"Instead, Google+ is a social layer that has always been intended to sit on top of the company’s flagship product: search."
Flash back to an anonymous Stanford office, circa 1996, where two ambitious graduate students are sitting in front of a pile of lego servers:
Larry: "Hey Sergey...you know what the world needs? A place where people can share cat photos with their friends."
Sergey: "Oh, Larry...how many times have I dreamed of such a thing!?!? But...how will we get people to join our site if nobody is already sharing cat photos?"
Larry: (thinks for a moment) "I've got it, Sergey! We'll create a search engine! Once we gain market dominance, we can use our captive audience to build our social network!"
That would seem to be true, as thinking otherwise is quite foolish of course. However, the very next paragraph is:
"Sure, Google hopes to build a social network that competes with Facebook, Twitter and other social services, but that is not the main reason the company has put so many resources behind Google+. Instead, Google+ is a social layer that has always been intended to sit on top of the company’s flagship product: search."
What? "Google+ is a social layer that has always been intended to sit on top of the company's flagship product: search" just exactly as long as they decided to "build a social network that competes with Facebook, Twitter and other social services". He is somehow trying to sleight-of-hand away the causal relationship here. If Google+ fails to rival Facebook and Twitter as a social network, it might still turn out ok somehow, but it will doubtlessly be considered a failure internally and externally.
This is a bit far afield. The most likely prospect for G+ is that it becomes a social network for the more technically inclined while Facebook remains the social network for all -- a bit like the differentiation between reddit and digg. The main reason is not something great that Google is doing, however, but the immense dislike that many have for Facebook. Facebook, of course, is sucking in all data it can get access to regardless of whether it has any legitimate reason to take that data and, despite willful violation of data protection laws, is likely to remain above the law like many other protected parties.
I think the long term hope is that Google+ might become something like Gmail is to Outlook. G+ is the innovative, feature-driven, technologically saavy option, whereas even if more people use the "Outlook" option today, because of the technological advances attached to the "Gmail" option, people will transition to it over time.
That said, I think that is the best possible option and I don't have any reason to think that G+ is really delivering in any meaningful way on these hopes. Let's see if they actually can stay one technological step ahead of Facebook. Some better APIs would be nice...
The problem with your assertion is that a lot of technically inclined people know a lot of other people and want to interact with them socially. It's Facebook's most powerful and most difficult to overcome feature: all your friends are already on it.
To me, the only truly viable way for Google to combat that is to create a truly open, federated collection of social networks that can interoperate, by releasing the underlying code to G+ the way they did with Wave, or the way email works.
It would enable Diaspora, identica, etc. to become full-fledged social networks, and all still be viable because they could talk to each other, as well as talk to G+. Don't trust Google or any other company? Host your own Plus server. Companies could host their own internal Plus platforms.
I can't imagine that Google can fight the closed platform of Facebook with another closed platform, and the open web has always been its symbiotic ally.
a lot of technically inclined people know a
lot of other people and want to interact with
them socially
I remember a time when Facebook was the gathering place for technically inclined people, while normal people would hang out on MySpace or Hi5. I also remember a time when Apple products were reserved for professionals doing either creative work or software development. And speaking of Google, I also remember a time when Yahoo and AltaVista were used by normal people, while people with in-knowledge would quietly type "google.com" in the address bar.
For me, I never liked MySpace or the copycat Hi5 because noise, eye-bleeding page customizations and idiotic comments were actively encouraged and I couldn't stand it. Then Facebook came with a cleaner design and (initially) a more well-behaved audience and so I was hooked. But now that initial advantage is gone, the masses found out about it, so half of my news feed is filled with invites to idiotic games or stupid jokes and I don't have the patience to block them all (on the other hand Google+ has a spam problem already).
The reality is that technically inclined people are the trend setters when it comes to technology, not the other way around.
I remember those times, too, but MySpace never had the sheer ubiquity that Facebook has. It feel qualitatively different to me, in that I never felt like I was out of the loop or unable to communicate with certain people or excluded from certain conversations because I wasn't on MySpace. That was partly because I could see people's MySpace pages (not that I frequently wanted to) without having an account, unlike Facebook.
