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What’s hilarious about the G+ rollout (in a highly dark comedy way) is that G+ was probably a superior offering than the competition. If Google had given it tim

What’s hilarious about the G+ rollout (in a highly dark comedy way) is that G+ was probably a superior offering than the competition. If Google had given it time and opportunity to fail, it would have succeeded because they could then fix the minor issues people didn’t like. Instead they forced it on everyone using any Google product, hurting the product itself, but also preventing the critical feedback loop that would have allowed G+ to improve, and become organically successful.

milsorgen 4y ago
I found G+ quite compelling. It was pleasant to use and I'm sure could of grown into a platform of its own. A place for features that made sense in their time and place and some kind of integration in some products. It seems YouTube is gaining some social features, for instance posts to followers and live chat. I think these would of been interesting areas to utilize g+. But then again I'm outside looking in, I can't speak to the costs they might of incurred letting things unfold at a more measured pace.
jimbob45 4y ago
It wasn’t meaningfully better than FB (at the time) and there was no reason to switch.
- browningstreet 4y ago
  Scoble loved it /s
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    His former boss lit that dumpster fire. https://scobleizer.blog/2006/06/28/wow-vic-gundotra-leaves-microsoft/ https://scobleizer.blog/2006/06/28/wow-vic-gundotra-leaves-m... https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/24/vic-gundotra-the-father-of-google-is-leaving-google-after-8-years/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/24/vic-gundotra-the-father-of...
- hyperhopper 4y ago
  100% was. I mean look at the modern usage of Instagram. You have your Instagram, then your close friends list on Instagram. Then your finsta. And the close friends list on your finsta. All of these are just g+ circles.
  - llampx 4y ago
    Facebook had lists (don't quote me on the name) which was very similar to Circles, without needing to be on the sahara desert of content which was Google+. The advantage of FB was also that you saw content, whereas on Google+ everyone would have it locked up and you couldn't see it, great for the less popular types.
  - j45 4y ago
    This comment reminds me of Google wave too. Parts of it made sense, maybe a bit too early, not enough people using it.
  - erik_seaberg 4y ago
    I thought extra Instagram accounts are used as pseudonyms, which G+ was never willing to accommodate.
  - hot_gril 4y ago
    Instagram only implemented "close friends" after years of a solid user base to research the usefulness of that feature. It's not that they couldn't think of it; ideas are cheap. A lot of it has to do with the stories feature, an innovation stolen from Snapchat that G+ predates. And G+ Circles was way more complicated. Circles feature was also marketed the wrong way. The G+ ad showed a lady bad-mouthing her boss in a circle that doesn't include him. Who's gonna put that much faith in the separation? The entire point of a finsta is that it's not a supported feature, so you can believe that it's totally separate and also has a different name. You'd use the finsta to bad-mouth your boss, if you're a weirdo who friends their boss in the first place.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  It was faster, had more features, and many of those were about your control. It was meaningfully better than FB in pretty much everything but active user numbers.
  - AbrahamParangi 4y ago
    It was worse in the only way which mattered which was the content.
  - lukeschlather 4y ago
    The biggest problem with G+ was they replaced GChat, and Hangouts was emphatically slower than GChat. Maybe the G+ product itself was fast - the only part of the product I actually used was a huge downgrade from what they had before. I actually stopped using GChat for years as a result, just because it was so slow. Also I think Messenger may have been faster than Hangouts. It was not faster than GChat, but it didn't matter because Google killed it and that definitely drove me to use Messenger more.
  - hot_gril 4y ago
    Content aside, it was way more cumbersome to use than Facebook. My friends and I tried it cause one guy was a huge Google fanboy, and even he said "this sucks, man."
emodendroket 4y ago
But the thing is, with a social networking site -- like a number of other products -- being objectively superior doesn't count for much if your friends are on the other one.
- rst 4y ago
  There is a way around this -- find an initial target audience (team gamers for Discord, students of particular colleges for Facebook), start out as a specialty site for those to get a nucleus of active users, and then start building out. But the kind of outreach and engagement (and, honestly marketing savvy) required to make this strategy actually work don't seem to be "Googley". (It also helps to find target communities not well-served by incumbents -- like, perhaps, the multiple communities who interacted poorly with Facebook's "real names" policy. But instead, Google leadership insisted on copying that policy, and in a particularly heavy-handed way, to the point that Google employees couldn't register accounts with nicknames that they were actually known by to colleagues and family alike; see e.g. https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/why-googles-real-name-policy-is-so-flawed-2-3586289.html https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/why-googles-rea... )
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    Well there I think part of the problem is that for the world's Googles running a boutique social networking site for auto mechanics or whatever makes less sense -- they'll want to have mass appeal from the jump.
CobrastanJorji 4y ago
It was! But forcing it on us made me hate not just Google+ but also YouTube and Chrome and Gmail. Suddenly I needed to worry that all of my Youtube comments would become published under my Real Name? And notifications for Google+ were showing up on my Chrome home screen? And it's pre-installed on my phone? Google+ was pretty great. It had some really wonderful special interest communities, and it was really easy to separate my family identity from my tinkerer identity from my friends stuff. The whole circles and squares thing was a wonderful, front and center, privacy-focused metaphor, like some product people actually listened to what actual online community Ph.Ds were saying. But the execs made everything worse repeatedly in an attempt to drive success metrics up.
- Groxx 4y ago
  Yeah. I liked most of G+, I like the current state of unified login, but oh boy. Those early unified login things were horrifyingly poorly done. Buggy, unfitting of how people used their systems, it was a disaster and I think it's a big part of why G+ failed.
paxys 4y ago
This is the #1 biggest mistake large companies make when trying to force their way into a new product area. "We already have a huge user base, we'll just automatically sign them up for <new thing> and get it off to a running start". No, these users will hate you for it and in fact ruin the experience for the select few who are actually interested. Meanwhile executives will tout the rosy user growth metrics, declare the launch a success and collect their bonuses. There is no substitute for old-fashioned organic growth. Start small. Focus on early power users and listen to their feedback. Have something unique that sets you apart from the competition and attracts more users. This is how Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and the like were able to establish themselves in Facebook's presence while Google+ failed.
- raverbashing 4y ago
  Not to mention that G+ had ideas that worked on paper about how users like to manage their connections, but didn't work in real life Adding a new notification about everytime someone follows you is just asking for people to avoid the product
  - refulgentis 4y ago
    Is that different from Twitter, or appreciably different from Facebook?
    - raverbashing 4y ago
      Yes, their notifications were more "in your face" and for some reason you'd get a bunch of random people adding you to their "circle" Poor UX management
- zmmmmm 4y ago
  It's surprising they didn't learn from Gmail. For a while I was the most popular person in my circle of business colleagues because I had gmail invites. Artificial scarcity goes a lot further than forcing something on everyone in the end.
primax 4y ago
I remember the UI having made about as much sense as v1 of the Azure UI. I wouldn't have called it better than Facebook of the time in any way. Well, it was more colorful I suppose.
carom 4y ago
It is funny because today I got an email that my work account was given a YouTube handle and it had my full name in the profile there. Same company practices 10 years on.
- olyjohn 4y ago
  I still have two fuckin' YouTube accounts for some reason, too. Some devices log me into one, and some log me into the other one. It's almost as bad as Microsoft accounts.
paganel 4y ago
One of the main problems of Google+ was that it hadn't the cool people on it, it was always too dork-looking.
passion__desire 4y ago
Yeah they should play it safe and steady just like youtube shorts rollout. No need to panic. Ecosystem advantage is still with Google.
hot_gril 4y ago
No, G+ was like the turned an ACL system into a social network. I even heard of someone using G+ circles for access control internally! And the G+ rollout redid how end user login works. It wasn't just the execution, the basic idea was bad. The few people this overly complicated thing would appeal to are probably not the kind to use social media either.

