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The author seems to be suffering from a classic case of confusing personal anecdotes and preferences with actual insight and analysis. He seems to have joined

The author seems to be suffering from a classic case of confusing personal anecdotes and preferences with actual insight and analysis. He seems to have joined G+ with some sort of expectation that he'd find a full-baked, revolutionary new site that would change his perception of social networking. It's evident from his article, indeed his very first sentence, that he doesn't think Facebook has any shortcomings that need to be overcome. If you're starting from the position that "Facebook works just fine, I don't need a better way to share things online," then yes, Google Plus is not solving a problem for you. There are a lot of people who just want to use the Internet to share family pictures and funny jokes they've heard, and don't care about or understand things like owning their data, controlling their privacy, or ensuring that different sites and protocols are interoperable and predictable. They won't rush to join G+, because they are fine where they are inside the walled garden of Facebook, just like they were find inside AOL's walled garden in the 1990s. Eventually, Google+ will be for them, but not right now. I'd call that "early days," not "coming up short."

timr 15y ago
"If you're starting from the position that "Facebook works just fine, I don't need a better way to share things online," then yes, Google Plus is not solving a problem for you." Yes, exactly. And for the vast majority of Facebook users, that's where they're starting. And that's the guy's point. And he's absolutely right. Google has an uphill climb with this one, because they're competing against two established players who already do a great job of what they do. "There are a lot of people who just want to use the Internet to share family pictures and funny jokes they've heard, and don't care about or understand things like owning their data, controlling their privacy, or ensuring that different sites and protocols are interoperable and predictable. The only people I hear complaining about Facebook and Twitter on privacy grounds are the same people who complained that iPods were over-priced, that Macs aren't open enough, that VHS was inferior to Beta, and that MP3 was going to fall to Ogg Vorbis any day now. Could they be right? Sure. Do I think that's likely? Not based on past experience. Realists know that "good enough" carries the day -- especially when "good enough" is actually pretty darned good. Maybe Google+ will be a vastly better experience in a few years, but right now it's clunky and awkward, and the payoff for using it is low. Literally everyone I care about is on Facebook, and if they make their groups feature slightly more prominent and easy to use, they'll have matched Google+ feature for feature. That's the point of the essay: to make a compelling alternative to a strong competitor's product, you have to do a lot more than add a few basic features.
- jamesteow 15y ago
  " Literally everyone I care about is on Facebook" Everyone I cared about was on Friendster and on Myspace too. My favorite people who I'm friends with on Facebook tend to rarely post on Facebook (if at all) or use Twitter as their main outlet. I enjoy the social purge as my list get re-populated by my true friends of the time and the quality of the content re-aligns with a better signal-to-noise ratio. On a side note: photo uploading is way better on G+. I've been extremely unhappy about the re-encoding on Facebook which outputs my photos with less quality (despite uploading at a high quality setting) where as Google retains my original image and scales it according the browser size. That alone makes my experience vastly better as nothing annoys me more than seeing friends use my low-res photos of them as their profile photos when they should have access to a high-res version.
pnathan 15y ago
Sounds like a textbook "innovator/early adopter/mainstream" situation to me.

timr 15y ago

"If you're starting from the position that "Facebook works just fine, I don't need a better way to share things online," then yes, Google Plus is not solving a problem for you." Yes, exactly. And for the vast majority of Facebook users, that's where they're starting. And that's the guy's point. And he's absolutely right. Google has an uphill climb with this one, because they're competing against two established players who already do a great job of what they do. "There are a lot of people who just want to use the Internet to share family pictures and funny jokes they've heard, and don't care about or understand things like owning their data, controlling their privacy, or ensuring that different sites and protocols are interoperable and predictable. The only people I hear complaining about Facebook and Twitter on privacy grounds are the same people who complained that iPods were over-priced, that Macs aren't open enough, that VHS was inferior to Beta, and that MP3 was going to fall to Ogg Vorbis any day now. Could they be right? Sure. Do I think that's likely? Not based on past experience. Realists know that "good enough" carries the day -- especially when "good enough" is actually pretty darned good. Maybe Google+ will be a vastly better experience in a few years, but right now it's clunky and awkward, and the payoff for using it is low. Literally everyone I care about is on Facebook, and if they make their groups feature slightly more prominent and easy to use, they'll have matched Google+ feature for feature. That's the point of the essay: to make a compelling alternative to a strong competitor's product, you have to do a lot more than add a few basic features.

jamesteow 15y ago
" Literally everyone I care about is on Facebook" Everyone I cared about was on Friendster and on Myspace too. My favorite people who I'm friends with on Facebook tend to rarely post on Facebook (if at all) or use Twitter as their main outlet. I enjoy the social purge as my list get re-populated by my true friends of the time and the quality of the content re-aligns with a better signal-to-noise ratio. On a side note: photo uploading is way better on G+. I've been extremely unhappy about the re-encoding on Facebook which outputs my photos with less quality (despite uploading at a high quality setting) where as Google retains my original image and scales it according the browser size. That alone makes my experience vastly better as nothing annoys me more than seeing friends use my low-res photos of them as their profile photos when they should have access to a high-res version.

pnathan 15y ago

Sounds like a textbook "innovator/early adopter/mainstream" situation to me.