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Ask HN: Why doesn't Google get it?
Maybe I'm crazy, but why doesn't Google do something outlandish next time they try a social product? How about instead of opening it up to everyone and replicating 98.2% of the features the other products have they actually try doing something useful for once?
Here's a ridiculous idea. I'm not interested in creating 14 circles with 22 people in each one. I don't want to group video chat with these people. I don't want to IM with these people. I sure as heck don't want to share photos from Picasa of all places with these people. Stop taking other products that already do their job and do it well by bringing it all into one. If an entrepreneur pitched me this idea, I'd tell him to slow down. What problem is he solving for me with +? I have no clue. Sharing? Not a problem. Chatting? Not a problem. Video conferencing? Not a problem. Group sharing based on a common interest? Not a problem. Random news or information (sparks)? Not a problem.
Focus on a product that enhances my actual social network. My closes friends. Maybe that's limited to 5 circles with 10 friends each, maybe it's less. Maybe my friends from each circle belong in more than one circle. Maybe I want to share information with just a cross section of those circles.
I know that's a lot of maybes, but I just wish Google would stop replicating and combining services that are already out there.
End of rant. I'll try + again in a month when I'm proven wrong by all of my friends using it.
- nostrademons 15y agoSo what problem do you have with social networking?
- vrikhter 15y agoI actually don't have a problem with social networking. I know where FB and Twitter sit in my world. I use both of them regularly. I don't see how + is significantly different than either of those products. I've already hidden most people I don't need to see on my FB feed and of course Twitter is curated by people I'm interested in. What else am I missing here? EDIT: Let me follow that up by saying that the majority of my conversations that could be considered 'social', still happen in email. Is that a problem someone could solve? Or is that too far fetched to be solved by a social network?
- nostrademons 15y agoThen Google+ isn't for you. If you don't have a problem, why go looking for a solution?
- vrikhter 15y agoThat's a valid question. Maybe you're right. Let me explain it to you this way if I may. I may not be sure if I have problem, until it's explained to me that I'm missing something and thus a problem appears (isn't all marketing just that?). For example, my Dad runs a small biz and every week collects his employees time information by hand and calls Paychex to input the payroll. He doesn't really have a problem doing this, although it takes up nearly one hour if not more a week for him (or every other week). When I showed him tools that automated this for him and saved him time, he was quite thankful. He didn't realize he had a problem spending one hour every week (or every other week) doing this work, until I showed him a solution that made his current system seem problematic. At the moment I feel like there is more to social than just FB, TW and email. However, I can't quite pin point it myself - and I've tried. I was hoping someone quite smarter than me would do it, but they missed, and a by a lot in my opinion.
- thenonhacker 15y ago"Then Google+ isn't for you. If you don't have a problem, why go looking for a solution?" Not to mention that this reply is snarky and condescending. The issue here is, what are the main differentiators of Google+ from Facebook and from Twitter? For example, I thought I didn't need Twitter anymore, because believe it or not, I though Digg already solved the problem of connecting with people and sharing links with them. It turned out the Twitter has a different kind of value proposition from Digg. And look, Twitter is bigger than Digg or Reddit!
- iralarry 15y agoI did one better-I am thinking-with regards to FB "Friends" I do not see or even hear from regularly. In our haste to accumulate as many friends as the next FBer, we seem lost in the numbers. I actually blasted a statement telling al the people I was "friends" with that if we have not communicated directly with each other within the past year, I was going to de-friend them. ANd I did. I whittled the list down by 40%. Life, simplified.
- waqf 15y agoThey did something outlandish with Wave. How did that turn out?
- vrikhter 15y agoWas it? I thought wave was just a combination of chat, docs, email. It didn't solve any particular problem I had, it just combined everything I used to collaborate with people.
- aufreak3 15y agoWith G+, I'm seeing a change in emphasis that I like very much. In FB, when I post something, I'm not thinking about who's going to see it. In G+, I spend a little bit of time thinking about who this is for. I'm guessing this makes it more likely to engage in interesting varied types of conversations on G+ than the standard pub-like generic small talk that ends up happening on FB.