6 ms·

You do not want to be the service people just dump their stuff to. Google tried that with Buzz and in failed even more horribly than +. What you could do is be

You do not want to be the service people just dump their stuff to. Google tried that with Buzz and in failed even more horribly than +. What you could do is be the service people use to write to other services and then gradually lock them out. Unfortunately the fight you have to take on against the platform you are cannibalizing is really something a few fast moving guys, who fly under the radar and have nothing to show for anyway, can do for a few months, but nothing a Google scale corporation can do.

toyg 11y ago
Realistically though, nobody can now beat facebook at network effects, not big nor small. And that was already the case when G+ was launched. The best you can do is to allow people to try out your system with little investment, and then slowly persuade them to prefer it to the old system. Buzz failed for very different causes: it was a twitter clone that offered no additional functionality and even compromised your gmail privacy.
- tomjen3 11y ago
  Facebook has too much network effect - if you don't want to share your life with your parents you need to be on a platform they aren't. In my case I never friended my parents on FB, and keep G+ for family - which means I don't share things with the wrong group.
  - 9872 11y ago
    For normal people. sharing their lives with loved ones is a positive. Creating a social network for antisocial people makes no sense.
    - tdkl 11y ago
      You never share some things only with certain groups of people, because of relevance or intimacy ?
      - 9872 11y ago
        I don't think you understood the comment I was replying to, which advocated going to a totally different platform from the one your parents use in order to not share your life with them.
    - tomjen3 11y ago
      I wasn't very clear - I don't want to share the details of my drunk exploits with my parents, if something happens that is relevant to them and my friends I add it to both. Hardly takes a minute.
      - 9872 11y ago
        I can't tell if you're incredibly naive or if you just believe your parents are.
        hga 11y ago
        There's such a thing as not rubbing their noses in it....
kordless 11y ago
Then don't be a storage service and just run the API for them to shovel data from point A to point B. I'm speaking for others, but I'll still say that sometimes we don't want some of the data we post accessible to others. That seems an obvious statement, but I always use Twitter in a way that I find acceptable for sharing data with everyone. Facebook and Google+ are used in that way, but also ways where I selectively share things with people I trust to view the data I post. (To be clear, I don't use Facebook at all.) That's where things get complicated, because the service must enforce rules to keep these people from seeing those people's data. Those rules turn into 'features' and then you have a problem. A social sharing API doesn't need a ton of features, especially when it's designed to forward the data around to the people that need to see the data. By not storing it, you make things simpler and more resilient to attack.
- allendoerfer 11y ago
  An API-based system might be a good potential "killer". If I am not mistaken, that is what app.net is trying to be - have not heard from them in a while. To quote my other post [0] in this thread: Facebook cannot be killed with something so similar to Facebook like Google+, much like Google cannot be killed with something like Bing. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9991161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9991161
wahsd 11y ago
I get your point about "being the service people just dump their stuff to" but it is still a valid point. The problem with the network effect that Facebook has so thoroughly entrenched is that, in my opinion, you have to first replicate the network before luring users away with better features or, e.g., offering a more anonymous or secure or less invasive alternative to Facebook. It's somewhat similar to how a supply vessel docks to the ISS in orbit, you first have to match the speed in orbit before making an approach and then docking.
- allendoerfer 11y ago
  You can replicate the network with a reduced feature-set. Be something else entirely (e.g. Whatsapp, Instagram etc.), stay lean and grow. After that you can branch out or be bought by Facebook in fear of you branching out. I get your point, though. If I were Google I would have started the whole Google+ thing as a publishing platform for businesses and/or regular news publishers and bloggers, using some benefits within the search to lure them in. Facebook clearly pisses them of as they try to squeeze them. That way Google could have gotten some content first. Next push some commenting-system on top of it (as they did) but without the Feed-Posts appearing there and all the other crap. They already had Hangouts/Voice and Picasa, why did they even need to cripple all these services. They could instead have made Google+ a lightweight identity services as they promoted it.
dredmorbius 11y ago
One thing Google is in a strong position to do is to provide content filters: spam, abuse, clickbait, and the rest of it. They've the technical chops and semantic processing background. Combine that with some appropriate personalisation and metrics and they might have something.