Yes, the technical elite from MySpace eventually moved to FB, but more importantly, FB got a ton of users that were never on MS. I don't think Google can do the same to FB, because there just aren't that many people that aren't on FB. They have to actively court current FB users. Stealing the technical crowd is relatively easy. But FB's network effect is unprecedented and represents a much bigger challenge, IMO.
Generally speaking I agree, but Google screwed up Wave so badly that the lead developer went to work for Facebook; any developer that was in the community or building products for Wave was also so badly screwed I think they'll never work with or for Google again (Full disclosure: I was among them).
I think this needs a new company. Anyone interested?
It's more like the lead developer screwed up with Wave so badly that he lost all credibility and had to leave. Google gave him all resources he asked for and he produced a shitty overhyped product.
That's fair, but I don't know who has the intersection of Google's clout and incentives. Google's the only powerful force that has the incentive to fight for an open web, as opposed to a collection of closed silos.
My not-so-secret hope is that the lesson Google took from the Wave debacle was to first focus on making a product that's compelling and engaging to users, get a critical mass of adoption, and then release the code. I guy can dream, can't he?
It is ultimately not about clout and incentives; it is about drive. It is just like when a lot of people know what the right thing is to do but are too short sighted to pursue it (wasn't Google just trying to acquire Zynga, for example).
I would agree if they innovate and Facebook doesn't. One thing preventing mass adoption will always be the clumsiness of Google's UI compared to Facebook.
It's interesting you're mentioning reddit. In my personal use, G+ actually started competing with with reddit.
G+'s what's hot section resembles pretty much the image subreddit at this point content-wise, but the browsing experience is better since most content is displayed inline and I can easily navigate it with j/k.
Now they just have to figure out how you can get hot content for certain categories. Of course it's missing the anonymity of the reddit community, so the content will probably never be on par.
I really like G+, but I'm a bit dismayed that they seem to be addressing the concerns of brands over those of users.
The nymwars was a prominent example, of course, and even the resulting promise of pseudonymity features have yet to surface, while Pages for brands are now live.
The lack of an outward facing platform of APIs is also concerning. I continue to hope that the Plus project is the beginning of a way to implement social features into the web itself. I hope that Google doesn't forget that as the web gets better, Google gets better, and as people use the web more, people use Google more.
Give it some time. Likely Pages is dead simple to implement compared to pseudonymity. Possibly it was made by "secondary" team while the main tackles the pseudonymity.
G+ has not been live that long. Let it grow and evolve.
They could implement pseudonyms RIGHT NOW. All they have to do is stop paying people to harass their users. They can pay a lawyer to change the policy document later.
The reason for the delay is not because it's difficult to implement "not caring what people call themselves", but because it's difficult to implement some craptastic "you can call yourself what you like as long as we know who you are" bullshit.
Maybe you're right. But it's not just Pages. It's also stuff like Ripples, +1 integration with web sites, badgets, etc. These rollouts all seem to point to a prioritization of brands over users.
But I like what they are doing with the +1 button, or with the customized search results. I think it's pretty cool experimenting with my own blog / trying to stand out in the search results and it's also pretty cool seeing your face in that list :) -- not that I want to earn any money from it or whatever.
Google's direction is pretty clear to me. They are giving people the tools to promote themselves online. This is not necessarily a bad thing, although the nymwars left a bad taste in my mouth that I hope they'll rectify.
I think that makes you not really a regular user. Don't get me wrong, I think it's fine that Google is providing tools for self-promotion and features for brands. But it seems to me that the best feature for brands is a lot of engaged users.
The reason Google search ads have a stranglehold on the market is because they have so much search marketshare. Similarly, it seems to me that the best thing to do would be to aggressively provide users with the best experience possible. The brands will follow, regardless of how good their tools are.
This is true, actually. Pages seem to act exactly like regular user profiles other than the intention to have an associated brand instead of an associated person, and Google+ engineers have been posting that anyone can create a page (it just might not get the "confirmed name" checkbox by its name). So you could effectively set up a page with whatever name you want and use that as your pseudonymous profile on G+.
That won't work, because Pages can't add people to their circles until they've added the page. It'd be pretty hard to maintain a social network that way.
Now, you can come up with all the creative ideas in the world about how G+ is not supposed to be a facebook killer. I believe that is a cop out.
Google really wants to kill facebook and hoped to make a dent with G+. Why is it hard to acknowledge that they haven't made any noticeable dent? And that for the most part, facebook was very quick to address the granular privacy features that made G+ somewhat interesting.