milsorgen 4y ago

I found G+ quite compelling. It was pleasant to use and I'm sure could of grown into a platform of its own. A place for features that made sense in their time and place and some kind of integration in some products. It seems YouTube is gaining some social features, for instance posts to followers and live chat. I think these would of been interesting areas to utilize g+. But then again I'm outside looking in, I can't speak to the costs they might of incurred letting things unfold at a more measured pace.

jimbob45 4y ago

It wasn’t meaningfully better than FB (at the time) and there was no reason to switch.

browningstreet 4y ago
Scoble loved it /s
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  His former boss lit that dumpster fire. https://scobleizer.blog/2006/06/28/wow-vic-gundotra-leaves-microsoft/ https://scobleizer.blog/2006/06/28/wow-vic-gundotra-leaves-m... https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/24/vic-gundotra-the-father-of-google-is-leaving-google-after-8-years/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/24/vic-gundotra-the-father-of...
hyperhopper 4y ago
100% was. I mean look at the modern usage of Instagram. You have your Instagram, then your close friends list on Instagram. Then your finsta. And the close friends list on your finsta. All of these are just g+ circles.
- llampx 4y ago
  Facebook had lists (don't quote me on the name) which was very similar to Circles, without needing to be on the sahara desert of content which was Google+. The advantage of FB was also that you saw content, whereas on Google+ everyone would have it locked up and you couldn't see it, great for the less popular types.
- j45 4y ago
  This comment reminds me of Google wave too. Parts of it made sense, maybe a bit too early, not enough people using it.
- erik_seaberg 4y ago
  I thought extra Instagram accounts are used as pseudonyms, which G+ was never willing to accommodate.
- hot_gril 4y ago
  Instagram only implemented "close friends" after years of a solid user base to research the usefulness of that feature. It's not that they couldn't think of it; ideas are cheap. A lot of it has to do with the stories feature, an innovation stolen from Snapchat that G+ predates. And G+ Circles was way more complicated. Circles feature was also marketed the wrong way. The G+ ad showed a lady bad-mouthing her boss in a circle that doesn't include him. Who's gonna put that much faith in the separation? The entire point of a finsta is that it's not a supported feature, so you can believe that it's totally separate and also has a different name. You'd use the finsta to bad-mouth your boss, if you're a weirdo who friends their boss in the first place.
Semaphor 4y ago
It was faster, had more features, and many of those were about your control. It was meaningfully better than FB in pretty much everything but active user numbers.
- AbrahamParangi 4y ago
  It was worse in the only way which mattered which was the content.
- lukeschlather 4y ago
  The biggest problem with G+ was they replaced GChat, and Hangouts was emphatically slower than GChat. Maybe the G+ product itself was fast - the only part of the product I actually used was a huge downgrade from what they had before. I actually stopped using GChat for years as a result, just because it was so slow. Also I think Messenger may have been faster than Hangouts. It was not faster than GChat, but it didn't matter because Google killed it and that definitely drove me to use Messenger more.
- hot_gril 4y ago
  Content aside, it was way more cumbersome to use than Facebook. My friends and I tried it cause one guy was a huge Google fanboy, and even he said "this sucks, man."