toyg 11y ago

Realistically though, nobody can now beat facebook at network effects, not big nor small. And that was already the case when G+ was launched. The best you can do is to allow people to try out your system with little investment, and then slowly persuade them to prefer it to the old system. Buzz failed for very different causes: it was a twitter clone that offered no additional functionality and even compromised your gmail privacy.

tomjen3 11y ago
Facebook has too much network effect - if you don't want to share your life with your parents you need to be on a platform they aren't. In my case I never friended my parents on FB, and keep G+ for family - which means I don't share things with the wrong group.
- 9872 11y ago
  For normal people. sharing their lives with loved ones is a positive. Creating a social network for antisocial people makes no sense.
  - tdkl 11y ago
    You never share some things only with certain groups of people, because of relevance or intimacy ?
    - 9872 11y ago
      I don't think you understood the comment I was replying to, which advocated going to a totally different platform from the one your parents use in order to not share your life with them.
  - tomjen3 11y ago
    I wasn't very clear - I don't want to share the details of my drunk exploits with my parents, if something happens that is relevant to them and my friends I add it to both. Hardly takes a minute.
    - 9872 11y ago
      I can't tell if you're incredibly naive or if you just believe your parents are.
      - hga 11y ago
        There's such a thing as not rubbing their noses in it....

kordless 11y ago

Then don't be a storage service and just run the API for them to shovel data from point A to point B. I'm speaking for others, but I'll still say that sometimes we don't want some of the data we post accessible to others. That seems an obvious statement, but I always use Twitter in a way that I find acceptable for sharing data with everyone. Facebook and Google+ are used in that way, but also ways where I selectively share things with people I trust to view the data I post. (To be clear, I don't use Facebook at all.) That's where things get complicated, because the service must enforce rules to keep these people from seeing those people's data. Those rules turn into 'features' and then you have a problem. A social sharing API doesn't need a ton of features, especially when it's designed to forward the data around to the people that need to see the data. By not storing it, you make things simpler and more resilient to attack.

allendoerfer 11y ago
An API-based system might be a good potential "killer". If I am not mistaken, that is what app.net is trying to be - have not heard from them in a while. To quote my other post [0] in this thread: Facebook cannot be killed with something so similar to Facebook like Google+, much like Google cannot be killed with something like Bing. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9991161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9991161

wahsd 11y ago

I get your point about "being the service people just dump their stuff to" but it is still a valid point. The problem with the network effect that Facebook has so thoroughly entrenched is that, in my opinion, you have to first replicate the network before luring users away with better features or, e.g., offering a more anonymous or secure or less invasive alternative to Facebook. It's somewhat similar to how a supply vessel docks to the ISS in orbit, you first have to match the speed in orbit before making an approach and then docking.

allendoerfer 11y ago
You can replicate the network with a reduced feature-set. Be something else entirely (e.g. Whatsapp, Instagram etc.), stay lean and grow. After that you can branch out or be bought by Facebook in fear of you branching out. I get your point, though. If I were Google I would have started the whole Google+ thing as a publishing platform for businesses and/or regular news publishers and bloggers, using some benefits within the search to lure them in. Facebook clearly pisses them of as they try to squeeze them. That way Google could have gotten some content first. Next push some commenting-system on top of it (as they did) but without the Feed-Posts appearing there and all the other crap. They already had Hangouts/Voice and Picasa, why did they even need to cripple all these services. They could instead have made Google+ a lightweight identity services as they promoted it.

dredmorbius 11y ago

One thing Google is in a strong position to do is to provide content filters: spam, abuse, clickbait, and the rest of it. They've the technical chops and semantic processing background. Combine that with some appropriate personalisation and metrics and they might have something.