You can already see how Google+ is being integrated into the company’s entire product line. The +1 button is visible on every YouTube video and search results page, and it is even on single images from the site’s visual search. Earlier this week, Google began offering Google+ pages for businesses, too.
Very classic error: assuming development/integration equal traction. Yes, google can slap +1 button on every darn page. And of course a bunch of people might click on it. The billion dollar question is what longterm benefit does G+ deliver to its users? Is there any? Engagement metrics usually answer this question. But Google won't release engagement metrics. Guess away as to why...
I respectfully disagree. Was your expectation that G+'s user-base would eclipse FB after 5 months? I don't think that's realistic (really going out on a limb here). By that metric you could have said the same thing about FB in the early days when MySpace had all the users. Clearly, over time, people moved to the better product.
If you want to comment on the rate of adoption, that's one thing, but lets compare apples to apples.
I don't care about the user-base numbers. All I care about is engagement. Facebook had crazy engagement even when they had 1000 members. When they had 10M, over 50% of the users were logging in daily. Google now has 40M users and yet they refuse to release engagement numbers.
Facebook had great engagement early on because all the early users were in the same social circles. Wouldn't surprise me at all that 1000 users at the same college as me would result in more usage as opposed to 40 million users scattered across the world.
I chalk that up as a deadly blunder on Google's part.
No one forced google to just open up G+ to the entire world. I feel they botched the launch of G+ by allowing scattered masses to join instead of totally nailing smaller groups like how Facebook did.
I think they nailed a single group, the already fairly well connected tech and startups people. This also dragged along those interested in these people although they get less value from it as it's more of a Twitter like following medium unless lots of people are putting you in their circles.
Google certainly have the resources to nail more smaller groups, it's just not the way they operate as this doesn't scale well.
I disagree that they have nailed any group. For me, nailing a group would mean that group ditching their competitor. Yet, I can't name a single Valley friend of hundreds who has ditched facebook for Google+. Now, I can name you dozens who have a G+ account and have tinkered with it. But that is hardly "nailing" it.
I think you actually nailed it: google doesn't know how to scale social because social doesn't scale the same way as most other products. Facebook scaled growth in a very methodical manner from university to university and later country to country.
Actually, Google+ is doing fairly well among bloggers, especially tech bloggers. Some references: [1] [2].
Also, success of a product does not mean ditching competitors (although one of the report does even suggest that!), it means gaining sufficient acceptance initially, so that later it becomes a valid option to ditch competitors.
For example: I was an Orkut user (was not happy with it) for quite a long time (1 year or so), even after joining facebook. Not because Facebook was not good or successful but because there was already some engagement at Orkut that cannot be replaced in a jiffy.
Actually, Google+ is doing fairly well among bloggers, especially tech bloggers. Some references: [1] [2].
Sorry, tech bloggers is a vastly different segment than tech users. Neither are optimal groups to target if you want to build a mainstream social network.
I am not following. So if a site has 10 or 1000 users who are all engaged (maybe a community soccer forum or something), it's a success, but if it has 40M+ with an engagement that is unknown, it's dead? I am not convinced.
IMO, you can't simply disregard user-base and growth speed. Those numbers matter.
This discussion is specifically about facebook vs. G+; not a random site with 1,000 users.
We know that both sites have achieved significant user-base. We also know that one of those sites has crazy engagement and that it's had crazy engagement for a long time. That site is facebook. We know that the other site has 40+M members but publishes no engagement metrics and when pushed, avoids questions about engagement. It is not a stretch to assume from this that their engagement is not optimal. It is safe to say that facebook wins the engagement war.
The common counterargument is "but G+ only launched few months ago." To this, I counter that few months into facebook's launch, their engagement was very high.
The next common argument is that "but G+ got 40M+ members in few months." To this I say that the 40+M number says very little about G+ and says much about the Google search engine. As an example, I'd argue Google can launch a fictitious service and get tens of millions of signups for it by linking to it from google.com.
Here's a guess: engagement metrics of a 4.5 month old site are pretty pointless. And since Google+ is clearly not in the Facebook ballpark of usage, it would only reflect badly on Google. So why should Google release them? If you think not reaching Facebook-like status or denting Facebook in 4.5 months means Google+ is dead as a Facebook competitor, what could have Google done in that amount of time that would have made them a competitor in your eyes?
