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Strike One: When G+ opened up to the world, they decided to take an "invite" approach. While this might have been cool for the first few days, there were too f

Strike One: When G+ opened up to the world, they decided to take an "invite" approach. While this might have been cool for the first few days, there were too few invites and this nonsense just lasted far too long. Not really the "networking" roll out. Strike Two: Combine the "Real Names Policy" and forcefeed G+ to youtuber's who want to comment. No body saw the obvious problem with that? Some may not want a LOL on a Cat video be one search away from their real name. Plus (!) it was rolled out badly - some people began to get locked out of Gmail over this. Strike Three: Why is the UI so complicated to integrate Hangouts? Who does UI design? I still get Hangout Notifications from two previous companies.

iMiiTH 12y ago
It was pretty much all because of this. It took far too long to get an invitation, and you had to be 18 or older to use it. Facebook exploded first by being used by kids still in Elementary and High School. They initially cut out an absolutely major demographic, and people lost interest after a couple days.
- saurik 12y ago
  What is so silly is that they already had existing experience of the "invitation only" feature destroying a launch: Wave; I had a ton of friends at the time who were really excited about Wave, but they could almost never use it because there was at least one person they might want to involve in the discussion who didn't yet have access. It just seems like such a beginner-level misunderstanding of the value of networked products: even video games, which are classically purchased per user, have been moving in a direction where "if you own this game and your friends don't they will still be able to play it with you". I wish I understood the reason Google keeps doing this: it isn't like I really imagine that Google (of all companies) absolutely needs these invitation buffers to help them scale the system out (maybe for Wave, but not for G+), to the point where they have existential risk that the whole project will fail. (Am I simply misremembering how the G+ invite process worked, due to the way Wave worked? Were you guarantee access if you could get invited by a friend?)
- j2kun 12y ago
  I remember when facebook was not accessible to anyone without a university email address. So I think it was college students, not high school students, that blew it up.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  Facebook exploded first by being used by kids still in Elementary and High School. Last I checked, Havard University, Stanford University, and the Ivy League are neither elementary nor high school institutions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook#History
dredmorbius 12y ago
I think the limited rollout was actually a good thing. Remember: Facebook was developed in a world with existing and mature social networks. What gave FB a marked edge wasn't its openness but the fact that it was exclusive: Harvard, Ivies, selective edus, all edus, general world. For the first few years of its life, Facebook was the place that outiders viewed as more selective and attractive than any other option. This was a powerful growth hack. My own feeling was that Google had a solid initial nucleating community, mostly technical types but also some creatives (largely designers). Unfortunately, by opening the floodgates early, one of the larger adopter communities were SEO and marketing types -- not, shall we say, the most engaging party animals. The turn came early. I also feel that G+ really didn't start getting its feet under it until ~February/March 2013. Search had been incorporated, there was a growing wealth of content that could be found. I made several posts aimed largely at G+ staff about the value of search-driven and directed navigation rather than streams (I've deleted those along with most of my content). Unfortunately subsequent changes (the May, 2013 UI redesign) negated many positive effects. One telling post a month or so later from Circlescope showed a marked drop in engagement following that release. I continued to fight for it but watching increasingly passive-aggressive demands for my personal information (phone number, integrated YouTube account) were just pumping up the creep-out factor. Overall I do agree with you on UI/UX -- G+ is pretty awful in that regard.
rektide 12y ago
I disagree: none of these three or even the aggregate of these three historical mistakes is anywhere near enough to forever permanently condemn a product. I don't think Google gets 1 inning to win the game, or 10 inninings: they get as long as it takes them to build the thing worth using. These minor grievances could hardly be more narrowsighted and petty in that context. I do not believe in the 'make or break' theory you work against.

iMiiTH 12y ago

It was pretty much all because of this. It took far too long to get an invitation, and you had to be 18 or older to use it. Facebook exploded first by being used by kids still in Elementary and High School. They initially cut out an absolutely major demographic, and people lost interest after a couple days.

saurik 12y ago
What is so silly is that they already had existing experience of the "invitation only" feature destroying a launch: Wave; I had a ton of friends at the time who were really excited about Wave, but they could almost never use it because there was at least one person they might want to involve in the discussion who didn't yet have access. It just seems like such a beginner-level misunderstanding of the value of networked products: even video games, which are classically purchased per user, have been moving in a direction where "if you own this game and your friends don't they will still be able to play it with you". I wish I understood the reason Google keeps doing this: it isn't like I really imagine that Google (of all companies) absolutely needs these invitation buffers to help them scale the system out (maybe for Wave, but not for G+), to the point where they have existential risk that the whole project will fail. (Am I simply misremembering how the G+ invite process worked, due to the way Wave worked? Were you guarantee access if you could get invited by a friend?)
j2kun 12y ago
I remember when facebook was not accessible to anyone without a university email address. So I think it was college students, not high school students, that blew it up.
dredmorbius 12y ago
Facebook exploded first by being used by kids still in Elementary and High School. Last I checked, Havard University, Stanford University, and the Ivy League are neither elementary nor high school institutions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook#History

dredmorbius 12y ago

I think the limited rollout was actually a good thing. Remember: Facebook was developed in a world with existing and mature social networks. What gave FB a marked edge wasn't its openness but the fact that it was exclusive: Harvard, Ivies, selective edus, all edus, general world. For the first few years of its life, Facebook was the place that outiders viewed as more selective and attractive than any other option. This was a powerful growth hack. My own feeling was that Google had a solid initial nucleating community, mostly technical types but also some creatives (largely designers). Unfortunately, by opening the floodgates early, one of the larger adopter communities were SEO and marketing types -- not, shall we say, the most engaging party animals. The turn came early. I also feel that G+ really didn't start getting its feet under it until ~February/March 2013. Search had been incorporated, there was a growing wealth of content that could be found. I made several posts aimed largely at G+ staff about the value of search-driven and directed navigation rather than streams (I've deleted those along with most of my content). Unfortunately subsequent changes (the May, 2013 UI redesign) negated many positive effects. One telling post a month or so later from Circlescope showed a marked drop in engagement following that release. I continued to fight for it but watching increasingly passive-aggressive demands for my personal information (phone number, integrated YouTube account) were just pumping up the creep-out factor. Overall I do agree with you on UI/UX -- G+ is pretty awful in that regard.

rektide 12y ago

I disagree: none of these three or even the aggregate of these three historical mistakes is anywhere near enough to forever permanently condemn a product. I don't think Google gets 1 inning to win the game, or 10 inninings: they get as long as it takes them to build the thing worth using. These minor grievances could hardly be more narrowsighted and petty in that context. I do not believe in the 'make or break' theory you work against.