On my return to G+ I find zillions of posts discussing the death of G+, it's a ghost town apparently – a very old theme by the way- , but it seems rather lively to me. Reading through endless and very fierce debates I understand +Vic Gundotra boss of G+, one of the highest ranking Google executives dropped the towel.
Bad news for sure. Vic is an extremely smart guy (he started following me the moment he noticed I wasn't a 'googly', but a criticaster who just wanted G+ to succeed.. Excellent metric of intelligence I would say ;). However a social network should survive without a smart boss. Hell, even Facebook flourishes ….
Vic did everything and more to get G+ to succeed. He took no prisoners in the game and I'm pretty sure that made him enemies within the company.
You can't usurp YouTube and claim all commenters yours without internal resistance. Devoting all Google resources and assets, going all the way on the visual side with 'autoawesome photos' and lay-out remakes which made our words suffer were clearly part of an all-out ambition to get G+ to high places…
In the end he lost. He didn't achieve his own goals, took up too many resources and from the tell-tale wording in the eulogy by +Larry Page and the last post by +Vic Gundotra himself it looks like he lost an uphill battle. The board and/or other VP's in the management team told him enough is enough, no more red signs across Google that you have to sign in to G+ just to raise Vic's figures.
G+ is now just one of the many services Google provides. Doesn't make money, doesn't provide Google with more ad profiling information than they already have, doesn't help in getting more people into the Googe eco-system. Worse, it keeps people from seeing ads; time spent on G+ is time lost on ad-impressions.
The post of G+ boss was demoted to reflect that Google Plus was no longer a crucial asset. Search and Ads make real money so they and off course finance and legal are crucial in the management team. G+ isn't it. So far it's all corporate; in the end not very interesting.
What is interesting however is the fierce debate all over G+. Are you dead? Am I dead? Are we dead men and women walking, aka zombies populating G+?
Why is there such a debate? Are the 'Googlies' who did well on this network afraid they will loose their exposure? Is it damaging to formerly unknown people who got upwards from 100.000 followers on this platform if resources within Google shift?
Will a few news reports about the G+ ghost town hurt the commercial interests of the happy few with millions of subscribers who don't do well on Twitter or Facebook?
Getting back to G+ after a long absence I'm surprised. I try to catch up and have read a lot, but I still don't know what all the fuzz is about. Did people expect G+ to become like Facebook? And if so, did they expect to succeed as broadcasters as people communicating outside of family and friends are rare on FB.
Or the other way around: what if G+ was promoted and the budget raised even further. Maybe adding +Bradley Horowitz to the management team as well instead of silently demoting him as happened. An obligation to post at least once on G+ to unlock your new Android phone? Would it help?
What is the disappointment now that G+ no longer is a prime Google product. Why are the have's ( the people with 100K+ followers) so negative, why do people lash out to the doubters?
What's wrong with the Google Plus community I knew? What changed apart from some corporate infighting?
I did a lot of reading recently to help me understand what happened and I learned most from the following people +Steve Faktor +Mark Traphagen +Gideon Rosenblatt +David Amerland +Alex S +Edward Morbius +Shaker Cherukuri +Meg Tufano +pio dal cin +Rob Gordon +James Barraford +Robert Anderson +Carmelyne Thompson +Giselle Minoli +Randy Resnick +Serge A. +Eli Fennell +S. Wilson one of the most vocal +Mike Elgan and countless others. Circle them if you want to hear real opinions but realize there are many more I missed. G+ is full of smarties. #SocMed
Welcome back +Max Huijgen! We missed you.
Good to have you back, +Max Huijgen. This place was a little too quiet without you,. 😉
I actually read the whole thing +Max Huijgen good points.
Welcome back, +Max Huijgen – excellent post.
+Muamer Mujevic get used to it:long posts are the norm 🙂
+Scott Wilson I enjoyed your comments all over G+ for a long time. Asking good questions often works better than delivering mediocre posts/answers
Pfft. "G+ is dead" is the cry of pundits who also pushed "G+ is a ghost town." And the Ghost-town meme was always a crowd pleaser – inciting G+ fans, Facebook fans, and Twitter fans all alike. There is no downside nipping on the heels of a very public industry leader by prognoticating their pet project's death.
Frankly, everything +Max Huijgen listed was examples of where G+ was ground-zero of Google acting very unlike Google. If Vic's departure signals the end of that, then good. I'm sure Vic won't be hurting financially or facing a lack of interesting pursuits. And Google can get back to being Google.
Anyone else who felt this rock the foundations of their own fortunes and wasn't a Google employee should probably reconsider how they use any information platform out there. Plan accordingly. Adjust their strategy. And own their own corner.
Everyone else? Carry on. Most of my stream hasn't been about platform death. Which may be why I've never seen the ghost-town.
Thank you +Max Huijgen for pinging me in.
+Max Huijgen I honestly think there are to many social media gurus and mavens on Google+ promoting and defending this platform like true Zealots. It's not healthy, I never heard anyone lash out on people criticising Facebook and Twitter. And there is plenty of that around. Some people here act like this Google+ is sacred, and so much better than everything else..it's starting to sound like a cult.
Certainly +Muamer Mujevic check my 'first post' after being absent for some time a few days ago 'pundits'…. https://plus.google.com/u/4/112352920206354603958/posts/NAumor4n99B
Thanks for the mention +Max Huijgen . I've heard this discussion about +Google+ being dead before (last time I opened this page to show that there were many live "ghosts" around +Ghost Town Google plus ). I have been around this "game" for about three years now, like you have Max. As a golden beach we are the sand's grains composing the beach itself. If one thousand or one hundred thousand grains are removed or go away, the beach will still be there.
I am not here to complain but I really loved G+ the "original recipe", as +Vic Gundotra designed when you needed an invite to come in. You started a thread, a hangout, made a post and had almost immediate interaction. Of course it was something new and the thrill to discover all the buttons one could push was really exciting. I spent countless hours on a seven days a week period trying to understand how the game rules worked. I did fine, as half of my day was on G+. I mastered all the "buttons" I had to know to consider myself Confortable with the platform.
Then came the great changes of last year. It was like I was engaded to the most beautiful woman in the world and she shows up with a plastic surgery telling me "I changed my looks to be better looking" Sorry but "You were already amazing, you needn't any upgrades or changes".
I blame this on the urge that someone at G+ got trying to look similar to Facebook, and that was the biggest mistake. G+ lost its originality long before +Vic Gundotra decided to leave. It lost it last year when #communities were created, making the platform a lot business friendly and less friendky for the common user. It would be interesting to find out how many of us "old timers" who were labelled as "first generation users" would be willing to pay to go back to the original layout.
#Hangouts have lost their initial appeal and everyone is now hosting a show or a interview program. I started my +You Are The Star (for FIVE minutes) interviewing humble program a long time ago, when interviewing wasn't cool. It seems to me that the love of G+ for business has buried the initial drive that attracted millions of users to this "beach"
I'm repeating myself when I state that the Big River that once was the G+ stream is now broken up into thousand of small bodies of water, where you can cruise with your small boat but you cannot take all your friends into a "De luxe cruise" over the Atlantic anymore. Just look back at the threads of two years ago.
Still as it was pointed out on the other similar thread "Love it or leave it", it's free but that is not the point. It is like being used to play Monopoli and after a few years going to find out that all the rules have changed. Why? to make something great greaTER? or worse?
ping +Steve Faktor
Nice to see you posting again, +Max Huijgen 🙂
I read it +Max Huijgen well..you always had a good point or a story to share.
I'll tell you where it failed for me
No way to post content based on interest, for example if I add someone that talks about bitcoin I don't want to see their personal posts.
There should have been a "friends" context, I like circles for public content but managing circles of friends (because they might even not add you back) made G+ very 'public' oriented but never taking part of Facebook's pie.
I like G+, but forcing people in isn't the way, the youtube integration now makes me mad everyday it asks me if I want to link the account to G+, which I don't.
Finally the change of the UI made me come to G+ even less every day, the popular tags were something that made me come to G+ and stay on it for quite some time, it gave a sense of community that was delicious!
