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Google+ could still win by exploiting a simple heuristic: Don't be Facebook. Allow for privacy, allow for handles, integrate seamlessly with platforms that have

by subdane 12y ago

Google+ could still win by exploiting a simple heuristic: Don't be Facebook. Allow for privacy, allow for handles, integrate seamlessly with platforms that have traction already (including Facebook). Remember how Instagram let you take a photo and publish it to multiple services (Twitter, Flickr etc)? It was a free, useful tool that made your life easier and made you look great. It had a feed and following on top, but it wasn't clear in the beginning it would even be a social network on its own.

wwweston 12y ago
> Google+ could still win by exploiting a simple heuristic: Don't be Facebook. Allow for privacy, allow for handles I suppose the question is that they'd win, and whether or not it's worth as much to them to allow for privacy and handles.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - eitland 12y ago
    As of today it is brilliant and shows no sign of changing for the worse. You always knows who you share with, and they don't mess with permissions after the fact. Also there are clear notifications if something will be shared because of actions you take. E.g: you tag someone in a picture and it makes sure you are aware that this will share the photo or album with the person in question.
pinaceae 12y ago
problem is that privacy/anonymity runs counter to the core Google business with is advertising and collecting personal data. so for Google, they would need to find out what could be a defining feature that would move people off FB. whatsapp's killer was signing up via telephone number, from a smartphone. for business people there's LinkedIn, for coders GitHub, for teens there are SnapChat/etc. - Google would need to find an underserved target demographic and build something, anything unique. so far they have failed.
- eitland 12y ago
  We are a bunch of people using it. Me for example I'm following tech profiles in kde, Linux as well as photographers, chili growers, ham radio enthusiasts and a few friends and colleagues.
- danudey 12y ago
  problem is that privacy/anonymity runs counter to the core Google business with is advertising and collecting personal data. Well, that's the thing: you don't have to be anonymous to Google. Just let people create a few separate 'profiles' that they can post with (like Reddit's throwaway accounts, but integrated). In the end, this would be even better for Google; Facebook can build a profile of who you portray yourself as, but they can't get any behavioural data from other aspects of yourself that you might want to keep off Facebook to avoid attaching them to your real name. If you want an example, check out FetLife; a giant fetish/kink version of Facebook. People post updates, photos, events, etc. there that you almost definitely wouldn't post to Facebook, because you don't want your real name attached to that (because sometimes people are careless and might give away aspects of your life that you don't want revealed). Imagine if Google could make use of that information, those friends lists, those interactions, those posts and comments and connections. They would have a huge data harvesting advantage over Facebook, because they could see aspects of your life that no one else could see, as well as aspects of your life that you're open and public with. The same goes for celebrities. They could have their 'celebrity' account (i.e. their 'real' account), but also create separate personas that they could use to read, post, comment, etc. As it is, if +Vin Diesel used Google+ like a regular person, he'd get flooded with comments; as another example, Jewel Staite, who is not even super-famous, posts pretty much any tweet and gets hundreds of retweets and favourites, and dozens of worthless replies. People like that can't use social media the way everyone else does; a secondary profile feature tied to your primary account only via Google's anonymized data collection processes, would let people like that use social media normally, be marketed to, interact, and get value that they just can't get right now. There's probably lots of other examples, but those are the two extremes that came to mind.
  - username223 12y ago
    > Imagine if Google could make use of that information, those friends lists, those interactions, those posts and comments and connections. Um... that's the part I don't want, the part that makes Google even creepier than Facebook. I want to maintain separate online identities for separate activities, not let one big company follow me everywhere, but pretend to give me separate identities that only it can correlate. I prefer my current solution, where one barely-trusted corp gets me email, another my "social", others my chit-chat in various communities.
eitland 12y ago
>Don't be Facebook. Allow for privacy, allow for handles This is how it works actually. Even I can have one or more extra handles, not traceable back to my main account.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  Google still knows who you are. Reddit says "just sign up with an account, we don't care". Or as I said way back when about the nymwars: "FPN: Google finds technical solution to psuedonymity Citing unreliable sources, Forbidden Planet News reports that Google have found a technical solution to the pseudonymous user puzzle that's stumped its boffins for months: Users: This is the name I wish to be known by. Google: We're down with that.
cookiecaper 12y ago
People actually really like Facebook, so I don't think "don't be Facebook" is a good business strategy. Google tried to exploit Facebook's privacy weaknesses with Circles and just made it more difficult for people to post to their networks, and Facebook had the functionality copied within a couple of weeks anyway (and no one uses it there either).
wyclif 12y ago
Google+ does allow for handles. I see them constantly.

