7 ms·
Poll: What do you think of Google+?
I want to see what HN thinks of google+ so far.
- kunalb 15y agoWhile the UI is good with animations and a nice design, I don't see anything that will make me shift completely away from FB: I might use it for hangout as an alternative to calling over google chat/skype. That's about it.
- Vmabuza 15y ago1st thing they should do is to drop the ''Google'' and call it Plus-Its clean
- tintin 15y agoNo opinion (yet). I could not use it. -Edit- I was unaware of the real meaning of the black bar on top of HN. Joke removed..
- drivebyacct2 15y ago> I was unaware of the real meaning of the black bar on top of HN. Uh, what is it? I made a similar joke.
- JacobAldridge 15y agohttp://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2712469 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2712469
- tariqk 15y agoHave used it, not really getting an "Aha!" moment.
- rb2k_ 15y agoMaybe add an option for "haven't got an invite yet" update: got one :)
- expertmind 15y agoWhats your email id.
- espeed 15y agoMine is in my profile...if you still have one to spare :)
- Kusk 15y agoIf you got one more invite, I would really like one at anderskusk at gmail com Thanks!
- Zumzoa 15y agoI would also like to request one for [REDACTED] Many thanks in advance. [edit] Thanks to my sponsor!
- mpclark 15y agoI hate myself for this, but "pleaaase" -- mike at mikeclark dot eu
- Murkin 15y agoHow about instead of having people post emails, someone (who can invite) give us an email where we can ask him in private ? Strange that googlers haven't properly discovered HN yet.. would of been nice to spread some invites to the HN crowd.
- shafiahmedbd 15y agoCheck my profile
- pixdamix 15y agoIf anyone else got one to spare, you can check my profile for my email too. Thanks
- stefano 15y ago
- technogeek00 15y agoFrom how much of it I have used so far it is apparent that they have been listening to complaints about Facebook and other social networking sites. It is a far better venture than Buzz ever was, but even now Buzz appears as a view able tab and I am not sure why. Though I must say I am having more fun causing the animations on the circles to happen then anything else.
- xd 15y agoWith all the hype surrounding google+ it's a crying shame it's not openly available. Within a couple of days my interest will have subsided and it will be nothing but a distant memory .. which I can imagine will be the case for a lot of people. Hopefully if it is any good, it will claw it's way back into the media spotlight, but how many people will try for a second time to sign up. IMHO the invite only plan will kill it before it gets any kind of real traction. Edit: I'm aware gmail done well using invite only to begin with. But gmail was a leap ahead of it's competitors.
- meatmanek 15y agoMaking it invite-only forces people to talk about it. Gmail's slow launch was done really well, and probably drove interest more than harmed it. If Google handles this well, the same thing could happen for Google+.
- Blarat 15y agoI haven't seen any hype surrounding google+ except for HN and other similar communities. I don't think the regular FB user is even aware that google+ is in testing phase, or that google is even working on anything like it. Heck, how many have heard of google wave outside of the geek circle?
- xd 15y agoFor the UK the BBC news, daily mail, the sun etc to name a few are running the story.
- antihero 15y agoInvites are so bloody rare. Gmail was groundbreaking (and empirically offered way more space, etc) so people were going nuts for invites. This is, at best, a "bit better than Facebook". And much as people dislike it, Facebook is a pretty powerful tool, as opposed to webmail before Gmail, which majorly sucked.
- zachanker 15y agoThe invites weren't actually that bad, nothing like Gmail was initially. Most (Everyone?) had unlimited invites for a good 4-5+ hours. You could actually get in if you refreshed the main page, they seemed to let people sign up through some magical formula.