It still has a chance though
Edit:
The notification bar is also horrible now
While I appreciate +Max Huijgen's shout out, I'm doing most of my work and writing elsewhere. Folks are welcome to check out my subredddit directly or via RSS:
http://reddit.com/r/dredmorbius
http://reddit.com/r/dredmorbius.rss
Sure +pio dal cin and I miss you and the old G+ to pieces. Oh, and I agree that communities killed G+
Oh my god! Where is he taking my cat. Jaafar come back sweet heart mommy is coming hang on .
+Belial Pt this is why we need content filters. Say you're keen to read up on Bitcoin news from folks you think are pretty savvy on that sort of thing.
Click on the handy "Bitcoin" label. That invokes a filter like "From Circles 'Bitcoin Savvy' and 'Bitcoin News' where ALL keyword 'Bitcoin' and not where Photo and keyword 'caturday'".
Totally forgot +Mike Elgan and +Mark Traphagen which is rather stupid as they dominate these debates and have excellent contributions.
We missed you +Max Huijgen,welcome back
Frankly, folks with many followers on G+ often have an inflated sense of their own importance and believe G+ numbers reflect their true value. Those who view it as a neighborly pub that has it's ups and downs and may or may not go out of business have the healthier attitude. Enjoy it for what it is and the people you meet, but maybe relax a bit about the sacredness of the digital edifice itself.
Good to know that some people got actual promotions +God Emperor Lionel Lauer
+Jennifer Tackman who do I talk to around here, to get a nice pint of cider here at the Plus Pub? 🙂
We're everywhere +Filip H.F. Slagter, lol! I have a virtual Stella right here. Cheers!
And here's your pint of cider… 😉
Google+ is not where I expected it to be, it should really be influencing the web a lot more through recommendation engines, +Vic Gundotra is just probably I think getting ready to be a CEO at a multi-billion dollar startup like Snapchat, Airbnb, Uber or something like that. With all the stocks they offer the one to accept such a job, it would be stupid for him not to accept it. As for changes in Google+, hopefully they are coming and they should be coming, I expect big news out of Google I/O for the improvements coming to Google+, but that has nothing to do with Google+ closing down or anything like that.
Cheers 😉 +Jennifer Tackman "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" should be a reward in itself.
Love it, +Max Huijgen, and I agree. Friendships are the best currency.
+Nicolas Charbonnier becoming CEO at SnapChat or Airbnb would be a demotion to +Vic Gundotra
The stock offers could be fine, but I'm sure he got enough Google option when he moved away from Microsoft to a) make him rich on paper and b) dependent on Google stock prices so dont' expect openness…
+Max Huijgen Welcome back!
+Max Huijgen I started off as a Dame, then my career really took off. 😉
+Belial Pt Excellent points all. I've wasted to much breath and too many keystrokes on all those elements. Those, plus surveillance, trust, and the post-Snowden era are what ultimately broke the site for me.
Welcome back +Max Huijgen. It's nice to have an intelligent person to disagree with again 😉
+Mark Traphagen Those are the best sorts of disagreements. I've prayed more than once for a better class of trolls (not applying that to anyone here … yet).
Resistance is futile +Mark Traphagen but meanwhile like you I enjoy intelligent discourse.
+Catherine Maguire According to the nuff-nuffs at Tech Crunch, we all are.
+Catherine Maguire ;') Me too, apparently. ;')
I'm tired of all these posts and discussions which are influenced by a personal, subjective point of view (from the past).
Google+ is as it is. And tomorrow it will be different than yesterday. It's three years old and it's evolving. Google+ is Google, including (Semantic and Personalized) Search and Youtube and Gmail and Hangouts and Communities and Play Store and with +Post Ads now it's even a bigger part of Adsense (adressed to the doubters if G+ "makes money". Time spent on G+ is time invested in targeting and Real Time Advertising. Geez, it's even time that is not spent at Googles competitors, if you really need more arguments).
Edit: While some are still talking about friendships, Google is thinking about how to recognize relationships. Trust, authority, brands, circles – have a look at Ripples, radial connections, not linear dead-end roads.
And if you really want to compare FB or Twitter and their features with G+ then you should have a look at the "new" strategies across all platforms: Instagram for photos, Vine for videos, a mobile ad network to escape from the Facebook bubble, MoPub to target ads across different devices … it's a volatile business, it's a volatile time and if you want to be part of it jump on the train.
It's exciting.
+Catherine Maguire All Post Mortem Posts I assume 🙂
#hipsterplus
As one of the people who started off hyper-enthusiastic and then reached a point where I bailed out completely, I now feel somewhat vindicated.
G+ was an incredible success. And even more incredibly, it got pretty much everything exactly right from the very beginning. But +Vic Gundotra and others didn't see that, and they set about "improving" all the goodness out of it, reducing its functionality with every step.
Hangouts stopped working unless you updated your browser. Browser updates stopped being available unless you updated your OS, OS updates stopped being available for your particular hardware. Mobile was separate, and it wasn't really possible to work seamlessly across the two environments.
Other platforms that either didn't change, or where the changes didn't matter provided far better functionality, and there was ever less need to come anywhere near G+.
Apart from the very occasional comment like this, I haven't even looked at G+ in nearly two years. I use FB for direct messaging, and since getting involved in Dogecoin and discovering http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/ I'm spending more and more time on Reddit.
No platform is perfect of course. But G+ could have been. At the beginning it really could have replaced Reddit, Facebook and all the rest, providing real communication under the user's control. By taking that control away with every pointless redesign, it sealed its own fate, and it was only a matter of time to reach this point.
I don't want to see G+ die. I still believe it could be awesome. But I do want to see many of the 'improvements' unravelled, to make it a platform that can be used by anyone, on any hardware, without the loss of functionality.
Will that happen in a post-Vic environment? I really hope so. But I won't be holding my breath.
as +Bernd Rubel already suggested, google+ is an evolving platform. it adresses a changing market where people market and not ads. but it is missing tools and measurements and advice p open up that new ad pipeline to paying advertisers. that
is a big and unprecedented change. it will be intereoting to watch if google keeps this ball or it goes somewhere else.
Google Plus is like +Manchester United after the departure of David Moyes it's in a state of flux, changes are coming but what they are we do not know. Google Plus is not like Reader nor is it as important as YouTube but I think Google have to much riding on Plus for them to toss it in the bin. I have been on so many social networks and platforms over many years. Many have closed but mostly I enjoy the ride. Through out my time on Plus I have maintained my other social networks but Plus is my favourite. Every thing ends eventually.
+Max Huijgen, thanks for the list of interesting people. I'll be sure to add some of them to my circles. Remember you can share a curated version of any of your circles.
Oh +Max Huijgen , where have you been? Google+ is far from 'dead'. It still has the same number of active users as it always had.
hey +Max Huijgen ! welcome back to the zombies town 🙂
thank you for this long read and for mention here.
i still use G+, much less than before but i'm here.
the sad think that their internal politics may affect our social life.
but by their variability in products – i said from the start that not right to put all eggs in one basket… one day they will close this place without notification or with very short like it was with my fav Google reader.
Google+ today is just another portfolio for me – no more.
+pio dal cin pingggggggg !!!!
Its just Techcrunch that shotstormed g+ in an article as Vic was leavibg, like usually they do anyway.
+Noze P. Does anyone know why Techcrunch hates Google so much anyway? It's like Larry Page fucked Wossname's wife or something.
Chuck McQuone was died-May 2,2014 at 4:55 am at Hospital
Lol i have no idea, maybe the loss of big numbers with the moving to pages in the beginning. I know that did hurt a bit for a few. Not like they didnt gain back all the followings afterward +God Emperor Lionel Lauer.
They keep spitting crap articles about it, but my guess is that its just crap journalism. Most of those writing about g+ havent even posted a single line here. These posts draw attention to them soecially on other platforms…SEO farming ?!
+God Emperor Lionel Lauer It is just that they (the journalists) consider themselves the establishment and have not found a way to translate into success on Gplus and cannot buy their way either.
+John Blossom Max is back in action.
I am curious to why you see communities as a problem, +Max Huijgen ? I started one, and it is open and focused and filled with people that share that special interest. To me, that seems to be working like intended? Posts still need threading, though.
Google+ is not entirely ad free. We get to see ads from embedded YouTube videos, and sometimes ads in the form of videos and/or page posts that are widely reshared. It doesn't have context sensitive ads, but it could and if done like in Gmail, where ads don't feel as intrusive as on Facebook, it could work.