But there's another factor at play here. Many of Facebook's early users didn't have anything else to engage with -- facebook filled a hole. That's not the case with G+: most users already have facebook so they're trying to
So like Kylekramer mentioned: G+ engagement might be lower (and that's why they're not releasing figures) but engagement for an early stage social network competing against a dominant product is not a good metric of long term product quality. Users will choose the better product, over time.
but engagement for an early stage social network competing against a dominant product is not a good metric of long term product quality
Absolutely disagree. I think user growth metrics is a bad metric for a new product but engagement is the perfect metric when gauging product quality.
A large media campaign can pump up registrations--just like linking to G+ from the google.com homepage did. But it won't pump up engagement.
In contrast, organic growth like facebook's early days means smaller user-base but if the product is good, more engagement than the competitor. And let's not forget, in 2006 no one in the Valley or media was talking much about facebook. It was all about celebrating MySpace.
While I think that's true, my point is that product quality in the long run isn't best represented by engagement now because Facebook is already soaking up all the engagement. Engagement is not going to grow quickly when you have two very similar products, one which has almost complete dominance, and a new one.
And, yes, in 2006 Facebook was the underdog compared to Myspace but had high engagement levels, but at that point not everyone had a Myspace. There was plenty of people who have never used a social network before. Whereas today, everyone has a Facebook.
So engagement shift from Facebook to G+ (if it happens eventually) will be very slow at first, but I think that in the long run, people will choose the better product.
That is like saying google.com when it launched should have had low engagement because there was also yahoo.com as the dominant player. It makes no sense. Google.com had crazy engagement because the product rocked. It did have a gradual growth because it took a while for people to hear about it but when they did try it, they got glued. Same with facebook.
I simply don't see many people getting glued to google+. Now you can argue that it's because not a lot of people are on it to which I counter that 40+M people are on it; way more than enough for a good product to score engagement.
You can also argue that 40+M members are too isolated groups, to which I say who's fault is that? A big part of doing social is having a growth and engagement strategy. The only strategy google seemed to have is to slap a G+ signup button on their homepage. All that has done is deliver false signs of success.
Users will choose the product all their friends use over time. That's the nature of this market. At this stage, almost any growth for G+ is impressive.
Seems like another classic error is arguing from insufficient evidence. In 2006 you probably would have argued that "Facebook as a competitor to Myspace is dead." too, no?
For that matter, Myspace failed to kill facebook too. But they're still around and reasonably successful.
Why does it matter so much who kills who? If you don't like G+, don't use it. If your friends are there, join in. If you don't like their policies about privacy or whatnot, then make that case.
Quite the opposite =) I have links to my comments on venturebeat in 2006 saying how MySpace is going to die and facebook is the big thing that no one in the Valley seems to know about.
It wasn't that people were attacking facebook's engagement 5 years ago; it was that very few people in the Valley even knew about facebook because they were lost in the myspace hype and couldn't join facebook due to the .edu requirement.
That's ridiculous. You're talking about the company that has Chrome, Gmail, Android, and Google.com. Any one of those could potentially spark Google+ in time. And it's not like Facebook is infallible.
The article is ridiculous on the face of it. "Proclaiming that Google+ won’t survive is like saying that the Apple mobile iOS operating system will die, but the iPhone and iPad will live on" -- a better analogy is "Proclaiming that Google+ won’t survive is like saying that MacOS will die, but the Mac will live on". Except that this _did_ happen.
If Google+ fails, Google can let it die, and slowly remove all the places where it has intruded into search. Or Google+ can fail, and Google can decide to drag the whole company down with it, by trading all of their goodwill and usefulness to drive people to their social network. But claiming that they are forced to do the latter is stupid.
If this was Microsoft, I'd fully expect them to keep hammering away for years and dump as much money as it took for them to own the market, but Google has institutional ADHD.
If they don't outright kill it after three years of it not making them any serious money, I fully expect them to abandon it with only minor updates for some other shiny and new product.
It does seem to have slow uptake, but it has a long-game feel to it - doing it right slowly is probably the right move.
They should just buy Twitter and merge it in by allowing aliases.
