7 ms·

Why Google+ Still Has Huge Potential

capo 14y ago
G+ has huge potential because it's Google's identity layer, the discrete social network thing is a byproduct.
- gurkendoktor 14y ago
  I don't understand the distinction, isn't Google's account system still the same as before? So G+ is the need to attach a real name?
  - X-X 14y ago
    Yes - it gives google your real identity.
  - capo 14y ago
    They've never had a proper picture profile integrated across all services, G+ solves that.
    - songgao 14y ago
      How about Google Profile before the G+? I actually find myself still using G+ in the same way I used Google Profile...
      - Evbn 14y ago
        G+ is the overall system that links your Google profile to all your Google services. It's Google Plus, and it does what the name says, it adds a new layer on top of all of Google.
michaelpinto 14y ago
When Google+ came out I was blown away by just how well designed it was, but then slowly Google ruined it. Andy Hertzfeld created an amazing product, but then Google worked their "magic" just like they did with Blogger and watered down every strong feature like circles. The problem at the end of the day is that Google just doesn't understand "normal people". If you read up on their corporate culture they're filled with former gifted Montessori kids who make amazing engineers, but the dark side is that they may have a low social IQ. In fact Google goes out of its way to not have to interface with people: Have a problem with a Google product? Well good luck if you want to talk to a human. So yes Google+ has amazing potential; but not with the Google management team. I'm sure over time if they're lucky they can turn it into Pepsi to Facebook's Coke -- but that's only if they figure out how to focus. And if you want to see their latest failure just try using their mobile app: When put next to Facebook it's terrible, and when put next to Instagram (now owned by facebook) it looks like student project. And I say this as someone who loves and uses G+ every day!!!
- mdwrigh2 14y ago
  > When Google+ came out I was blown away by just how well designed it was, but then slowly Google ruined it. Andy Hertzfeld created an amazing product, but then Google worked their "magic" just like they did with Blogger and watered down every strong feature like circles. How have they ruined circles? They work the same as they did on day one as far as I can tell. > In fact Google goes out of its way to not have to interface with people: Have a problem with a Google product? Well good luck if you want to talk to a human. Let's not confuse two separate issues. Social IQ has no relevance to their customer support. Their customer support is non-existant for free products because doing support at their scale is nearly impossible. And while I'm not familiar with their support for paid products overall, I've had a decent experience dealing with Play support when I purchased my Nexus 7. Anyways, point being that the engineers were never going to be customer support in the first place. > And if you want to see their latest failure just try using their mobile app: When put next to Facebook it's terrible, and when put next to Instagram (now owned by facebook) it looks like student project. First off: which platform? Because on Android, G+ far outstrips Facebook's generally terrible mobile app. I've also seen some pretty positive reviews of the iOS app, but I have no direct experience with it.
darklajid 14y ago
Don't hit me. I visit G+ if - some post here links to it (seriously, I have more or less no other source that points to that stuff, and_very_ rarely a search hit leads that way) - I check, in vain usually, on the progress of a CM port for my LG crapphone, because the amazing guy behind most LG ports uses that site. I have a bookmark for his.. uhm.. posts? timeline? feed? People in my non technical and environment don't know what G+ is. People in my geek community left it because it's worse than Facebook in trying to build 'identities'. I'm always surprised to see real world usage and will continue to be a skeptical observer. That huge potential might certainly exist, but I fail to see it.
- adgar2 14y ago
  Do you use Google+ at an enterprise? If not, you seem to have missed the point of this article.
  - lmm 14y ago
    I don't, but nor do I use GMail or Hangouts at an enterprise (and this is a place that uses Yammer extensively). I would be surprised if many of the kind of enterprises the author is thinking of did, so I don't think the potential the author sees is really there.
- swah 14y ago
  I also follow Ricardo Cerqueira... and Jeff Dean, Brad Fitzpatrick and Linus Torvalds. It's like a small private space.
  - darklajid 14y ago
    I sometimes do. But I don't have an account or need one for that.
smegel 14y ago
I think people are slowly waking up to the idiocy of having an online "identity" that matches their real world one. If anything there will be a trend away from these spy networks as more people switch on to their purpose.
- madprops 14y ago
  There's a place for that kind of online network. There's also a place for random usernames like radnation. There are a lot of games to play.
pcwalton 14y ago
Yammer definitely does have traction. It may well be that the author didn't use Yammer at the two companies he worked at, but Microsoft wouldn't have paid a billion dollars for a company without traction.
- codeka 14y ago
  They just wrote down $6.2 billion on their aQuantive purchase, so I wouldn't be too quick to say that...
- rossjudson 14y ago
  Unless a company schedules and recognizes time and content that an employee puts into something like Yammer, it's useless. It's yet another informal communication method that won't be used.
nc17 14y ago
I don't understand how this article talks about the future of Google+ in the enterprise, yet it makes no mention of LinkedIn.
- matthewlmcclure 14y ago
  Maybe I'll write another post about how LinkedIn is going to crush Twitter.
- X-X 14y ago
  That's because LinkedIn is not used by employees within companies to communicate like Facebook is used by students within a university to communicate. He's saying that there's a gap there that Google+ can fill.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Because linkedin is spamming itself into oblivion?
iomike 14y ago
You can keep beating that dead horse, but I ain't gonna ride it. I was on G+ ver early, it's just not what I wanna use.
moocow01 14y ago
"At first, it’s just a place to put notes to myself, but I share them so that others can find them too. Once a few people start doing that, or a small team commits to doing it for the good of the team, the game is over. It can’t help but take off" And when one of your team members leaves and pulls your access to their company related content/documentation they've previously placed on Google+ what do you do ???
- Evbn 14y ago
  It is a company controlled G+ domain. More interesting is how Google privacy policies and company data retention policies interact when someone leaves a company.
davitr 14y ago
I think Google+ and Facebook complement each other in some sense. Facebook is social network which is mostly used communicate with "friends" and Google+ to communicate with like-minded people.
- drhowarddrfine 14y ago
  That's what circles are for in G+.
- modarts 14y ago
  Wouldn't it be fair to assume that there's a great deal of overlap between the two groups?
  - davitr 14y ago
    Sure, there is big overlap, because we all need both type of interaction.
hk_kh 14y ago
G+ is ok for google even if it is not popular. It has managed to get 400m users, linked to gmail accounts, which, at the same point will be linked to analytics. Even a really basic filling out of the profile (name, location, age) is better than guessing for them.
drhowarddrfine 14y ago
I absolutely love G+. I don't use Facebook and never have. The hardest thing I found about using G+ is getting anyone else to use it. It has many more features, is more flexible, and integrates with everything I do (and integrates with everything the people I want to use it does). EDIT: And this paragraph says exactly explains how I feel: "Which brings me back to Google+. As a standalone social network — business or personal — I don’t have much use for it, but when it’s sitting there next to Gmail and Hangouts, I just can’t help using it as a company-private blog. At first, it’s just a place to put notes to myself, but I share them so that others can find them too. Once a few people start doing that, or a small team commits to doing it for the good of the team, the game is over. It can’t help but take off."
exabrial 14y ago
Ok, their mobile app was once a beautiful thing. Then some retard designers got ahold of it. - Now, there is hardly a text summary on posts. Just big ass pictures with hardly any content. - There's a delay when fetching new content. - They added really shitty scrolling animations that are just annoying. You can install the older v2.5 of the app and bypass the crappy UI/UX, but you lose the newer features of G+. Sad tradeoff!