I am curious about where +Dave Besbris and +Bradley Horowitz will take us next. Why dwell on the past, when the future is so much more interesting?
+Max Huijgen you wrote too many letters in one post. People do not read such long posts. If you have some idea which want to share, communicate it in via couple of phrases, it dies not matter where- in Google+ or in Facebook.
+pio dal cin Google+ was almost dead, before Google introduced communities. Introducing social network without groups/communities was mistake. I appreciate that Google did its homework, and we have communities now.
+Vadim Plessky I read the whole post. tl;dnr is not a badge of honor.
+Colin Walker The best way to deal with such sensational reporting would have been to ignore it but that is not human nature and we Plussers also need our clickbites. Et tu +Max Huijgen Every one wants his engagement numbers!
+Colin Walker It is like a zugzwang in chess. a set of forced moves since not doing it leads to loss. Given time especially in the backdrop of Vics departure, some body would have written the article and who wants to miss out on an opportunity. Everything is "Foxified", give the audience what sells.
Yes, everybody should now know that social media is for fun and not simply to promote a pyramid selling scheme or business blog.
I'd posit that so many people are willing to believe Plus will go away because of Buzz, Wave, Reader, etc. It's not exactly lacking in supporting narrative evidence. The numbers count of Plusses versus tweets and FB likes are visible on many sites that have put a solid couple years' effort in. The major defenders of Plus as vibrant are on the SUL or top 50.
I personally don't know either way, but I can definitely understand the perception.
Why is Communities a mistake? They are very vibrant, many with members over a hundred thousand. Communities is what brought and unites people with single interests, and is a powerful filtering tool.
+Max Huijgen Great to have you back and yes, we Googlies are still alive and kicking 😀 But to clarify: the original Techcrunch article last week that started all the rumours and postmortems included speculation and innuendo that key G+ Hangouts and Photos staff were being moved to Android and the term ‘walking dead’ was used to refer to these staff and the possibility that G+ was to be phased out.
I have to admit that nearly 10 days later I am a little concerned as we haven’t seen a PR story from the new G+ chief, in fact we have seen nothing only a squirrel photo….
I missed the squirrel photo +Eileen O'Duffy . Who posted that?
Oh, look! A butterfly….
Where +Wolf Weber ?
+Russell Davison, just next to that squirrel over there. Oh, look, a plane…
I agree on the point, that Communities killed a big piece of the user experience of Google+ +Max Huijgen & +pio dal cin . What's the point now on posting public, when there are topic specific communities? So why still having topic based circles? But then, you might loose the rest of the world… Now, instead of posting once, you might post to all the communities (and you have to make sure not to miss one) and also public. What a mess… Dear +Google+ , Dear +Dave Besbris : Please kill "Communities". It serves a higher target 😉
And BTW: Welcome back +Max Huijgen !
But before communities everyone was complaining about "noise" e.g. They followed VC X for VC news not baby pictures – so VC was heavily socially pressured to be a one trick pony, not a real person with varied interests.
The real problem underlying this seems to be the conflict between narrow topical interest and general social interest – the latter being more why I follow Max here – because I like his "voice" even if I'm not into F1. If G+ were to move forward and find an innovative solution untangling the real problem, that would be of benefit. Many models were offered in the past, and could no doubt be revisited if there was support from the new leadership.
On G+, I now find that 80% of the pyramid or MLM guys have left and there is less noise around. I'm actually liking G+ more, these days.
+Russell Davison, they didn't left and they're still very active. You only adjusted your circles better meanwhile.
The good news? +Vic Gundotra now has more time for golf. I'll play with him, as long as he doesn't wear his Google Glass.
ooooooooooo
+Catherine Maguire I'm dead??
Quiet! You'll wake the others.
+Fulvio Gerardi OS updates stopped being available for your particular hardware.
I'd bumped into that on my apparently now-ancient Android device. Couple that with my reticence to updating the system as every push came with yet more mobile-vendor crapware that I'd have to remove, and I pretty rapidly fell out of step with updates. It's similar to Apple's limited lifetime support for its hardware. All the more reason to convert to free software for any and all devices, though the confusion that is Android and how data are or aren't preserved across updates has made me cautious in that regard as well.
Upside: I've abandoned Android from phone systems (now back to a dumbphone which has a stupidly excessive battery life, I'll note), though I'm looking for a good, truly open, tablet platform. There are some advantages to that particular form-factor.
Hi +Able Lawrence Good to see you again!
I wouldn't call my post a typical '"Et tu, Brute? I 'm not done with G+, but I'm not driven by page views either.
I can see from the comments that my post was mostly seen as rhetorical. Shame on my writing style as I really hoped for some answers.
How do you ,reader, feel about G+ after the change of leadership? Time for an exit, are others leaving or is the restructuring of no importance for your G+ love?
I don't see why we should act any differently. We have no real evidence that anything is changing that would affect how we use or value this network.
+Max Huijgen The original story was alarming, but after discovering that the source was Tech "who needs facts?" Crunch, much less so. I haven't been at all impressed with Vic's helming of the G+ ship, & I'm cautiously optimistic about its future, if anything.
I have seen the TechCrunch article, but what surprised me more is the lack of reaction by Google.
No statement from the new leader, no confirmation that over 1000 people will continue to work on G+. Or did I miss something?
+Colin Walker +Mark Traphagen +God Emperor Lionel Lauer
+Max Huijgen Google had issued a statement that the plans for Google+ have not changed and I think there was something that Google+ will be a platform and not a product. I consider a platform as something bigger than a product and I remember the famous rant by a Googler who was previously with Amazon who said how Google had failed to become a platform as compared to how Jeff Bezos literally bludgeoned Amazon into one. Since then everything Google did was to transform itself into a proper platform, which is a good thing and I dont see why people are seeing anything ominous about it. The way I see it, we are seeing that the childhood of Google plus is over. The daily diaper changes and the breastfeeding and the trainer wheels are off and the erstwhile baby has to walk and run on its own. With the social infrastructure now in place, what is needed is for every other product, namely chrome, android and the other applications to digest and realize the full potential.
+Max Huijgen yes, the new leader +Dave Besbris commented in a post, that the leave of Vic will have no impact on the development and efforts of Google+. However, it was just a post inside G+. No official statements to the press so far.
+Max Huijgen I was just making my point, trying to get into the mind of the TechCrunch, how these kind of news items and posts are inevitable.
Google almost never makes comments about press stories, unless it is about government regulations that threaten them.
In my +Marketing Land article (http://stonet.co/gplusnotdead) I link to statements by Larry Page that they will “continue working hard to build great new experiences for the ever increasing number of Google+ fans.”
Also +Yonatan Zunger confirmed to us that the moving of Google+ employees mentioned in the TC article is just moving to a new building for more space, not a "reassignment" to other projects.
The "changing from a product to a platform" was one of the quotes from the anonymous sources in the TC article. It has not been in any statements from G+ officials that I know of.
+Max Huijgen, why should an oak care if a pig is scratching its back on the bark?
If I was Google I would have done the very same they did. Ignoring the rumours and carry on…
You're right +Wolf Weber. Many pundits on G+ don't post about anything really apart from authorship, post structures, networks, social media, Facebook
vtwittervFriendster. It's a bit silly really to use a media to just write about that same media!+Russell Davison guess what….you only see them if you circle them!
And no, it's not "silly" to do so. This is where our audience is.
right on +Mark Traphagen .
So, are you saying because you closed your eyes, I can't see you?
s/fuzz/fuss
Is an audience of 20 million TV viewers big? Are 100,000 car drivers distracted by a highway hoarding board called an audience ?
It's a fun analysis, +Max Huijgen, but the press has ludicrously overstated (read: made up) the situation. G+ is just as much a crucial asset as it was a month ago: social is critical to our success. It doesn't compete for ad-watching time; people aren't thinking "gee, I could either spend time with my friends, or go click on some ads." Instead, it boosts people's investment in the system, helps them know other people better, and helps us in turn know them better, so that we can help them do a wide range of things. I'm not afraid about our ability to make money. 🙂
Also, contra TechCrunch, Bradley wasn't demoted at all. If I had to stack-rank the org, I'd say that before this, he was the #3 guy at G+, and now he's the #2 guy. Bez was always there, he just didn't do as much publicly visible stuff. (cf my post about him)
/sub
Hi +Yonatan Zunger it wasn't much of an analysis, but an attempt to feel out the waters.
