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Google has made G+ intentionally unattractive to most people, and has encouraged the 40-50-ish white male technology self-promoters to be the focus of the netwo

Google has made G+ intentionally unattractive to most people, and has encouraged the 40-50-ish white male technology self-promoters to be the focus of the network. They could have made other choices. This isn't our problem and can't be fixed by us. Games, as currently implemented on social networks, are a terrible and useless waste of human time. (Imagine a true social networking game. We haven't seen it yet, but it's out there somewhere. But trying to figure out how to make people come back to your app every two hours to "harvest crops" is dumb.)

Angostura 14y ago
>Google has made G+ intentionally unattractive to most people, and has encouraged the 40-50-ish white male technology self-promoters to be the focus of the network. Could you explain your reasoning? I'm not sure why you believe this to be the case. Introducing games was just one sign that they wanted to attract a wider demographic.
- loudmax 14y ago
  Google limited the appeal of G+ early on when they started enforcing their real name policy. Throwing out users when you're trying to expand the user base turned out to be counterproductive. But the policy seems more misguided than intentionally unattractive.
  - nl 14y ago
    And we see the same problem again. The number of people who care about the real-name policy is so vanishingly small that it just doesn't matter. It's the 37 Signals cat.jpg[1] issue problem. Look at Facebook. Everyone[2] uses their real names, and it seems to have done ok. [1] Apparently some people thought it was outrageous that 37 Signals posted that the 100 billionth (or whatever) file uploaded was called cat.jpg. [2] I expect some pedantic comments here about how their friend's boyfriend uses a fake name to avoid an ex-gf. If you think that is important then may I suggest you are missing the point.
    - Kylekramer 14y ago
      It is funny, cause the no pseudonym policy was brought up as the reason why Google+ is an older male technologist wasteland, and vast majority of the vanishingly small number of people who care about the no pseudonym policy are older male technologists.
      - nl 14y ago
        Very nicely put.
  - Angostura 14y ago
    Absolutely. Facebook's success with a wider demographic is clearly due the fact that allows pseudonyms. Wat?

Angostura 14y ago

>Google has made G+ intentionally unattractive to most people, and has encouraged the 40-50-ish white male technology self-promoters to be the focus of the network. Could you explain your reasoning? I'm not sure why you believe this to be the case. Introducing games was just one sign that they wanted to attract a wider demographic.

loudmax 14y ago
Google limited the appeal of G+ early on when they started enforcing their real name policy. Throwing out users when you're trying to expand the user base turned out to be counterproductive. But the policy seems more misguided than intentionally unattractive.
- nl 14y ago
  And we see the same problem again. The number of people who care about the real-name policy is so vanishingly small that it just doesn't matter. It's the 37 Signals cat.jpg[1] issue problem. Look at Facebook. Everyone[2] uses their real names, and it seems to have done ok. [1] Apparently some people thought it was outrageous that 37 Signals posted that the 100 billionth (or whatever) file uploaded was called cat.jpg. [2] I expect some pedantic comments here about how their friend's boyfriend uses a fake name to avoid an ex-gf. If you think that is important then may I suggest you are missing the point.
  - Kylekramer 14y ago
    It is funny, cause the no pseudonym policy was brought up as the reason why Google+ is an older male technologist wasteland, and vast majority of the vanishingly small number of people who care about the no pseudonym policy are older male technologists.
    - nl 14y ago
      Very nicely put.
- Angostura 14y ago
  Absolutely. Facebook's success with a wider demographic is clearly due the fact that allows pseudonyms. Wat?