capo 14y ago

G+ has huge potential because it's Google's identity layer, the discrete social network thing is a byproduct.

gurkendoktor 14y ago
I don't understand the distinction, isn't Google's account system still the same as before? So G+ is the need to attach a real name?
- X-X 14y ago
  Yes - it gives google your real identity.
- capo 14y ago
  They've never had a proper picture profile integrated across all services, G+ solves that.
  - songgao 14y ago
    How about Google Profile before the G+? I actually find myself still using G+ in the same way I used Google Profile...
    - Evbn 14y ago
      G+ is the overall system that links your Google profile to all your Google services. It's Google Plus, and it does what the name says, it adds a new layer on top of all of Google.

When Google+ came out I was blown away by just how well designed it was, but then slowly Google ruined it. Andy Hertzfeld created an amazing product, but then Google worked their "magic" just like they did with Blogger and watered down every strong feature like circles. The problem at the end of the day is that Google just doesn't understand "normal people". If you read up on their corporate culture they're filled with former gifted Montessori kids who make amazing engineers, but the dark side is that they may have a low social IQ. In fact Google goes out of its way to not have to interface with people: Have a problem with a Google product? Well good luck if you want to talk to a human. So yes Google+ has amazing potential; but not with the Google management team. I'm sure over time if they're lucky they can turn it into Pepsi to Facebook's Coke -- but that's only if they figure out how to focus. And if you want to see their latest failure just try using their mobile app: When put next to Facebook it's terrible, and when put next to Instagram (now owned by facebook) it looks like student project. And I say this as someone who loves and uses G+ every day!!!

mdwrigh2 14y ago
> When Google+ came out I was blown away by just how well designed it was, but then slowly Google ruined it. Andy Hertzfeld created an amazing product, but then Google worked their "magic" just like they did with Blogger and watered down every strong feature like circles. How have they ruined circles? They work the same as they did on day one as far as I can tell. > In fact Google goes out of its way to not have to interface with people: Have a problem with a Google product? Well good luck if you want to talk to a human. Let's not confuse two separate issues. Social IQ has no relevance to their customer support. Their customer support is non-existant for free products because doing support at their scale is nearly impossible. And while I'm not familiar with their support for paid products overall, I've had a decent experience dealing with Play support when I purchased my Nexus 7. Anyways, point being that the engineers were never going to be customer support in the first place. > And if you want to see their latest failure just try using their mobile app: When put next to Facebook it's terrible, and when put next to Instagram (now owned by facebook) it looks like student project. First off: which platform? Because on Android, G+ far outstrips Facebook's generally terrible mobile app. I've also seen some pretty positive reviews of the iOS app, but I have no direct experience with it.