- nopinsight 15y agoWe're working on a startup with an app that functions very similarly to the Sparks feature of Google+. The app will recommend new things for you to read and watch based on your interests (which are stored long-term, but can be ordered, edited, removed). Now that Google+ has a very similar feature in Sparks, I need to think long and hard on whether to continue with the idea. (We are a small team with three developers and a couple other members.) Do you think we should continue to work on this? Would you use something like Google Sparks as a stand-alone Website or mobile app? If we continue, what would be significant differentiating functionalities that Google can't easily copy and deploy? (I am considering showing a different style of recommended results from Google Sparks, e.g. long-term, evergreen articles versus newsflash, but of course Google can do that too.) I am torn right now. Thanks a bunch for any ideas and opinions on this.
- true_religion 15y agoDitto, I had a side project that was evolving in the same direction as the way Google circles' deals with photosharing. I had heard of circles previously when they leaked things last year, but I assumed it would be vapourware or a half-start like Buzz or Wave. Now that they have actually come out with the product, I'm going to have to pivot away to plan B.
- revorad 15y agoIf you're a startup building another social network, I think the question to ask yourself is: what's our business model? Unless you are well connected in the valley, have insane traction already, have boatloads of cash, don't like or need money or are doing it for charity, it's not a startup, it's just a hobby. I think the smart thing to do now is ride the social networking wave and build something on top of it. Think Zynga, not Facebook.
- nopinsight 15y agoNo, we're not building another social network. This will be an app to help people follow their favorite topics. Think RSS, but filter by topics instead of websites. Or think Reddit, but with only links on your favorite topics. (The topics can be more fine-grained and flexible than putting existing subreddits together.) Of course, there will be social components on it, but the key functionality is the links to interesting articles/videos/books instead of chattering with your friends.
- JoeyRJ 15y agoFrom what I can see (From demos, no invite yet, got one? :( ) Google got alot of things right that Facebook got wrong. Mostly concerning privacy and sharing. Now, like most people say, Facebook has all these settings to share stuff with the people you want to share with, but my problem is that the whole security settings thing is a MESS! If google can do that right, while providing a better android app than FB does, that's enough for me to ditch Facebook for Google+.
- personalcompute 15y agoCan't invite you w/o contact information. Add an email to your bio.
- redthrowaway 15y agoI'd actually really appreciate an invite if you have any to spare.
- shafiahmedbd 15y agoAdd me to the list.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- tonyskn 15y agoHey, if you've got invites, here's my mail: [redacted]
- bvi 15y agoIf anyone has an invite, (pretty) please get in touch!
- jonursenbach 15y agoThey took the invite system down tonight due to too much demand, else I'd send you one.
- geoffw8 15y agoIf someone could send me one I'd be very much appreciative :)
- motyar 15y agoWhat you think about android? Google rocks. But what you think about orkut? Wait and watch.
- edlich 15y agoGreat idea. The mixing of circles in Fbook is a show stopper for me.
- patio11 15y agoI do not have a Google+-shaped hole in my life right now. If a) it starts to matter to non-technical Internet users and b) they tie it into search heavily (which is the Google go-to playbook for promoting properties of strategic importance), I will start caring with alacrity.
- praptak 15y ago"I do not have a Google+-shaped hole in my life right now." Neither do I but the only hope for G+ is not plugging known holes - FB does that already. They need to create new possibilities instead.
- redthrowaway 15y agoFacebook didn't really create anything new when it launched, it was simply less annoying and more grown up than myspace. I'm already a heavy user of the Google stack (gmail, docs, maps, translate), so if G+ offers me a way to better integrate that while getting away from facebook's annoying immaturity, I can see myself as a regular user. What facebook does have right now is a reason to check it multiple times a day. G+ will get that if a lot of my friends start using it, but it doesn't appear to have that draw yet.
- maverick2 15y agoWhat makes me hate facebook is that it is closed, So yes I would switch to G+ as I see in future all my google services[mail, calenader, maps, doc] integrated into my social networks and devices with the onset Android and the Google TV, and chrome browser all well intergated, privacy is not my concern. Rather I would love all my digital services intergated witha single vendor so that it can provide me with the kind of AI services google is known for[that too for free].