Interpreting Google's moves resembles the lost art of Kremlin watching. We don't have much to go by so we can only interpret the little details available.
+Vic Gundotra thanking +Larry Page suggested an internal battle where Larry backed Vic (at least for some time.)
Larry posting a badly formatted, hastily written eulology suggests that Vic's departure wasn't a long time planned event.
Moving the control over G+ from a senior VP in charge of a business unit who sat on 'Larry's' board to an engineer does tell something. G+ is no longer crucial like search or ads are.
Checking the http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/management/ page helps understand the priorities of Google and no Bez doesn't show up there. You don't need that TechCrunch article to make these observations. People will make them and adjust their priorities.
Folks with large vested interests in G+ will start looking elsewhere as a backup, while publicly showing strong support for the network.
Businesses will adjust their efforts on social media; away from a G+ that no longer is a priority for Google.
My question for you (and Google in general) is why is there no clear statement?
Oh, and time spent on G+ is time lost on seeing ads +Yonatan Zunger Of course people don't choose between looking at ads or spending time with their friends but brands make sure that they combine both.
A brand impression in a social, relaxed atmosphere is what makes these Super Bowl ads so expensive 🙂
Being on Facebook, exposed to brand ads or spending time on G+ without them is a missed opportunity. Serving the web seeing Google ads or reading on G+ is a net loss in exposure. It must be a concern in the board of directors.
+Max Huijgen I will bet you that we can make plenty of money by having social without putting ads in people's streams. No comment beyond that. 🙂
+Max Huijgen that's what is so misunderstood, what +Yonatan Zunger was hinting at but perhaps does not want to say openly, but I will: Google+ does monetize Google.
Google+ helped bring about a unified login and privacy policy for all of Google. That means Google can better track your activity across all of Google (and elsewhere) when you are logged in. And that data, very likely including what you do here, enables them, among other things, to better target their advertising to you as well as your total user experience, within Google and across the web on their ad partner and social login sites.
THAT is the tremendous difference of the Google+ business model, and so few understand it.
I've been saying it for over two years: Google+ does not need ads in its stream to make money for Google. Almost no one understands this! When I wrote a blog post about that over a year ago, I got a message from "someone very high up in Google+ who is no longer their hint hint wink wink nudge nudge" that I "got it."
+Mark Traphagen +Yonatan Zunger that's the reverse argument. I have no doubt Google can (and does) profit from G+ and I am certainly not pushing for ads to be shown here.
However in a board room where the Google bottom line is a key issue it will be all about profitability. G+ is no longer represented in the management team and that didn't happen without a reason.
Take the example of infrastructure. The availability of Google services is so crucial for the bottom line that Urs Hölzle is part of the management team.
G+, software as a service 😉 is no longer represented there. People will see this cue and move their assets and efforts.
+Max Huijgen regarding
Checking the http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/management/ page helps understand the priorities of Google and no Bez doesn't show up there.
I think having Vic still on this page means that the page isn't updated yet.
+Max Huijgen so Yonatan is lying when he says it is just as crucial an asset as it was a month ago? I think you're over-reading office politics. Yes, that the head of G+ right now isn't a SR VP position may signal some sort of change, but I don;t think it's any change we'll notice one bit at the user level.
Sure +CircleCount but I'm willing to bet that Bez will not show up there in the future. Social has been demoted within Google.
+Mark Traphagen Thanks to +CircleCount I noticed you elevated that comment from Yonathan and made it into your own post. Could have been done more elegantly, but no I don't think or say Yonathan is lying.
He will believe what he states, but that's not the message Google is broadcasting.
+Max Huijgen – now you are starting to sound ridiculous.
Why +Lars Fosdal ?
+Max Huijgen do you realize that in the US "lifted" is a euphemism for "stolen"? Do you really want to accuse me of that?
It is a public comment on a public post. I linked back to this post for attribution. There is no way shape or form on social media that I "lifted" anything from you. Why so vindictive?
I didn't realize it meant 'stolen' in your language. That certainly was not my intention +Mark Traphagen I just meant lifted as 'taken from a discussion to a higher position'
edit see: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Lifted
See http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lift defintion 4. I understand the misunderstanding now +Max Huijgen – my former comment rescinded, and alarm put away!
Oh the dangers of "lost in translation" eh?
+Max Huijgen – You are saying that Google is broadcasting that Social is being demoted. Google has not made any such statements. On the contrary, numerous Google employees has pointed out that the sensationalist articles have no facts in them. Only conjecture and speculation. I didn't expect you to head down that same path.
+Max Huijgen Regarding your comment: "Moving the control over G+ from a senior VP in charge of a business unit who sat on 'Larry's' board to an engineer does tell something. G+ is no longer crucial like search or ads are." BINGO!
This leads me to believe we might agree on the actual purpose(s) of G+ from the beginning (from the corporation's standpoint, not necessarily from +Vic Gundotra's). Sadly, I hadn't followed you before today (which I have now remedied), so you may have already addressed that… I'll be taking a look. it would be great to find at least one kindred spirit.
In a nutshell, I believe that G+ has largely fulfilled its underlying goal – one which I have yet to hear anyone else venture a guess on. Maybe I'm mad, but I think I know what that goal was and I think that play is in its final act.
However, I don't believe for an instant that G+ will be going away. There are other goals… which quite feasibly could be very productive for Google. Whether I'm right or wrong, however, I'm certain that G+ is slated to stick around for a while, even though it will probably evolve significantly. And I intend to continue to embrace more and more of it.
To answer your question, while I registered early, I didn't really begin to embrace G+ until last year. There are many aspects of it that I love, Hangouts being high on the list. Unlike many, I enjoy the integration of G+ and YouTube, although I would like to see the option of keeping them separate without feeling like a rebel.
+Lars Fosdal Don't know if you ever followed the typical 'Kremlin-watchers' but that's what they did. When there is no official and believable position, take all available pieces of information and try to string them together.
It's of no importance what I make from the available info. I'm a nobody without any clout but I'm quite certain that people whose livelihood depends partly on G+ and business considering campaigns will draw the conclusion that G+ is no longer as important as it was.
+Doc Sheldon – To isolate your Google persona from your YouTube persona, create a Google+ page to post YouTube comments. It is just like having a pseudonym, and there are no public links between that pseudonym and your regular Google Plus profile.
+Doc Sheldon I did write about the same thing at http://bit.ly/gplusnotdead saying that I thought G+ has fulfilled its phase one goal. I ventured my supposition that was to unify all of Google under one login and one privacy policy so that user data could be harvested seemlessly.
Personally, I prefer facts over speculation. It's been a few days since Vic revealed that he was leaving. I'll wait for some official news from I/O and/or Vic, instead of howling with the hounds.
I am a bit scared of losing Google+. It is the ONLY place where my posts have exposure…
Thanks, +Lars Fosdal. I've already tied my YT account, and it really didn't concern me that much at the time. Now, however, I've begun doing hangouts for more than one entity, and it just presents a hassle that could have been easily avoided by maintaining the two accounts separately and allowing us to state what YT account we wanted to upload to when setting up a hangout.
+Mark Traphagen, I saw that piece, and don't disagree. However, what I alluded to above is a somewhat different use of the data that's harvested. Give me a shout sometime, and we can chat about it. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.
Will do +Doc Sheldon
I learned a lot about Google Plus here on this post.
Different opinions and points of view on the subject here proposed.
But if I had to weave any comments I would say the same as +Scott Wilson when he comments :
I don't know what is going to happen. I just know there are hundreds of million of people that enjoy this community. I like that the people here are generally smarter and more intellectual, and not as celebrity obsessed and worthless as the folks on Facebook or Twitter typically are.
And +pio dal cin when he says : G+ lost its originality long before +Vic Gundotra decided to leave. It lost it last year when #communities were created, making the platform a lot business friendly and less friendky for the common user as I …a common user 🙂
I can not opine on business with Google but I love this network by not having ads
I had a small restaurant [closed ] which created a page for it here [ also closed / deleted] … interacting and people who did not know how to get the opportunity to find by clicking the link address and so opened the GoogleMaps .
I like this type of integration with products from the house …. with Youtube [ I know some do not like ^ ^ ] the HangOut .. anyway … is a social network with .. gist of " I'm home "
Somehow abandoned Facebook after the third modification of the Terms Privacy Policy .. O_o .. do not have it here .