darklajid 14y ago

Don't hit me. I visit G+ if - some post here links to it (seriously, I have more or less no other source that points to that stuff, and_very_ rarely a search hit leads that way) - I check, in vain usually, on the progress of a CM port for my LG crapphone, because the amazing guy behind most LG ports uses that site. I have a bookmark for his.. uhm.. posts? timeline? feed? People in my non technical and environment don't know what G+ is. People in my geek community left it because it's worse than Facebook in trying to build 'identities'. I'm always surprised to see real world usage and will continue to be a skeptical observer. That huge potential might certainly exist, but I fail to see it.

adgar2 14y ago
Do you use Google+ at an enterprise? If not, you seem to have missed the point of this article.
- lmm 14y ago
  I don't, but nor do I use GMail or Hangouts at an enterprise (and this is a place that uses Yammer extensively). I would be surprised if many of the kind of enterprises the author is thinking of did, so I don't think the potential the author sees is really there.
swah 14y ago
I also follow Ricardo Cerqueira... and Jeff Dean, Brad Fitzpatrick and Linus Torvalds. It's like a small private space.
- darklajid 14y ago
  I sometimes do. But I don't have an account or need one for that.

smegel 14y ago

I think people are slowly waking up to the idiocy of having an online "identity" that matches their real world one. If anything there will be a trend away from these spy networks as more people switch on to their purpose.

madprops 14y ago
There's a place for that kind of online network. There's also a place for random usernames like radnation. There are a lot of games to play.

pcwalton 14y ago

Yammer definitely does have traction. It may well be that the author didn't use Yammer at the two companies he worked at, but Microsoft wouldn't have paid a billion dollars for a company without traction.

codeka 14y ago
They just wrote down $6.2 billion on their aQuantive purchase, so I wouldn't be too quick to say that...
rossjudson 14y ago
Unless a company schedules and recognizes time and content that an employee puts into something like Yammer, it's useless. It's yet another informal communication method that won't be used.

nc17 14y ago

I don't understand how this article talks about the future of Google+ in the enterprise, yet it makes no mention of LinkedIn.

matthewlmcclure 14y ago
Maybe I'll write another post about how LinkedIn is going to crush Twitter.
X-X 14y ago
That's because LinkedIn is not used by employees within companies to communicate like Facebook is used by students within a university to communicate. He's saying that there's a gap there that Google+ can fill.
Evbn 14y ago
Because linkedin is spamming itself into oblivion?

iomike 14y ago

You can keep beating that dead horse, but I ain't gonna ride it. I was on G+ ver early, it's just not what I wanna use.

moocow01 14y ago

"At first, it’s just a place to put notes to myself, but I share them so that others can find them too. Once a few people start doing that, or a small team commits to doing it for the good of the team, the game is over. It can’t help but take off" And when one of your team members leaves and pulls your access to their company related content/documentation they've previously placed on Google+ what do you do ???

Evbn 14y ago
It is a company controlled G+ domain. More interesting is how Google privacy policies and company data retention policies interact when someone leaves a company.

davitr 14y ago

I think Google+ and Facebook complement each other in some sense. Facebook is social network which is mostly used communicate with "friends" and Google+ to communicate with like-minded people.

drhowarddrfine 14y ago
That's what circles are for in G+.
modarts 14y ago
Wouldn't it be fair to assume that there's a great deal of overlap between the two groups?
- davitr 14y ago
  Sure, there is big overlap, because we all need both type of interaction.

hk_kh 14y ago

G+ is ok for google even if it is not popular. It has managed to get 400m users, linked to gmail accounts, which, at the same point will be linked to analytics. Even a really basic filling out of the profile (name, location, age) is better than guessing for them.

drhowarddrfine 14y ago

I absolutely love G+. I don't use Facebook and never have. The hardest thing I found about using G+ is getting anyone else to use it. It has many more features, is more flexible, and integrates with everything I do (and integrates with everything the people I want to use it does). EDIT: And this paragraph says exactly explains how I feel: "Which brings me back to Google+. As a standalone social network — business or personal — I don’t have much use for it, but when it’s sitting there next to Gmail and Hangouts, I just can’t help using it as a company-private blog. At first, it’s just a place to put notes to myself, but I share them so that others can find them too. Once a few people start doing that, or a small team commits to doing it for the good of the team, the game is over. It can’t help but take off."

exabrial 14y ago

Ok, their mobile app was once a beautiful thing. Then some retard designers got ahold of it. - Now, there is hardly a text summary on posts. Just big ass pictures with hardly any content. - There's a delay when fetching new content. - They added really shitty scrolling animations that are just annoying. You can install the older v2.5 of the app and bypass the crappy UI/UX, but you lose the newer features of G+. Sad tradeoff!