp/jQJ0LE ... its like they learned nothing after all
- chollida1 15y ago
  The actual link that the above "minified" link goes to: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/804904/cropper/google_plus.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/804904/cropper/google_plus.png
- sectek 15y ago
  You can currently set your Google profile to not be publicly indexed by search engines under "search visibility" on the edit page, but don't know if it will carry over once + goes public.
mchusma 15y ago
I think they didn't learn from Wave exactly what is frustrating me now. Don't limit my ability to use a communication tool amongst my friends. With Wave, I thought "Hey cool, let me try this out with..." nobody, because it wasn't open to all. I had the same experience going to +1: "hey this is cool let me add my friends..." oh wait...
mark_l_watson 15y ago
I just got an invite tonight - a very slick system. Does anyone know if it is a GWT app? I still miss Wave. I was not 100% enthusiastic about Wave's UI, but writing robots for Wave was fun and I was looking at it as being a good platform to write for. Google+ does not look like a platform for 3rd party developers.
fondue 15y ago
"The Google+ Android app is very well done, and it's made a few of my dual-using iOS/Android friends go all-out Android." I didn't see it this way - I have more than one gmail address and after downloading the app it prompted me to associate Google+ with the account that didn't have Google+! There is no option to associate it with any other email address so it's completely unusable to me.

152 points by cjoh 15y ago

"Wave was released in "limited preview:" too few real users not soon enough. Google+ is in "field testing" right now. The language here is important. "Field test" implies that a significant number of real users outside of the plex's walls are putting Google+ through its paces, and will find confusing UI around sensitive items like privacy before the product gets released to the public." Using the right buzzword doesn't mean anything. And 'field testing' doesn't imply more users than 'limited preview'. In fact, I would have said it meant less, by my gut feeling. It probably doesn't have any relation at all in their minds. For the rest of it, I think I can summarize with: Keep it simple, while still implementing all the features necessary for social networks, especially Notifications and mobile access. The only non-obvious thing is the feedback mechanism, which is apparently pretty rich. I still say that it doesn't matter how nice a social network is if my friends aren't also on it. And if you let me in but make me wait too long for my friends, you'll lose us all 1 at a time, which is the same result as never having us in the first place.

dpcan 15y ago
It will be insanely foolish if ALL the first invites don't also get about 30 invites themselves, and for those we invite, allow us to send them whatever "share" of our invites we want them to have. So, I can invite a popular friend and give him 10 invites, and I can invite my other friend and give him 1 invite.
- wccrawford 15y ago
  I think that would be a good compromise, but I'd rather see everyone start with 1 or 2 invites, and let things expand organically for a while, then add more invites to everyone when the capacity is there. Even giving everyone 1 invite every day would be better.
  - nextparadigms 15y ago
    An invite a day...that's an interesting proposition. It would make me want to find a new friend that I could convince to join Google+ everyday :)
  - masterzora 15y ago
    > I'd rather see everyone start with 1 or 2 invites, and let things expand organically for a while, then add more invites to everyone when the capacity is there. No, no, no. This is the problem I have with Diaspora. They gave me 5 invites. I used my first since I got mine as part of an invite chain. I have no clue how to best utilise the other four so as to maximise the usefulness of Diaspora (i.e. grow my own social network maximally). End result, I haven't used any of my other 4 invites due to analysis paralysis and my social network is basically dead. Google+ seems to be off to a pretty good start so far. I'm not exactly sure how the invite structure works, but somehow a significant portion of my social network seems to already be involved. I'm assuming this just means I know a lot of connected people (most of my network is from college and we all know people who do or have worked at Google), but it means that, even within the first 24 hours, activity has been pretty decent.

ryanisinallofus 15y ago

If they don't give people invites soon Google+ will be DOA. People will stop caring before anyone gets a chance to use it.