Can I format my text
or not.. anyway 😀 .. I do not think this plataform runs out .. and not see it as a ghost town.I am 44 years old and my son 6
I hope that he still a part of it 🙂
I like the approach : what now? what will happen ?
Aeschylus said :
The future will know when he comes ; before that, forget it
Well .. this is my humble opinion .
have a good night all you gentlemen 🙂 o/
PS.: I will have the freedom to circulate that some people believe will add to my understanding of this network.
+Yonatan Zunger thank you so much for that clarification, you have no idea how much that means!
+Wolf Weber yours is the best quote in the entire debacle
"…, why should an oak care if a pig is scratching its back on the bark?
If I was Google I would have done the very same they did. Ignoring the rumours and carry on.."
I absolutely adore that Max has compared outside speculation about big tech companies to Kremlin watching.
Trust but verify, people.
Good to see you again +Max Huijgen. The tech press has had it out for G+ from the beginning – the current hullabaloo is no different… And it's still filled with great critical thinkers and content creators. Some of us can see through the BS.
+Mark Traphagen Unified login and "better" tracking (substitute "more invasive") are precisely the parts of Google I'm seeking to get as far from as possible. This is the post-Snowden era. Facebook's acknowledging that, Google still hasn't.
Google+ = Google at this point. There is no way to unwind it now. Much ado about nothing.
+CircleCount Say: did you ever do a followup of the engagement measurements you posted in June of 2013 following the May "makeover"? That was interesting data, and I don't believe I've seen anything further.
+Edward Morbius s if you think facebook's "anonymous" login is that, you need to check +Mike Elgan's stream from today, and then send me the payment for that bridge
+Max Huijgen While admiring your
KremlinologyGoogleplexology, it's worth noting that the original set of analysts were often wildly wrong in their interpretations and conclusions, seeing both much that wasn't present and missing much that was. But such are the risks.Overall though, I have to say your story hangs together pretty well. There's also the distinct possibility that the script is still being written and the final adjudication hasn't been settled. +Yonatan Zunger, much as I appreciate your forthrightness, there's simply no denying that there have been loud bangs and much smoke seen emanating from the castle.
+Lars Fosdal My YouTube "persona" was already perfectly isolated from my G+ account, until Google decided to ignore my many refusals to marry two independent and separate accounts and do it anyway. As I told Yonny when he suggested a similar tack: 1) I'm done playing games and 2) Google violated my trust once. I've been unwinding (and deleting/transferring content) since then.
+Mark Traphagen I'm terribly sorry, sir, but what on God's Green Earth, or the FSM's Eternal Pasta Bowl, gives you the slightest inkling I believe any such thing of Facebook, or have any interest or trust in that particular blight on the Internet. I'm not one of Zuck's "dumb fucks".
What I was referring to was Zuck's F8 keynote which referred to little else than the problems of trust the company is facing post-Snowden. I'm utterly unconvinced by their actions, but I find the focus of interest.
http://redd.it/24h6or
When I say "even Facebook", it's meant in the spirit of "an entity whose moral judgement and character that's so utterly beyond redemption has taken notice". It's like the Catholic Church finally deciding that sodomizing children really isn't a fair reason to shield priests, the Koch brothers determining that fracking might be less than positive, the Nazi party determining that animal abuse is a bad thing, or Jeffrey Dahmer speaking on behalf of halal food preparation practices.
Jarring, in other words, for showing any moral sense.
+Edward Morbius ??? You're the one that said "Facebook gets it in the Snowden era" not me. I swear it as a devout Pastafarian.
+Edward Morbius I wonder if you'd mind if we could discuss this topic without mentioning the Catholic Church, sodomized children, fracking, Nazis, animal abusing or Jeffrey Dahmer? #calmdown
+Bernd Rubel I'll just note that those were all introduced in the context of the other network.
For the record, Morbius has been very public for at least years now about his feelings about FB, and they are consistent with his statements here. Not sure where the jumping to conclusions came from.
+Angyl Bender To be fair, since I've deleted most of my record on G+, that fact might not be evident to those here. But your characterization is correct: I am not a fan of FB nor of Zuck, with a very few exceptions.
The company's stand in breaking the Silicon Valley anti-hiring collusion between Google, Apple, Intel, and others, is commendable. Zuck also made an early statement against NSA spying and surveillance I found at least noteworthy. I think there's one other instance, possibly a software release. But save that there's very little positive I see in the company, its practices, Zuck, or the morality of his behavior.
+Max Huijgen I don't know what they are talking about – your post is just the right length. Concise and makes plenty of room for own thoughts.
While reading your post and comments in the thread I realized something. Recently I began preaching that Google+ is Google's own mass-media channel. I think I was a bit (but just a bit) wrong here. Perhaps Google really did want to go social and they created this social layer to make all of Google better. But it didn't quite work the way it should have. Instead of listening to their customers, Google was telling them what to do (use YouTube comments, use this layout, sign in with Google+ and etc.).
Whatever the case one thing becomes obvious now – Google couldn't have learned what it was like to be truly social until Vic's departure. The reason for that was the G+ cult that spread blind love to Google. It was like mass hypnosis. And only now people begin waking up.
Perhaps your post, +Mark Traphagen 's Quo Vadis Google+ my recent write-up and similar ones are a bit speculating. However, what we are all doing now is slapping bad Google for the missteps we think it made.
We're waking up. And Google will have a number of concerns to deal with which in turn should make it a better company. And hopefully this will make Google+ a social network of objectively and critically thinking people.
Be listening. Be authentic. Be real. Google said. Time for Google to take these words seriously.
Reading through comments. Page 15/19.
+Max Huijgen To answer your question about my feelings about G+ – diversify and intensify. I was about to semi-quit G+ until a recent conversation with +Mark Traphagen . Things don't look as bad to me anymore, I'm staying to fight the last battle if it indeed happens that it is the last one 🙂
It's a risk and I am willing to bet.
In regards to silence from Google's top oficials – I am concerned. Hence I said that everything I hear from Googlers on G+ I take with a grain of salt.
I bet not even Googlers working on Google+ know what’s going to happen. Everything we hear about the future of Google Plus is plain speculation. Even if it comes from the horse'a mouth. <- that's how I see it now and will keep seeing it until a) time can tell OR b) major announcements by Google are made officially. I'd prefer b)
_"…a social network should survive without a smart boss. Hell, even Facebook flourishes…" touché! well played, dear sir! With Google+ I don't think it's about the ads missed, I think it's about who's connected and/or affiliated with whom. What people think about in-depth, what people are interested in in-depth – those are metrics you can't glean from searches. Not to mention product recommendations and idea exchanges between peers within your own social network and environment. After all, people believe their own peers more than published works/reviews.
+Max Huijgen Everyone will be foolish to think that social was ever the number one business priority of Google for its own sake.
Its priority is search, advertising, chrome, android, in that order. Social was a necessary ingredient in the formula and the high rank of +Vic Gundotra was a temporary requirement to make a company wide transition and reorganization of the information infrastructure. Now that the back bone is ready, it is only appropriate that things go back the normal. That does not mean that the Google+ will disappear or will become less of a user experience. We may not see any more drastic changes and that might be a good thing.
+Able Lawrence well said…perhaps a few steps back into the old layout/hangouts with a twist of "how to improve notifications" wouldn't hurt:)
+pio dal cin Think of it as something like this. China decides that English Education is important for its business competitiveness and appoints an English Professor and head of Education. Years pass and and they have an army of English teachers and English speaking graduates and engineers and executives and the position of Education Czar goes to a Physicist and then +TechCrunch starts shouting from the rooftops like Chicken Little that China is abandoning English education and English teachers start chattering and huddling together scared for their jobs! +Max Huijgen +Mark Traphagen
nice way to put it +Able Lawrence
+Edward Morbius I stopped updating OSX years ago, and I refuse to move to iOS7. One thing that really pisses me off is that the iOS5 iPad I inherited isn't allowed to go to iOS6. Its the 7-way or the Highway, according to Apple.
Not that Unix is immune, mind you. I've got machines with elderly Unbuntus which can't be updated to more recent versions as well.