by subdane 12y ago

wwweston 12y ago

> Google+ could still win by exploiting a simple heuristic: Don't be Facebook. Allow for privacy, allow for handles I suppose the question is that they'd win, and whether or not it's worth as much to them to allow for privacy and handles.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- eitland 12y ago
  As of today it is brilliant and shows no sign of changing for the worse. You always knows who you share with, and they don't mess with permissions after the fact. Also there are clear notifications if something will be shared because of actions you take. E.g: you tag someone in a picture and it makes sure you are aware that this will share the photo or album with the person in question.

pinaceae 12y ago

problem is that privacy/anonymity runs counter to the core Google business with is advertising and collecting personal data. so for Google, they would need to find out what could be a defining feature that would move people off FB. whatsapp's killer was signing up via telephone number, from a smartphone. for business people there's LinkedIn, for coders GitHub, for teens there are SnapChat/etc. - Google would need to find an underserved target demographic and build something, anything unique. so far they have failed.

eitland 12y ago
We are a bunch of people using it. Me for example I'm following tech profiles in kde, Linux as well as photographers, chili growers, ham radio enthusiasts and a few friends and colleagues.
danudey 12y ago
problem is that privacy/anonymity runs counter to the core Google business with is advertising and collecting personal data. Well, that's the thing: you don't have to be anonymous to Google. Just let people create a few separate 'profiles' that they can post with (like Reddit's throwaway accounts, but integrated). In the end, this would be even better for Google; Facebook can build a profile of who you portray yourself as, but they can't get any behavioural data from other aspects of yourself that you might want to keep off Facebook to avoid attaching them to your real name. If you want an example, check out FetLife; a giant fetish/kink version of Facebook. People post updates, photos, events, etc. there that you almost definitely wouldn't post to Facebook, because you don't want your real name attached to that (because sometimes people are careless and might give away aspects of your life that you don't want revealed). Imagine if Google could make use of that information, those friends lists, those interactions, those posts and comments and connections. They would have a huge data harvesting advantage over Facebook, because they could see aspects of your life that no one else could see, as well as aspects of your life that you're open and public with. The same goes for celebrities. They could have their 'celebrity' account (i.e. their 'real' account), but also create separate personas that they could use to read, post, comment, etc. As it is, if +Vin Diesel used Google+ like a regular person, he'd get flooded with comments; as another example, Jewel Staite, who is not even super-famous, posts pretty much any tweet and gets hundreds of retweets and favourites, and dozens of worthless replies. People like that can't use social media the way everyone else does; a secondary profile feature tied to your primary account only via Google's anonymized data collection processes, would let people like that use social media normally, be marketed to, interact, and get value that they just can't get right now. There's probably lots of other examples, but those are the two extremes that came to mind.
- username223 12y ago
  > Imagine if Google could make use of that information, those friends lists, those interactions, those posts and comments and connections. Um... that's the part I don't want, the part that makes Google even creepier than Facebook. I want to maintain separate online identities for separate activities, not let one big company follow me everywhere, but pretend to give me separate identities that only it can correlate. I prefer my current solution, where one barely-trusted corp gets me email, another my "social", others my chit-chat in various communities.

eitland 12y ago

>Don't be Facebook. Allow for privacy, allow for handles This is how it works actually. Even I can have one or more extra handles, not traceable back to my main account.

dredmorbius 12y ago
Google still knows who you are. Reddit says "just sign up with an account, we don't care". Or as I said way back when about the nymwars: "FPN: Google finds technical solution to psuedonymity Citing unreliable sources, Forbidden Planet News reports that Google have found a technical solution to the pseudonymous user puzzle that's stumped its boffins for months: Users: This is the name I wish to be known by. Google: We're down with that.

cookiecaper 12y ago

People actually really like Facebook, so I don't think "don't be Facebook" is a good business strategy. Google tried to exploit Facebook's privacy weaknesses with Circles and just made it more difficult for people to post to their networks, and Facebook had the functionality copied within a couple of weeks anyway (and no one uses it there either).

wyclif 12y ago

Google+ does allow for handles. I see them constantly.