- maverick2 15y agoJust could not stop myself from posting this comment from 'lifebyexperimentation' .. the blogger[with hands on experience ] says my point in much better manner "Everything is smoothly integrated into one place, from Google Chat to the notification center in the upper right. I wonder if I will be able to access my gmail and iGoogle widgets from Google+? If so, then it could provide a one-stop-shop for everything and take over as my browser homepage (something Facebook never had a chance at doing). One thing I have to be thankful for in that Google+ works well internationally because it remembers my Google settings. No other company could manage this. Overall, like any social network, the #1 determining factor will be adoption. If my friends use it, I will use it. But adoption is based upon a good user experience and a service that solves a problem, and to my surprise Google+ seems to be accomplishing just that (I actually did not expect to like it). "
- jacobroufa 15y agoThough the rest of the features are relatively mild, I'm definitely a fan of the "hangout". I was just on a chat earlier with 4 friends - I'm in the pacific northwest, three of them were in the midwest in several cities and one was all the way on the other side of the world, in Calcutta. Quality was fantastic and smooth, especially considering our pal in India was on a tethered 1Mbps cellular connection. Needless to say, I'm sold. Google+ makes Skype look like some teenager's high school science project gone wrong.
- necubi 15y agoI find I miss the simplicity of Facebook to a degree. With plus, it's not really clear who I'm sharing what with at any given time, or what the relationships I've set up are. Facebook has one kind of relationship (1-1) and one kind of sharing (to your friends or to everybody, depending on how your security settings are configured). It's also missing a number of essential (at least for college students) facebook features, like events and richer profiles. I'm playing with it for now, but I don't think I can manage two social networks and since nearly all of my friends are on Facebook it's not hard to choose one. Maybe some day that will change, but network effects augur otherwise. Edit: I should note that hangouts are seriously cool, and they might be reason enough for people to start using it.
- sharpwing00 15y agofacebook really mess up with our privacy
- StrawberryFrog 15y agoFacebook is simple?
- tytso 15y agoObviously someone who has never bothered to look at Facebook's privacy controls. :-)
- henrikschroder 15y agoHave you ever clicked the little padlock next to the Share input widget? You can choose between Everyone, Friends of Friends, Friends only, or Customize. If you choose the last one, you can select groups of friends or individual friends, or everyone except a list of excluded friends. Facebook has gotten pretty complicated...
- qaexl 15y agoYes. I saw that. It doesn't work all that well. One of the comments I saw on Google+ is making a distinction between a "plaza" and a "warren". Facebook defaults to plaza though it can do warren with some contortion. Likewise, Google+ defaults to warren and can do plaza with some contortion. With my wide-ranging interests and extremely, sometimes mutually-exclusive perspectives, personal beliefs, pet philosophies and operating paradigm, I prefer a social network that defaults to a "warren". In the end, it is probably a case of the "Evil Twin": http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/09/17/your-evil-twins-and-how-to-find-them/ http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/09/17/your-evil-twins-and-how...
- revorad 15y agoI think you need another option: Don't like it, don't need it, but will end up using it
- dscape 15y agoI don't care about it. Facebook is fine for my family to talk to me and see pictures. I don't use anything else on it. As for social tools twitter is ok. Now can we have github replace twitter and have that timeline do something for us devs - now that would be awesome
- obelix 15y agoIf you need an invite, please email me at lists at anands dot net. I have a few, will add you all when they re-open invite feature. Please say Google+ in the subject and it would be helpful if you spell out your email in the body. I will add it once they re-open invite. https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/PhJFJqLyRnm https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/PhJFJqLy...
- obelix 15y agoFWIW, I have created a HN stream and added ~40 of you who sent emails. You should be able to signup to google+ using that. If it tells you to retry later, please do that. It works - eventually.