I put the situation down to the very same forces that have made G+, FB and others what they are now. A loss of focus on what really matters (usually in the pursuit of money), and the resulting bloat that demands more and more horsepower to do trivial things. The same process is evident not only in social media, but search (remember when Google was clean, elegant and FAST?), OS's, Browsers, productivity software, games, mobile apps, email, IM, etc etc etc.
I haven't switched from an iPhone to a dumb phone… I never gave up my old Nokia in the first place. I saw no problem carrying both a phone to make phone calls and an iPod to do everything else. So when the (non-replaceable) battery in the iPod refuses to maintain charge after just over a year, it doesn't stop me calling for help if the need arises.
In much the same way, I use Google Groups as my core social platform, to communicate with diverse yet focussed groups, large and small. I use Reddit for the awesomness of its communities, and even Failbook for the dumb F&$#s I know but need to reach occasionally.
I had hoped that G+ would replace all of the above, and for a short while it looked like it would. Then the ship hit an iceberg, and has been listing badly ever since. I now only interact via the notifications pulldown on other pages, and find that apart from +Max Huijgen 's excellent posts, 99% of those can easily be ignored as well.
To answer Max's question as relates to my own experience…
For me, the draw of a social platform is strictly in the connections I have that operate on the platform. I came to Plus because a certain set of my peeps that wouldn't use Twitter or FB etc were willing to use Plus. Nymwars caused me to begin disentangling myself from Google products as a precautionary measure – it made me aware of just how much I had in Google products and how much I had to lose if a bot flagged me and left me with no one to call to get my account back. Water under the bridge there. Anyway, I made some new connections here, as I do on every new platform I encounter. When the desktop interface and "judgmental red pill" as I've seen it called began to interfere with my desktop work, I switched to mobile interface and stayed signed out of Google on the desktop, but still checked in a couple times a day. After the YouTube integration, around 70% of my contacts, old and new, had dropped off usage. I dripped down to checking in a couple times a week at that point, and began pruning the things I was following, as the frequent posters began to drown out my remaining peeps. My current state is quite low engagement.
On another arc, I was originally very involved in leaving feedback and brainstorming with other highly engaged early users in picking apart apparent problems and modeling suggestions. However over time it began to feel like that was nothing more than a theoretical exercise, as time and again new revisions and features just made things more difficult for me to use here. The feeling of joy from the apparent engagement of the development team with the users turned sour and began to feel like lip service out of one side of the mouth while the hands did something else entirely. Please note I am using the word "feel" to refer to emotional responses, not logic.
Thus in conclusion, I personally was already disengaged at many levels. The replacement of Vic actually allows me a moment of hope that the new leadership and team positioning might allow them to pivot priorities and deliver a more usable experience to people, bringing my peeps back and actually encouraging me to use this site and enable Google to collect that previously lost valuable ad targeting data we exchange for use of the platform. However I will wait and see what evidence develops before I place any bets.
+Angyl Bender I feel that an awful lot of people can identify with your experience. I know I can!
G+ was never about the bells and whistles. It was about the people. Google, and specifically +Vic Gundotra lost sight of that, and got carried away with their own cleverness. In doing so they broke a perfectly good tool.
Lets hope the new leadership can patch it back together again, and reclaim lost ground.
We, Google plus, won't accept to die.
It's our simple duty to haunt down Facebook and Twitter to the eternity. 😉
Nothing to add at this point other than to say this has evolved into one of the most rational and reasonable discussions on this topic I've seen anywhere. Glad I'm here!
+Russell Davison You get what you look for on Google plus. We have great communities for physics and cosmology, Science, cooking and food, modern agriculture besides the well known photography and technology communities.
I am a frequent user of Google+, here in Brazil. I do not understand that communities impair G+. I think it helps people to relate affinity. I hope improvements and the growth of this network. There will come a time when, who to call Google+ a ghost town will be branded a fool.
By the way, I'm using the Chewbacca avatar because I am attending an event Stars Wars with friends on G+.
+Mark Traphagen It has to do with the notification circle that +Max Huijgen has collected over time. We were missing him for nearly half an year of his sabbatical from the community. So much so many of us were worried something had befallen.
+Able Lawrence yes, I know. I was among those who missed him!
+Mark Traphagen this has evolved into one of the most rational and reasonable discussions
Oh well. I tried 😉
Definitely +Edward Morbius. This rational discussion, with 165 comments, truly shows social media students what G+ is all about.
hopefully this will make Google+ a social network of objectively and critically thinking people. +Sergey Andrianov
Personally, I prefer facts over speculation <>_I'll wait for some official news from I/O and/or Vic, instead of howling with the hounds._ +Lars Fosdal
Personally I agree with your statement, but marketeers will jump to the conclusion that G+ has been demoted.
Not only marketeers but business plans considering a G+ login, G+ commenting or other tie-ins will be rewritten.
All I do is analyze what little facts there are. Reassuring words from +Yonatan Zunger are not as good as a clear statement from the new leader. Waiting until June seems a corporate mistake to me.
Yes +Max Huijgen , a short and comforting statement from +Larry Page would be good if he said that G+ will be here, at least, till 2016.
+Larry Page já deu essa declaração quando compartilhou a postagem de despedida de +Vic Gundotra
I don't interpret +Vic Gundotra 's departure as being the message we seek from +Larry Page +Rivison Delmondes . Sorry.
I don't really care about the marketers, the things they do destroy my social media experience. So called social media 'experts', 'bloggers', marketers, 'ninjas' are the most useless overrated group I have ever seen.
Yes +Chris Robato , it is up to us, the users, to call someone an expert or guru . Only assholes give themselves the title expert !
I was referring to the people in charge of marketing budgets +Chris Robato, not the pundits.
+Max Huijgen – Google have never spent much energy on correcting speculations about any of their products, projects and plans.
IMO, that is a good thing.
It doesn't really matter what Google say, as – not exclusive to this particular debacle – the pundits and opinionists already have their minds made up and are riding the sensationalist train.
What will matter, is what Google executes and delivers.
Unfortunately, in general people have too short an attention span to remember who speculated wrongly, so when the new facts are out, the same pundits will make up new headlines:
Google fails to subdue social network – Forced to continue hosting civic discussions in ad-less environment.
Marketers are not important for Google+. Marketing on social media is as welcome as fleas to a dog. Google takes your information and uses it to more precisely target ads for you elsewhere.
+Edward Morbius a bit late, but:
+CircleCount Say: did you ever do a followup of the engagement measurements you posted in June of 2013 following the May "makeover"?
That was interesting data, and I don't believe I've seen anything further.
No, we haven't done an update on this, but it is a very good idea. This will take some time to analyze current data, but I'll check what we can do.
+CircleCount Thanks. I know I'd really like to see that, and by way of settling a bunch of "it's better now" or "it's worse" bar bets, there's nothing like actual data.
Another element that would be interesting to see would be general increases / decreases in activity among users — were there fall-offs at any given point in time. I see two trends: both abandoned accounts (still present on G+ but no traffic, say, +Xeni Jardin), content wipes such as +Rain Place and those which have vanished entirely, of whom I'd have to do some further digging (I actually thought Rain Place was one of those though it seems she's got a placeholder account).
+Lars Fosdal I just checked and Google does release statements when it feels it should correct press reports. Even those of Techcrunch…..
See http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/29/adsense-whistleblower/ but best is to google on "Google denies" (most defensive statement that can be made and no fun from aPR point of view, still it does so often
no doubt about it +Robert Pratt but I have had similar engagement on forums where I was active. Even a few thousand users can generate the kind of response one gets on G+.
ping +Alex Schleber
Very true +Max Huijgen and no social media platform dare tell the public about true active users. In the future, maybe …
+Max Huijgen – The TechCrunch example you provided shows that Google may respond to a direct inquiry – although TC didn't mention who made the statement.
The "Google denies" quotes appear to mostly accompany
– A named Google employee in an interview setting
– statements made in court of law
– Direct inquiries, frequently without a named source
You've already dismissed the first of these three, as you don't think they are in the know – while I see those as the most relevant, especially when we are talking about people who are among the top tier of the core teams.
Most of Google's issued public statements appear in one of their blogs.
http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/blog-directory.html#tab0
Again – time will show, so why waste time on speculation? If you have no faith in Google and Google+, why not simply move on?
I've noticed that on-line newspapers like the Guardian, Telegraph, and Daily Mail do have more engagement than G+. User numbers?