emodendroket 4y ago

But the thing is, with a social networking site -- like a number of other products -- being objectively superior doesn't count for much if your friends are on the other one.

rst 4y ago
There is a way around this -- find an initial target audience (team gamers for Discord, students of particular colleges for Facebook), start out as a specialty site for those to get a nucleus of active users, and then start building out. But the kind of outreach and engagement (and, honestly marketing savvy) required to make this strategy actually work don't seem to be "Googley". (It also helps to find target communities not well-served by incumbents -- like, perhaps, the multiple communities who interacted poorly with Facebook's "real names" policy. But instead, Google leadership insisted on copying that policy, and in a particularly heavy-handed way, to the point that Google employees couldn't register accounts with nicknames that they were actually known by to colleagues and family alike; see e.g. https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/why-googles-real-name-policy-is-so-flawed-2-3586289.html https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/why-googles-rea... )
- emodendroket 4y ago
  Well there I think part of the problem is that for the world's Googles running a boutique social networking site for auto mechanics or whatever makes less sense -- they'll want to have mass appeal from the jump.

CobrastanJorji 4y ago

It was! But forcing it on us made me hate not just Google+ but also YouTube and Chrome and Gmail. Suddenly I needed to worry that all of my Youtube comments would become published under my Real Name? And notifications for Google+ were showing up on my Chrome home screen? And it's pre-installed on my phone? Google+ was pretty great. It had some really wonderful special interest communities, and it was really easy to separate my family identity from my tinkerer identity from my friends stuff. The whole circles and squares thing was a wonderful, front and center, privacy-focused metaphor, like some product people actually listened to what actual online community Ph.Ds were saying. But the execs made everything worse repeatedly in an attempt to drive success metrics up.

Groxx 4y ago
Yeah. I liked most of G+, I like the current state of unified login, but oh boy. Those early unified login things were horrifyingly poorly done. Buggy, unfitting of how people used their systems, it was a disaster and I think it's a big part of why G+ failed.

paxys 4y ago

This is the #1 biggest mistake large companies make when trying to force their way into a new product area. "We already have a huge user base, we'll just automatically sign them up for <new thing> and get it off to a running start". No, these users will hate you for it and in fact ruin the experience for the select few who are actually interested. Meanwhile executives will tout the rosy user growth metrics, declare the launch a success and collect their bonuses. There is no substitute for old-fashioned organic growth. Start small. Focus on early power users and listen to their feedback. Have something unique that sets you apart from the competition and attracts more users. This is how Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and the like were able to establish themselves in Facebook's presence while Google+ failed.

raverbashing 4y ago
Not to mention that G+ had ideas that worked on paper about how users like to manage their connections, but didn't work in real life Adding a new notification about everytime someone follows you is just asking for people to avoid the product
- refulgentis 4y ago
  Is that different from Twitter, or appreciably different from Facebook?
  - raverbashing 4y ago
    Yes, their notifications were more "in your face" and for some reason you'd get a bunch of random people adding you to their "circle" Poor UX management
zmmmmm 4y ago
It's surprising they didn't learn from Gmail. For a while I was the most popular person in my circle of business colleagues because I had gmail invites. Artificial scarcity goes a lot further than forcing something on everyone in the end.

primax 4y ago

I remember the UI having made about as much sense as v1 of the Azure UI. I wouldn't have called it better than Facebook of the time in any way. Well, it was more colorful I suppose.

carom 4y ago

It is funny because today I got an email that my work account was given a YouTube handle and it had my full name in the profile there. Same company practices 10 years on.

olyjohn 4y ago
I still have two fuckin' YouTube accounts for some reason, too. Some devices log me into one, and some log me into the other one. It's almost as bad as Microsoft accounts.

paganel 4y ago

One of the main problems of Google+ was that it hadn't the cool people on it, it was always too dork-looking.

passion__desire 4y ago

Yeah they should play it safe and steady just like youtube shorts rollout. No need to panic. Ecosystem advantage is still with Google.

hot_gril 4y ago

No, G+ was like the turned an ACL system into a social network. I even heard of someone using G+ circles for access control internally! And the G+ rollout redid how end user login works. It wasn't just the execution, the basic idea was bad. The few people this overly complicated thing would appeal to are probably not the kind to use social media either.