- curiousfiddler 15y agoI feel hangout is gonna be the dark horse feature. Imagine coming back from a hard day's work, logging in to plus, and finding 3 of your best friends hanging out over a beer ;)
- davidw 15y agoI think the circles thing is a bit stressful. Making me sort my friends out is "making me think" and not fun.
- ducuboy 15y agoThey tried to make it "fun" with the drag'n'drop UI. Personally I think circles is the biggest part of the +. I can finally interact properly with my Family, Buddies, Coworkers and so on.
- davidw 15y agoI can see the attraction - it's a sensible idea, it's just that I can also think of it being stressful: who did I just tell I'm going to quit my job? Who should I tell that we're moving? Is someone going to get offended if those circles leak and they've been placed in the 'wrong' one?
- expertmind 15y agoLiked it, Loved it, Will shift to it.
- suresh051 15y agoGoogle+ will succeed
- ignifero 15y agoI like the overall very positive response from those who used it. I m interested in it as an apps platform, but i haven't got an invite :(
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- mailanay 15y agoGoogle+ has the same buzz and expectation which was associated with gmail when it was first launched (with respect to scarcity of invites). I am based in India (not sure how location matters) and I remember I had to wait a few weeks for someone to invite me to gmail. If that is some indication, then Google+ looks to be a winner. (I remember how I moved from Yahoo! and Hotmail email to gmail after I finally got the invite).
- trezor 15y agoIt has the same buzz and expectation as Google Wave too. I can control my anticipation.
- jarin 15y agoYeah, but unlike Google Wave, you don't really have to explain it to people. "It's like Facebook without all the Farmville crap" seems to suffice for even the least techie of people (as long as they are already on Facebook).
- icebraining 15y agoSmall plug: you can see a graph of the results here: http://hackernewspoll.appspot.com/2712967 http://hackernewspoll.appspot.com/2712967 I did this small service using GAE after seeing so many people manually updating graphs, it's painful. Btw, every poll works, just change the number with the poll id from YCombinator's URL.
- danoprey 15y agoFrom the little I managed to use it I thought it was unbearably slow, then I found out it was the Chinese Government's fault: http://www.penn-olson.com/2011/06/30/google-plus-china/ http://www.penn-olson.com/2011/06/30/google-plus-china/ So if it were fast, I'd use it!
- pixpax30 15y agoI'd love to comment - Ive registered my interest but dont have an invite...if anyone felt kind, my email is in my profile ;)
- steveh 15y agoHate to be a me too. But.... me too?
- iamben 15y agoIt'd be much more useful if they'd integrated it with Apps accounts prior to launch. Apps customers still can't create Profiles, never got to use Buzz etc etc, despite being promised Profiles 'in a few weeks' back in March.
- trezor 15y agoSeriously? That's a killer for me then. I'd have to get a new email out there for people to add. Just to use a new social platform from Google. Because I'm using Google's email-plkatform. This doesn't make any fucking sense. As usual I might add. Google really loves to shit on its premium customers, the ones who actually pays them money for the products they are using. At some point I was surprised to learn this, but I guess over time it's natural to get a bit jaded.
- ducuboy 15y agoI take it like a fresh start. This is why I switched from Y!Messenger to Gmail Chat. There was a good opportunity to get rid of annoying people in my list, and to handpick the ones that I really wanna chat with I will try to do the same by switching from Facebook to Google+. It seems easy enough that my folks will be able to use it. So for one thing, I will be very active within my Family circle, given the fact that I live abroad and I share lots of photos and do a lot of video chatting with my family. Second, I have the chance to better organize my friends and acquaintances and to share relevant stuff with them.
- sharpwing00 15y agoa new thinking in social networking
- greengarstudios 15y agoDoes Hacker News have a black bar at the top because of Google+? (The same thing happened to my Google today: the top bar turned black.)
- pilif 15y agono. The black bar ist because of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2712469 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2712469 - RIP.