+Russell Davison Mainstream Media is its own thing, but it's a good point, G+ has not become an off-site "watering hole" the way that other social networks have managed via embedded comments. G+ was late to the dance on this.
+Russell Davison Google plus is more about interest graphs and people from certain interest graphs are well entrenched here. Where ever there is a vibrant alternative on facebook, things are surviving but even there, the respective communities would benefit from migrating here.
I am for example active in some India based Birding communities on Facebook. While there is a lot of engagement in those communities (the reason I am active there), the total number of +1s and other appreciation and viewership is more on Google+. The biggest problem in Facebook is the difficulty in finding your own posts later on. On G+, you can always find it by search
+John Blossom – Not only late. Threading and linkable comments would have helped too.
+Lars Fosdal Agreed. Too "keep it simple." I like a lot of things about G+, but it seems like anything that was too much like Google Wave got the axe.
+John Blossom – YouTube style with one extra thread level would be good enough for me. Linking is more important, to be able to refer into a discussion.
+Lars Fosdal We had it in Wave, of course…:-/
If only we could get Wave back …. +John Blossom
+Lars Fosdal It's not my personal mission to declare G+ dead. I actually came back to this platform. My analysis is 'as seen from outside by stakeholders'
+Max Huijgen G+ has "unrealized potential," let's put it that way. All that fussing around with Auto-Awesome doesn't seem to have really boosted the community as a whole. Probably necessary, but not sufficient.
Agree +John Blossom Check this thread https://plus.google.com/u/4/105103058358743760661/posts/hd8K62YyNDv and my comment (to which I still can't link while I recall a promise by another Googler over a year ago we would get that)
+John Blossom Wave was interesting, but felt construed – especially the realtime updating – and like an attempt to remake email. A good attempt as such, but I find myself often using G+ posts or Hangout messages where I earlier would use email. The asynchronous method of dialog works quite well, and both G+ and hangouts are great at keeping context over time.
+Max Huijgen I am happy to hear that. Define a Google+ stakeholder?
This Post was brought to you by Sociopath-Saturday.
+John Blossom G+ wasn't late to the off-site watering-hole dance so much as it poisoned the well, IMO, from the start and repeatedly. While success certainly isn't guaranteed, they had the early buzz, crowd, and interest (I and many others seeking Usenet 2.0). They simply executed with total fail. Or at least, sufficient fail to kill the prospect dead dead dead.
Reddit and Digg both emerged into worlds with thriving off-site watering holes (most notably at the time, Slashdot), and killed. Digg then committed its own fail. Reddit's going through some pains now mostly associated with the cultural aspects of the site: how it manages, allows, and polices moderators of significant subreddits, many of which have subscription, readership, and participation rates major national dailies would do very unseemly things for. See my recent G+ post or search DDG for "downgrade brigades reddit".
Which only highlights how much the problem domain space isn't technical but social. And Google utterly fails to execute on social: Orkut, Wave, Buzz, Plus, Glass. Hell, they can't even run a bus service without starting a riot. Check that. Multiple riots.
+John Blossom There are two things which kill technical interfaces. One is too many knobs and poor defaults — it takes too much fiddling to make things work (arguably still Linux's Achilles heel, and I say that as a 17 year daily desktop user and 25+ year Unix veteran). The other is too few knobs: an interface which isn't sufficiently rich for the domain space it inhabits. +Robert Scoble called out G+ from the very, very beginning for its lack of noise controls, and in three years (plus internal beta) that problem has not been addressed in the least. It's what he specifically cited in his Jan 2014 post stating why he'd transferred most of his activity back to Facebook (along with the fact that there's a there there, with people in it). Fighting crap G+ content remains a constant frustration of mine.
It's something of a problem on Diaspora (which also lacks for search), but I really don't rely on that much, I dip into it periodically. On reddit, I've got very powerful tools, largely in the form of topical segregation of content, but also ready dismissal tools, to cut through the BS to the solid content and comments.
Lack of a rich markdown, threading, link encoding, image and video dismissal (I'm currently flagging every last fucking animated gif as spam), and a filter to exclude links (I'd really like to be able to do on G+ what I can do on Google search: specify sites I never, ever, possibly am presented with: BuzzFeed, UpWorthy, etc.). Timeouts for annoying fucks. Tuning the annoyance, I mean, notification icon so that it doesn't pester me with stupid shit like spam invites and +1s, neither of which I care a rat's ass about.
Hell, that icon was just one more incentive to ditch G+ and Google generally as it followed me all over Google's fucking properties (a fact I've mentioned more than once in G+ feedback). Y'know, when I'm trying to get work done, I prefer to minimize my distractions.
Reddit's subtle little message/response indicator is far less intrusive.
+Edward Morbius Well, there were a lot of good ideas put out there when G+ launched, especially trying to create some sort of a reality-based community versus endless sock-puppetry, but I do think that they tried too hard to be the anti-Wave and focused way too much on design and not enough on core utility. The photo junk isn't a total loss – it's fun – but it's mostly a way to patch over the fact that G+ isn't that useful for surfacing and maintaining the most valuable content and conversations. I don't think that other social media networks are really any further ahead on that score, and to G+'s credit, they've avoided some of the worst extremes of inanity in other networks. But here we are, a few years in, and there's still no API suitable for apps development, which given their lack of ads would seem to be kinda an OK thing, you know.
It's sad that so many social media experts predicted the long game for G+, blew kisses to Google staff then … ran home back to Facebook!
+John Blossom There are definitely parts of G+ that are good. Hangouts is a multi-billion dollar free-standing opportunity at the least, it's just got to be divorced from Plus. Want to make it rocket? Drop the requirement for all meeting participants to be registered with Google, only require the organizer to be, and handle the rest through invites (and some sort of PKI majick).
The photo tools are pretty slick. The inline translate is fucking genius. The search functionality is crippled to the point of uselessness in terms of syntax, but its scope and speed are exemplary. The site UI/UX stink, but the underlying page structure is sane — now drop the DOM on a diet of 50-90% so that it doesn't consume 1-2GB per tab and pig out the desktop (if Google performed locally as it does on its backend it would rock). The engagement supported by the nag indicator when it's for responses to posts and the ability to compose a quick reply (after 2.5 years of fucking up and losing several billion War & Peace's worth of text to suddenly-disappeared editor dialogs) is not bad.
Honestly, a "back to the drawing board" wouldn't be a bad thing. Start with those.
Scrap Circles. Create content/context-based flows. Add threading. Add comment links. Provide real filters. Provide timeouts (shut this user the fuck up for ### time). Rip out the crap markup and install a Markdown library as I told +Yonatan Zunger to do years ago. Disaggregate G+ from other Google services. Scrap Communities and start over with real moderation tools (included for users' own streams as well), up and downvotes, and the ability to follow people's Community posts specifically. Engineer in privacy, content deletion, content export (already there, another good one for Google), and total identity separation from the start. Put user-channel selection tools front and center (the stuff you've now got to dig through multiple menus and/or screens to get to now: streams, communities), and move the site-centric crap (what's on the current LH menu) deeper down — the 1st or 2nd G+ UI rev actually had this right. Beef up the search syntax with author, date, content type (post, comment, community page), hell, just rip off reddit's search syntax (and maybe give them gratis comment indexing as recompense). Put user moderation tools directly on the fuck-ass annoying user cards rather than buried under an invisible inverted caret on the user's Profile page. Provide real stats to users on the engagement they've got with other users and/or pages — again, reddit has a lot to borrow from here. Round up whoever specified and designed both the existing Circles management and Blocked / Muted user management interfaces and run the gamut of medieval torture methods on them. And use the bloodied disembodied head of Vic Gundotra as the site's logo.
Make the site something people want to use rather than are forced to use, and listen to the key engagers from the start. Realize that once you spin something out in the world, it takes on its life, not yours.
+Russell Davison Yes, I'm shocked, shocked I tell you that marketroids are all talk and no commitment. Flash and no substance. A complete stunner, I say.
+Edward Morbius Great points, some of the suggested changes are definitely on the not-gonna-happen list, but you drive it home – Performance issues are now pretty critical, Circles haven't really solved the "public hits my parents" problem elegantly, discovery is limited, and channels of some kind are a must. Even with that said, though, it's a very good platform waiting to become awesome. All in time.
