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Facebook has "circles" but they are called "groups." I have sources that say, unofficially that: 1) They were not blindsided at all. They worked hard to compe

Facebook has "circles" but they are called "groups." I have sources that say, unofficially that: 1) They were not blindsided at all. They worked hard to compete on major features before g+ ever came out. 2) "Groups" has more or less similar functionality, and the feature is known to have a poor UI right now. The point though is that FB thought about this and even though they aren't up to the same polish with that feature, the feature exists, no architectural changes necessary. Just UI polish.

ern 15y ago
Facebook has "circles" but they are called "groups." I think Friend Lists is what you may be referring to. They need to make the feature easier to use/find, and they need to make the News Feed more sensitive to these.
- smackfu 15y ago
  Yeah, they have been pushing Groups (like including it in the sidebar) but it's not very useful for privacy filtering since it tells the group members they are in the groups. Given that, Friends Lists aren't especially hidden either. Account > Edit Friends > Add a list. But using them for privacy is hard: you need to select custom privacy, then say show to specific people, then type in the friend list name in a box that looks like it only expects a person's name. Kludgy. (The iPhone app is actually much better here: it just includes the friends lists in the privacy dropdown.)
  - ahalam 15y ago
    Wouldn't Facebook massively improve usability by just including the Lists in the drop down list in the web interface also? It is actually not too hard if they approach this incrementally.
- prostoalex 15y ago
  One could argue that it's a chicken-and-egg problem, but a year ago friend lists were easier to find, allowed filtered per-list access to your News Feed and ... "Tonight at a Facebook Developer’s Garage meeting at Facebook’s headquarters in Palo Alto, Zuckerberg fielded a question about the service’s privacy controls. He said that the ideal solution for sharing different things with different people is to make a friend list. “But guess what? Nobody wants to make lists,” Zuckerberg admitted." http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/26/facebook-friend-lists/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/26/facebook-friend-lists/
  - commandar 15y ago
    That's because Facebook's lists, as implemented are A. cumbersome and B. sometimes just decide not to work anyway. I absolutely love Circles, and it's more or less what I always wanted Facebook lists to be.
- jasonlotito 15y ago
  That users of HN can't properly comment about Groups or Lists without confusion is telling.
jimbokun 15y ago
"Just UI polish." If Apple's success has taught us anything, it's that "UI polish" trumps pretty much everything else when it comes to making money from software, and it is hard to get right (or else everyone's UIs would be just as polished as Apple's). So if Facebook is behind Google in "Just UI polish" they may have very much to fear, indeed.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- ForrestN 15y ago
  Agreed. People spend a lot of time on Facebook, and most I know complain about its frustrating UX and ugly design. People aren't using Facebook's groups feature, so it's immaterial. Having a feature isn't good enough, it has to be broadly usable and ultimately, it has to be used. It is true that Facebook may just copy the best innovations of Google+, but that puts them in a defensive position and obviously isn't what they want. We've seen what happens to giants who bank on leveraging their entrenchment in the current market.
- tjarratt 15y ago
  It's not just UI polish that make Apple products what they are though - it's the design that goes into a product even before an engineer writes a single line of code, or before a prototype is even built. Apple isn't afraid to have a bad idea and then toss it out because, after all, ideas are cheap. If you build a turd and you polish it, are you still going to release that polished turd? The Apple way is to design it the right way from the start, THEN you polish it.
lhnz 15y ago
"Just UI polish" is a hilarious way of stating this. It's not just the UI that needs to change, more importantly it's the UX. It's disappointing if they are willing to ignore the importance of something like this. It's not just a "lick of paint" that's needed. They need to rework the whole concept and this is time-consuming and difficult to do right. The super embarrassing thing for Facebook is that Google already told them what they were going to do. Take a look at this slideshow by Google's UX team a whole year ago [1]. That's right it's Circles! Google has really done their homework on what makes a social network work and Facebook has no excuse for executing their own version of Circles so poorly with Groups and Lists. They've wasted valuable time pandering to advertisers when it was blatantly obvious what was coming. Google's vision wasn't secret. [1] http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-network-v2 http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-networ...
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- r00fus 15y ago
  Even more ironic, the guy who did that study was later hired by Facebook. I honestly think Zuck either figured that a) Google was incompetent/unwilling to challenge them or b) Google be damned, Facebook will make much more money with the public-by-default, privacy-optional approach to sharing. Perhaps the blindsiding was the promotion of Page to CEO and subsequent mobilization of Google's developer army?
  - ams6110 15y ago
    Zuckerberg is also a kid, he's like a rookie who hit a home run on his first at-bat. It would not be surprising to me if he was blindsided out of a combination of youthful arrogance and inexperience.
    - pbhjpbhj 15y ago
      Because there's only Mr Zuckerberg running the whole company? He's been at it a while. If he gets beaten I don't think it will be to do with youth and inexperience. Remember Google failed with their first offering in this space (Wave), was it youth and inexperience then?
fossuser 15y ago
The groups are still a bit different when it comes to how they're actually used in the site. First of all they still require a mutual friendship and they're also separate from the main sharing area of the site. Google+ has the idea more integrated into the site's actual foundation. Whether or not that is something that the casual user will want still remains to be determined.
jasonlotito 15y ago
Is it Groups or Lists?
MatthewPhillips 15y ago
Is it really just UI polish? Google+ makes you choose who you're posting to on every post. Does Facebook? Isn't that a pretty big difference; on Facebook it is an optional entity that you must seek out and on Google+ it is a feature built into the posting architecture. You cannot post to Google+ without choosing a circle (even Public is presented as being a circle, reiterating the importance of the concept).
wisty 15y ago
I think that Facebook killed MySpace for one simple reason - tricking people into using their real name made it easy to find real life friends (and classmates, etc). IMO, this is what put it head and shoulders above all the other social networks. Nobody could copy it, because their existing users (the early adopters) had silly names like "wisty". Existing users already have old habits, and existing data that they don't want to retype. Users aren't code - you can't just refactor them into something new, clean, and shiny. Google+ users will build their networks afresh, focusing on privacy and groups. They will just maintain two accounts, and use Google+ when they want some level of privacy, and Facebook when they need to announce their wedding to the late adopters.
- SoftwareMaven 15y ago
  But they will only add their photos to one, and that one will ultimately pull ahead.
  - bmelton 15y ago
    And that is exactly why, at least on Android phones, the out of box Plus configuration is to automatically upload all pictures that are taken on a phone.
    - waterlesscloud 15y ago
      You've got to have misstated that. That would be a complete and total disaster of enough scale to completely kill Plus.
      - bmelton 15y ago
        Nope. They're uploaded as 'private' by default, and it's a configurable option, so you can turn the auto-upload feature off altogether. Actually, maybe I did, because I think it asked me the first time whether or not I want auto-upload on or off by default; but even with it on, I don't feel even remotely unsafe -- the photos are automatically backed up to 'the cloud' and aren't shared unless I go in and explicitly share them.