- DrStalker 15y agoPersonally any Google service that requires me to completely log out of my Google Apps account to use is no good to me.
- 1010011010 15y agoI agree. But that will be fixed.
- boundlessdreamz 15y agoYou just need to enable multiple sign on for your Google Apps account and regular account. http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=181599 http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=...
- deekrish 15y agoLooks like a mashup up of all existing google tools flavored with the tone of Social Networking...perhaps the only leverage it has is its Circle feature and Hangout...curious to see how it ll go....
- lifty 15y agoThe next step is standardizing a protocol for inter-social-network communication. Open flow between Google+, Facebook and other small compatible networks and standalone clients :) I hope Google will do the right thing, like they sometimes do. They certainly have the position to do it, and they would be appreciated for that.
- phreeza 15y agoIsn't that essentially what OpenSocial does? http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/ http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/ Somehow I don't see facebook implementing that though.
- leif 15y agoneed an option for "have an invite but they're over capacity and won't let me sign up yet" I have no opinion yet, I was backpacking for a few days during the announcement, just got back and had these invites. To me, it's nothing more than a product name, and a damn confusing one at that. I'd have accepted google++ ;-)
- benjaminlotan 15y agoI think it should be evaluated in terms of where it could be 10 or 20 years from now. Somehow when i think of it that way, and then i compare that to thoughts of facebook in 10 or 20 years... i have faith in google.
- jarin 15y agoI'm surprised nobody has mentioned this yet, but the "Send feedback" widget in the lower right is amazing. It seems to be inspired by Safari's Web Clips, and I hope it won't be long before someone better at Javascript than me reverse engineers it (otherwise I guess I will have to).
- mkr-hn 15y agoLiking it quite a bit so far: http://bitoftech.mkronline.com/2011/06/30/google-plus-first-impressions/ http://bitoftech.mkronline.com/2011/06/30/google-plus-first-... I'm using it more than I've ever used Facebook. That's a good sign. Circles don't have the tedium of a Facebook group. I can add a few people and go straight to talking and sharing with no need to bug them to join a group or tinker with a profile. It's functionally similar to Facebook groups, but switching contexts is easier.
- resdirector 15y agoGoogle Wave poll two years ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=635354 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=635354
- mkr-hn 15y agoWave was glitchy and slow, and no-one could figure out exactly what they were supposed to do with it. Google+ has a clear purpose, is fast, and doesn't seem glitchy. I was having a blast chatting with people from a forum I use on Wave, but the conversation crash at 300+ killed it for everyone. edit: I put it this way in a Google+ conversation: "Wave was a good name. Sometimes it was up, sometimes it was down. And you had to rebuild any time the wave got too big."
- wisty 15y agoTwo years ago, I had no idea what problem Google Wave was trying to solve. I'm still a little hazy. Google+ is solving the problem of Facebook not discriminating between your drinking buddies, and your boss. That's a pretty big problem - people get fired or sued over it. The more friends you have on Facebook, the less you want to use it, as you are the victim of overshare (yay, so many food pictures) and can get yourself in trouble too easily. It doesn't scale. I bet Google+ does. OK, Facebook might just clone Google+'s features. Yay for them. Then it's a platform war. I bet the app developers, after being bitten by Facebook's previous decisions, are going to back Google.
- uptown 15y agoSo far I like it. I feel that Facebook benefited from people's curiosity to add everybody they'd ever encountered over the course of their lives to see what they're up to today. Google+ will likely benefit from a better-curated collection of connections that are added in a more though-through manner. With Facebook it was neat to see what somebody I knew in middle-school is up to now, but really there's no reason for me to add them on new social networks going forward. And I think part of that curation of connections is what makes a social network increase in value. Good job Google.