cjoh 15y ago
I'm in there -- Google Employees are playing a good ground game answering people's questions and such and from what I've heard, invitations are imminent.
- Hostile 15y ago
  Can you elaborate on where you heard this? I've seen it implied that no invites are planned until after the "field test", and who knows how long that period might be.
  - nl 15y ago
    I can send invites now, and I only got my invitation a couple of hours ago
  - cjoh 15y ago
    I can send invites now. Floods of people joining. I think 6 hours counts as imminent.
    - Hostile 15y ago
      Indeed it does. I never called you wrong, just asked where you got your info. I'm in now, so I guess it doesn't matter any more.
nextparadigms 15y ago
I think they need to strike a balance between releasing invites very slowly, and releasing too many at once, making them pointless. But I'm also dying to get one and I can't even from Google employees because they don't have any invites to give right now. So hopefully they'll give the first batch some invites so they can invite everyone else who is eager to join. But they should have at least one more level of private-mode before they go public. They need to make sure the early adopter community is tight first, kind of like Quora did. Imagine what would've happened if Quora went public from like day one. It would've basically killed the product. Or what if everyone knew about HN from day one? Facebook, too, was once only for college students. The early community needs to be very strong before it gets diluted by the masses. The early adopters help shape the product before the "unwashed masses" join it, and I think they should give enough time to early adopters to get used to it, get to love it and have enough time to tell everyone how cool it is and how much they love it before they can actually invite everyone else and make it public.

ryanisinallofus 15y ago

Judging from the previews and looking over a co-worker's shoulder this finally looks like a social, singular interface for many of Google's products. Iv'e been hoping they would stop thinking of themselves as many different products and start viewing themselves as users do: just one Google. Each product is really just a feature. Facebook does this right and I hope Google does too.

mrschwabe 15y ago

You know what would be great? A new social network NOT created by Google. The company is the Wal-Mart of tech; the modern day Microsoft of the internet. Let's join something created by entrepreneurs, not conglomerates.

sukuriant 15y ago
Why? If someone produces a good product, and they have generally pleasant business practices (and don't have glaringly bad ones, too), why does it matter if it is a large company or a small one?
- mrschwabe 15y ago
  Exactly, Google doesn't have generally pleasant business practices. Maybe the Google of 1998, but the Google of today is a much different beast.
  - Hostile 15y ago
    To my knowledge, Google has never offensively used a patent. A large percentage of their products are open source. They develop a lot of open technologies in an attempt to make the web better/faster for everyone (which, in theory, will be good for their business in the long run). Their privacy practices are going to be audited by a third party for the next 20 or so years. Where exactly is the walmart/microsoft likeness?
    - mrschwabe 15y ago
      The parallel between Google and Wal-Mart is how they both appeal to the lowest common denominator. And how their customers are oblivious (or knowingly apathetic) to the negative impact these conglomerates are perpetuating. As for Microsoft, they were the dominant conglomerate of yesteryear. Today it's Google. Both companies wield different powers, and both have been abusing them in different ways.
      - 15y ago

rubergly 15y ago

I will love Google+ when and if all my friends show up and stick around. Isn't the phrase usually "if and when"? I wonder if this was switched on purpose.

krmmalik 15y ago
Yeah, i thought the same thing too. I did if the phrase was switched. Not sure why you got down-voted on this, its a fair point.
- chc 15y ago
  It was probably downvoted because it seems like, if you'll excuse the bluntness of the term, pointless pedantry. The reversed word order doesn't make any obvious major difference to the phrase's meaning, so whether it was done intentionally or by accident comes across as pretty academic. (I hope this doesn't come across as overly hostile. I don't mean it as an attack. I'm just explaining my guess since I hate mystery downvotes.)

uast23 15y ago

It's surprising when people find it difficult to understand the importance of email/some kind of notification for the activity on your social profile, but the this cannot be the only reason to be credited with the failure of Wave. I still feel that Wave is a great product and it could not catch up just because it was ahead of its time. And the few admirers could not use it because others were not ready to use it. A lot of new age collaboration tools do the same what Wave did long time ago.