ern 15y ago

Facebook has "circles" but they are called "groups." I think Friend Lists is what you may be referring to. They need to make the feature easier to use/find, and they need to make the News Feed more sensitive to these.

smackfu 15y ago
Yeah, they have been pushing Groups (like including it in the sidebar) but it's not very useful for privacy filtering since it tells the group members they are in the groups. Given that, Friends Lists aren't especially hidden either. Account > Edit Friends > Add a list. But using them for privacy is hard: you need to select custom privacy, then say show to specific people, then type in the friend list name in a box that looks like it only expects a person's name. Kludgy. (The iPhone app is actually much better here: it just includes the friends lists in the privacy dropdown.)
- ahalam 15y ago
  Wouldn't Facebook massively improve usability by just including the Lists in the drop down list in the web interface also? It is actually not too hard if they approach this incrementally.
prostoalex 15y ago
One could argue that it's a chicken-and-egg problem, but a year ago friend lists were easier to find, allowed filtered per-list access to your News Feed and ... "Tonight at a Facebook Developer’s Garage meeting at Facebook’s headquarters in Palo Alto, Zuckerberg fielded a question about the service’s privacy controls. He said that the ideal solution for sharing different things with different people is to make a friend list. “But guess what? Nobody wants to make lists,” Zuckerberg admitted." http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/26/facebook-friend-lists/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/26/facebook-friend-lists/
- commandar 15y ago
  That's because Facebook's lists, as implemented are A. cumbersome and B. sometimes just decide not to work anyway. I absolutely love Circles, and it's more or less what I always wanted Facebook lists to be.
jasonlotito 15y ago
That users of HN can't properly comment about Groups or Lists without confusion is telling.