- jshort 15y agoMy only fear with the invite only launch is that Facebook will have enough time to announce some of it's own changes before people get an invite to Google+. Although Facebook users are unlikely to (attempt to) delete their account unless google+ gains huge popularity. Google+ may just become a compliment for must Facebook users who use circles for their inner circles (perhaps family or co-workers). With hangouts I personally would only video chat with a select group of people falling into three circles, close Friends, family, and for work. But in the end those small groups will overlap with other circle to create one circle including everyone. Let's just hope the transition to google plus happens quickly and smoothly.
- brudgers 15y ago>"Google+ will succeed" >"Google+ will fail" This is a bit incoherent because success and failure for Google is radically different than success and failure for people who consume Google's services. If after six months Google+ provides an important data set which enhances ad revenues, they can shut it down or let it die off (which would be more likely) and still claim success even though this would constitute a failure for people who consume Google's services. Likewise, if the implementation favors Android over iOS this increases the odds of success for Google while increasing the odds of Google+'s failure among people who consume Google's services. Perhaps nothing better illustrates this divergence of interests more clearly that the current hype surrounding Google+ coupled with the lack of widespread availability among people who consume Google's services.
- tomaszkubacki 15y agoLike it and would use it
- gravitronic 15y agoLike any social network, the more (time & posts) you put in, the more you get out of it. I don't think I'm alone when I say my aptitude for social networking is burnt out and way passed the "love" stage. It makes it hard to go into this site with a fresh mind to discover any of it's cool nooks and crannies that separate it from Facebook. That being said I think there's still room for invention in the space. I was quite pleased and excited with turntable.fm (and now that I can use it in Canada again I am excited again). Maybe I'll end up using the "hangout" feature. tl;dr don't really need another means to ignore my long-lost highschool friend's all-important status updates
- jarin 15y agoI've gotten a lot of business from my long-lost high school friends (and long-lost high school enemies too), so each trivial status update is like a precious little gem to me.
- JiPi 15y agoMight fail, might succeed...only time will tell! It isn't a Wave 2 that no one will understand, but still have rough edges, bugs, no API (no integration with apps besides official one), nothing major that could make ppl move from Facebook, might be hard for casual user (think your father and mother) to get a Google Profile as Hotmail users...etc!
- programminggeek 15y agoI got an invite and I have to say that Google has a GREAT start here. They are doing a lot of smart things like making the UI very clean and nice. It isn't nerdy at all. It looks like a product that is trying to win at being a social network, not at trying to be search advertising or a "twitter killer". It's as if Google realized that they succeed when their products are genuinely good, not just "good enough" and pushed out to Google's massive user base via their massive advertising platform.
- dilap 15y agoIt's hard for me to imagine it having much mass adoption -- it's just too similar to Facebook, and its killer-feature, Circles, is of dubious value to the non-OCD, non-geek set (do normal people care about sorting their friends into various groups?). That said, a la the XKCD comic, I could see it being personally useful to me as a way to stay in touch with people who refuse to use / have left Facebook, but have no such compunctions for a Google product. I.e., I could see it becoming a place where the "cool kids" hang out. I'm curious what Google's response will be if G+ only gets a limited amount of adoption. Will they just give up on it, like Wave, or will they keep pounding away & improving it? It's been noted that today's Google is like yesterday's Microsoft, incredibly aggressively moving in on any perceived threats, but yesterday's MS would keep iterating an unpopular product until it was successful, whereas Google seems to be taking the "keep trying shit until we have an instant hit" approach. (Perhaps they were spoiled by search & gmail, where they were able to introduce truly game-changing improvements over the status-quo.)
- bsphil 15y agoStill can't seem to find an invite.
- qaexl 15y agoGoogle+ solves most of the problems I have with Facebook. The circles more or less reimplement what I have been using with Livejournal for ten years now. I've been migrating as many of my contacts off of FB as I can, with the plan to cull my FB friends list and then ditching it as far as daily use is concerned. If I am applying the Gervais Principle right, Google+ will never completely supplant Facebook. That's fine by me.