+Edward Morbius for VP of Social
+Catherine Maguire It's ALWAYS about the cat…
+Max Huijgen Thank you kindly for the recommendation, sir, but the position I'm gunning at is the VP of Anti-Social.
+John Blossom If they don't at least go with my logo concept, there's no chance in hell I'll buy it.
Your logo concept? +Edward Morbius
+Max Huijgen Tail end of my long post 😉
Ah, my bad +Edward Morbius I actually read all your comments, but didn't make the connection with a 'logo concept' 😉
+Max Huijgen It's … something of a headliner.
+Lars Fosdal many people and businesses are stakeholders. Take these 5000 http://www.circlecount.com/profileslist/ and these 5000 http://www.circlecount.com/pages/for a start.
Here's a thought. Generate tag clouds for users and pages – yeah the autotagging isn't perfect but it is surprisingly decent. Let people inclined to do so subscribe to user+tag using sliders. Deliver anonymized metrics to user – what tags people are subscribed to and interacting with. This incentivizes user to try out different topics and focus on what their audience shows interest in. Special sauce under the hood like fb to tune user+tag subs when not specified, (assumed typical case) but also explicit control for those that like it, use the explicit data to sanity check the auto guessing. Iterate that for 6mos. Boom, something innovative that also generates amazing interest graph data.
+Angyl Bender Metrics for both topic and quality, and selectors for both, would be very interesting. What G+ lacks is a way to indicate negative interest (I've taken to simply flagging stuff as spam — it's the only way I can be assured of never being bothered by it again, other than blocking the user). Yes, I'm aware it's abuse of a feature, but, well, I've had the "overly simplified UI argument" either here or in a related thread in the past day or so ….
Let me indicate that high-quality content of specified topics / keywords from a user is of interest, and include or exclude specific content types (images, gifs, and videos, generally), and we're making progress.
We have had this discussion with our overlords at Google but they were opposed to any form of 'dislike' / downvoting. Unfortunately +Edward Morbius The idea being it was all about a 'positive atmosphere'
No wonder the Googlies got rewarded by putting them on the SUL showing reinforcement for positive news. Same for What's hot.
The net effect is that G+ is for Google lovers.
Everyone who invested in this network is tied into it.
horse? Where +Catherine Maguire
+Max Huijgen If they don't want negatives, they could simply frame the question as a scale: do you like this a little or a lot. Truth is: if it's only a little, it means I really don't like it.
But I'm seriously -1 on the +1.
Tuning down #caturday on a slider would be a great way of expressing a negative without the social problems of downvoting.
Lol! I'm more a #doge person.
Dear +Max Huijgen again an interesting view on this topic. But what I dont understand, and perhaps you can help or explain to me, is why there is only information and/ or speculations about +VicGundotra and G+ from OUTSIDE Google? Where can we find official information? #WhoDoYouTrust #authorship
+Max Huijgen To respond to your question "How do you feel about G+ after the change in leadership"…
That depends upon whether that personnel change results in changes in features or management practices. Change provides opportunity for improvement. Every site has advantages, drawbacks, threats and opportunities. It's too early to tell whether Google will identify their current strengths weaknesses, opportunities and threats correctly, and what changes they might implement to address them.
I do think that you've identified one of the major weaknesses of the culture cultivated on G+ by management:
"No wonder the Googlies got rewarded by putting them on the SUL showing reinforcement for positive news. Same for What's hot.
The net effect is that G+ is for Google lovers."
The world is bigger than Google, and Google makes itself smaller when it allows technology religion to define or even color interaction on the site. Historically, G+ management has prioritized and promoted people who rabidly and aggressively support anything and everything Google. Hey, I love Google too, but I happen to need an app or two that only run on an iPhone, and I like the camera quality and accessory lenses designed for my iPhone 5S. Does that mean that I'm pre-destined to be "out" on G+? To many G+ users it sure feels that way. So cut off the half of smart phone users on Apple. Don't use the Chrome browser? Cut those users out. Don't use Google Web apps or a Chromebook? Reward users who give people the impression that this is a small-minded place, and the user base starts to get really small.
Early on G+ felt neutral. G+ thrived. When it became biased and rewarded technology religion (and the "burn the heretics" approach of true Google disciples), G+ didn't thrive.
Does a slight change in top management and the shifting of engineers signal a shift in that basic policy? Given that many engineers were allegedly transferred to Android, maybe not.
Google's too powerful and important to ignore, so a strategic toe in the water of G+ is probably a useful thing to maintain. I've been in that sort of "wait and see" mode since mid-2012, when the major problems implemented in September 2011 were simply buried behind an internal dashboard with a new set of controls instead of addressed. The technology has been great, but the application of it has left a lot to be desired. It doesn't seem like the folks within Google have been able to identify or address what's been holding them back. Perhaps that will change with a new captain at the helm. As always, I'm guardedly optimistic, but like most users I won't hold my breath for months or years for long-needed changes which could literally take minutes.
Yip +Jeff Sullivan (and hi 🙂 when G+ was almost overwhelmed by people being excited about a minor release of Android (remember Kit Kat) I really felt out of place. Mind you these were not techies, but ordinary users being excited without knowing about what.
I intended to make a post when KK whas finally released asking people if they still felt the world had changed now that they had a transparent bar on their phone.
The 'cult of love' is much older than Kit Kat, but it undermines G+ as a thriving platform. The 'incestuous circles' sharing the Google love contributed to the success of the participants on this platform, but distorted reality. We now have a clan of people with an enormous vested interested in G+ with numbers of followers which are completely off the mark. They would never get a similar following on other social media.
By using the "SUL" and 'recommended for you" Google used a powerful weapon to stimulate inbreeding.
I doubt things will change now that the second in command takes over.
+Jeroen Olthof there have been two 'official' statements by Larry Page and Vic Gundotra (both on G+).
The recent +TechCrunch article by +Danny Crichton was fascinating in that it seemed to help spawn and support the mini "Google is dead" meme when Vic mentioned his departure:
A Personal Reflection On Google+
http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/25/a-personal-reflection-on-google/
But that article is mostly about internal politics. It makes for a fascinating read, but none of it really seems to touch on why G+ would thrive or not.
G+ has had some users for years now, does Google really know why? Does it know why many new users didn't stick? I'd observe that it hasn't fixed onboarding rates for three years now, so clearly no, onboarding issues were not well understood or addressed. That same hindsight can be applied to a myriad of G+ challenges, and that process of introspection could result in new opportunities for growth. Will +Dave Besbris fully exercise this opportunity for a comprehensive analysis and at least partial reset? Fortunately he has bought some time before people will expect strong hints at where things are going, so anything is possible.
Facebook thrived without YouTube users or comments. Trying to relate the success or failure of G+ to other Google products avoids a complete discussion of challenges than a summary of them, no matter how much in the face of the engineers and managers such desired integration with other Google products may have been.
I do appreciate the glimpse into internal company politics in the article, so I don't mean to imply that such a view attempted to completely cover the topic or intentionally avoids the rest, but at the end of the day integration is a convenience, not a strategic imperative. There's ample opportunity for a site like G+ to succeed without integration if it is truly appealing to users. On a social site appeal includes form (behavior, tone) as well as function (technology).
Most of the articles have suggested that G+ is collapsing into Google's captive technologies and user base. I'd be surprised if people within Google suddenly display such an uncharacteristic lack of ambition, so I suspect that +Yonatan Zunger's responses to those articles are much closer to on the mark. We never quite know where G+ will go next, but at least within Google the goals and trajectory appear to point in a direction far from G+ being a "dead" site, to be populated mainly by "Android zombies".
As an aside: Danny Crichton served as an Associate Product Manager Intern developing the search feature of Google+ between June and August of 2011. made the piece less convincing…
+Max Huijgen I saw that; I mainly mentioned the article to point out that while it has been referred to in some articles (as if it justifies a proclamation of G+ as "dead' or full of "zombies"), a discussion of Google politics may indicate what some people had to deal with, but it doesn't really get to the meat of why G+ would thrive or not.
Sure +Jeff Sullivan was just an aside. Your comment still stands. I'm thinking about an answer.
+Tim Southernwood
Sure ain't dead in my circles!
Just occurred to me. How much influence did Vic G have on the closing of Google Reader? I've been unable to find much comment about this although Wikipedia does suggest he was responsible for killing sharing within Reader a few months before it closed down.
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