jimbokun 15y ago

"Just UI polish." If Apple's success has taught us anything, it's that "UI polish" trumps pretty much everything else when it comes to making money from software, and it is hard to get right (or else everyone's UIs would be just as polished as Apple's). So if Facebook is behind Google in "Just UI polish" they may have very much to fear, indeed.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
ForrestN 15y ago
Agreed. People spend a lot of time on Facebook, and most I know complain about its frustrating UX and ugly design. People aren't using Facebook's groups feature, so it's immaterial. Having a feature isn't good enough, it has to be broadly usable and ultimately, it has to be used. It is true that Facebook may just copy the best innovations of Google+, but that puts them in a defensive position and obviously isn't what they want. We've seen what happens to giants who bank on leveraging their entrenchment in the current market.
tjarratt 15y ago
It's not just UI polish that make Apple products what they are though - it's the design that goes into a product even before an engineer writes a single line of code, or before a prototype is even built. Apple isn't afraid to have a bad idea and then toss it out because, after all, ideas are cheap. If you build a turd and you polish it, are you still going to release that polished turd? The Apple way is to design it the right way from the start, THEN you polish it.

lhnz 15y ago

"Just UI polish" is a hilarious way of stating this. It's not just the UI that needs to change, more importantly it's the UX. It's disappointing if they are willing to ignore the importance of something like this. It's not just a "lick of paint" that's needed. They need to rework the whole concept and this is time-consuming and difficult to do right. The super embarrassing thing for Facebook is that Google already told them what they were going to do. Take a look at this slideshow by Google's UX team a whole year ago [1]. That's right it's Circles! Google has really done their homework on what makes a social network work and Facebook has no excuse for executing their own version of Circles so poorly with Groups and Lists. They've wasted valuable time pandering to advertisers when it was blatantly obvious what was coming. Google's vision wasn't secret. [1] http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-network-v2 http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-networ...

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
r00fus 15y ago
Even more ironic, the guy who did that study was later hired by Facebook. I honestly think Zuck either figured that a) Google was incompetent/unwilling to challenge them or b) Google be damned, Facebook will make much more money with the public-by-default, privacy-optional approach to sharing. Perhaps the blindsiding was the promotion of Page to CEO and subsequent mobilization of Google's developer army?
- ams6110 15y ago
  Zuckerberg is also a kid, he's like a rookie who hit a home run on his first at-bat. It would not be surprising to me if he was blindsided out of a combination of youthful arrogance and inexperience.
  - pbhjpbhj 15y ago
    Because there's only Mr Zuckerberg running the whole company? He's been at it a while. If he gets beaten I don't think it will be to do with youth and inexperience. Remember Google failed with their first offering in this space (Wave), was it youth and inexperience then?

fossuser 15y ago

The groups are still a bit different when it comes to how they're actually used in the site. First of all they still require a mutual friendship and they're also separate from the main sharing area of the site. Google+ has the idea more integrated into the site's actual foundation. Whether or not that is something that the casual user will want still remains to be determined.

jasonlotito 15y ago

Is it Groups or Lists?

MatthewPhillips 15y ago

Is it really just UI polish? Google+ makes you choose who you're posting to on every post. Does Facebook? Isn't that a pretty big difference; on Facebook it is an optional entity that you must seek out and on Google+ it is a feature built into the posting architecture. You cannot post to Google+ without choosing a circle (even Public is presented as being a circle, reiterating the importance of the concept).

wisty 15y ago

I think that Facebook killed MySpace for one simple reason - tricking people into using their real name made it easy to find real life friends (and classmates, etc). IMO, this is what put it head and shoulders above all the other social networks. Nobody could copy it, because their existing users (the early adopters) had silly names like "wisty". Existing users already have old habits, and existing data that they don't want to retype. Users aren't code - you can't just refactor them into something new, clean, and shiny. Google+ users will build their networks afresh, focusing on privacy and groups. They will just maintain two accounts, and use Google+ when they want some level of privacy, and Facebook when they need to announce their wedding to the late adopters.

SoftwareMaven 15y ago
But they will only add their photos to one, and that one will ultimately pull ahead.
- bmelton 15y ago
  And that is exactly why, at least on Android phones, the out of box Plus configuration is to automatically upload all pictures that are taken on a phone.
  - waterlesscloud 15y ago
    You've got to have misstated that. That would be a complete and total disaster of enough scale to completely kill Plus.
    - bmelton 15y ago
      Nope. They're uploaded as 'private' by default, and it's a configurable option, so you can turn the auto-upload feature off altogether. Actually, maybe I did, because I think it asked me the first time whether or not I want auto-upload on or off by default; but even with it on, I don't feel even remotely unsafe -- the photos are automatically backed up to 'the cloud' and aren't shared unless I go in and explicitly share them.