xster 15y ago

Google Profiles is not available for your organization. nuff said

cpeterso 15y ago
The lack of Profiles for Google Apps (for organizations) is a big annoyance. If I try sharing RSS fiends with friends in Google Reader, everyone shows up as "Anonymous". Many people complained about these problems on the Google Reader support forums last year, but Google still hasn't responded or fixed anything.. :(

raganwald 15y ago

In one paragraph, the author lauds the fact that Google+ will send email to people who aren't on it, effectively spam for your friends: G+'s email notification handling is particularly elegant. It gives you the choice—on by default—to let your friends who aren't on yet know there's something going on. In another paragraph, the author lauds how Google+ doesn't clutter your mail inbox: Don't mess with the Gmail inbox. When Buzz invaded my Gmail inbox with a flood of social-networky conversations, my first instinct was "Turn it off!" I guess the message is that if you sign up, Google+ won't annoy you, but it will give you the tools to annoy your friends so their product can be "viral."

chc 15y ago
Gmail also allows you to send email to people who aren't Gmail users. I don't see how it's necessarily worse when Google+ does it. It doesn't sound like it's talking about Farmville here — more like what Apple does with iMessage, where it sends an iMessage to other users of Apple's service and a text to others. (I'm not on Google+, so I don't speak from experience. That's just how it sounds to me.)
- raganwald 15y ago
  To be perfectly candid, I am not sure if I have an issue with Google+, with my friends who think I want to throw a custard pie at them, or with the author who both praises and lambastes products that send you unsolicited email. Perhaops I should have simply said, "Hmmm, that's odd..."
  - Symmetry 15y ago
    His criticism of Buzz didn't have anything to do with unsolicited email, but rather with the fact that Google integrated it into its gmail UI.
    - stanleydrew 15y ago
      Correct, although the author is a her.

kin 15y ago

Slightly off topic from the article, I'm curious when they're going to integrate their gaming platform into this, or any 3rd party development for that matter.

nextparadigms 15y ago

1. Does Google have a "broadcast mode"? Because I think it's vital. The problem with Facebook is that it only had a broadcast mode and not a "circles" mode. But does Google+ have only the Circles mode and not a broadcast one as well? All social networks need a broadcast mode (AND a circles mode). 2. Does it have a real time communication tool, such as Gtalk, or maybe another chat program that works across the entire network like Facebook chat. I think IM features are important for a social network, too. If it does, how does it work? Does a different chat appear in each Circle? Or do I see all at once? I'm not sure I'd like to see all at once. It's acceptable in the beginning, but what if you have 10 groups of ~20 people each? I think I'd prefer to just go into each Circle when I want to talk to that group, rather than see them all at once, and having them all see me when I'm online.

jedc 15y ago
1 - Yes. You can share to specific circles, specific people, OR "Public" to everyone. 2 - Sort of. Through the "Huddle" functionality on the mobile client, you can do real-time group chats. But that might not be what you're referring to.
- jedc 15y ago
  Sorry, answer to 2 is "YES". There's a chat bar, and you can select an entire Circle to chat with.
- robflynn 15y ago
  To add to this, there is also a "your circles" option, which generates a post that is not fully public, but does post to ALL of your circles. So, it's some where in between the two options mentioned in point one.

trustfundbaby 15y ago

... but they still force you to make your profile public http://j.mp/jQJ0LE http://j.mp/jQJ0LE ... its like they learned nothing after all

chollida1 15y ago
The actual link that the above "minified" link goes to: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/804904/cropper/google_plus.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/804904/cropper/google_plus.png
sectek 15y ago
You can currently set your Google profile to not be publicly indexed by search engines under "search visibility" on the edit page, but don't know if it will carry over once + goes public.

mchusma 15y ago

I think they didn't learn from Wave exactly what is frustrating me now. Don't limit my ability to use a communication tool amongst my friends. With Wave, I thought "Hey cool, let me try this out with..." nobody, because it wasn't open to all. I had the same experience going to +1: "hey this is cool let me add my friends..." oh wait...

mark_l_watson 15y ago

I just got an invite tonight - a very slick system. Does anyone know if it is a GWT app? I still miss Wave. I was not 100% enthusiastic about Wave's UI, but writing robots for Wave was fun and I was looking at it as being a good platform to write for. Google+ does not look like a platform for 3rd party developers.

fondue 15y ago

"The Google+ Android app is very well done, and it's made a few of my dual-using iOS/Android friends go all-out Android." I didn't see it this way - I have more than one gmail address and after downloading the app it prompted me to associate Google+ with the account that didn't have Google+! There is no option to associate it with any other email address so it's completely unusable to me.