I'm really warming to Google - very impressed with the way they've re-skinned and consolidated their product set - it feels like they've crossed a bridge that Microsoft couldn't.
> I'm really warming to Google - very impressed with the way they've re-skinned and consolidated their product set - it feels like they've crossed a bridge that Microsoft couldn't.
Google Apps users still feel second-class, but seems that at long lasts, after years of failed promises they are getting around to fixing this.
it's my understanding that google+ does not need to be a breakout social media phenomenon to be successful. google already has a ton of very successful social products, the + initiative is gradually integrating those product's social features under a common interface.
picasaweb, for example, is a huge photo sharing network with tons of users. blogger is a huge social network with tons of users. youtube is a huge video sharing network with tons of users. google already has those users. that's the core of their social business. just because people aren't writing public 'wall' posts, doesn't mean g+ is dead. despite how similar it looks to facebook on the surface, the core of google's social business is very much not facebook.
It's not just business use alone that matters for Google, they are a complete productivity/life suite. Facebook fails miserably at this.
Enter the realm of Facebook and what do you accomplish, you add friends, like something, and look at photos, essentially nothing, a closed experience that ignores much of the internet as a whole delivered through an unusable interface (does anyone else feels like facebook has a b-rated windows 95 feel to it?). Seriously, try to find apps in Facebook vs. finding apps in Chrome Web Store. I understand the numbers behind it, but AOL was cool at one time too.
Google you have everything you need to help you be productive and useful. Amazing integration across all platforms, mobile phones, google docs, chat, news, reader(quit whining about the redesign) and discovery (google +, seriously video chat in hangouts thats pretty and easy to use, why do I need Citrix?). If your against the thought that google + can be successful and aide you in having a better social user experience online, then I'll let you get back your USWeekly and you can keep joining your "Kim Kardashian Support" groups on Facebook.
Google is the company that Microsoft failed(fails?) to be. Sure they don't make pretty iphones, but they make real, usable products.
This is a pretty good assessment. I could see G+ gaining traction as a work network a la yammer but that probably isn't a big enough prize for Google to bet the company on.
I've found its starting to get hard to analyze some Google products and their likelihood of survival when it comes to Google. In my case its when I get questions about the GoogleTV. If it were any other company I'd say "yeah that product is dead" but its not any company. Its Google, who has 40B dollars in cash reserves. They have an unprecedented ability to continue to develop products which are "flops" if they continue to see a strategic advantage to being involved in the space. With the amount of financial runway, and human intelligence Google can provide to a product - its hard to see any of them continuing to fail indefinitely.
I already discover most new content via Facebook and the only missing piece is search. If Facebook builds a search engine and integrates within its core experience sooner than Google takes to get G+ to work and scale, it would be a good indication of who might eventually win. From the social perspective, Facebook already has the mental association at a massive scale that may be tough for G+ to get to, especially considering Google is perceived to be "more utility than fun" across its user base.
I think the integration of G+ in the core of Android will do wonders for its adoption. Suddenly the millions of users with Android devices have an incentive to begin using G+.
I don't think Google+ should be trying to compete with Facebook and Twitter in the traditional sense of the word. Just because a website fits into a niche of companies under the broad heading, "Social Network" doesn't mean that it has the same intentions as its other incumbents. Facebook more or less eradicated MySpace because it was a case of two websites being too similar in function, and Facebook was simply superior. Twitter and Facebook coexist without one or the other being eliminated because they don't directly compete - Twitter is useful for different functions that Facebook doesn't accomplish; but neither does Facebook or Twitter try to accomplish the other's specialties. While I agree that some competition is needed to expand user base and continually maintain attractive and trending features, it would be better for the social networks to specialize. A website like Facebook could never defeat Facebook - it has a de facto monopoly on vicarious, virtual socializing.
That said, you don't really go on Facebook to announce something to the world unless you have a really popular "Page" (as opposed to profile). You sign up for Twitter and tell your followers what the update is. It's much more professional for a working environment. Facebook is personal. I feel Google+ fits somewhere in between these two dichotomies right now, which is why it feels somewhat awkward for a lot of users. But I think it's still a very good network that has potential to specialize into something neither Facebook or Twitter quite accomplish yet. If it can create its own niche within a niche, competition won't be as important as maintaining its own superlative market share for specialized functioning. Otherwise, it will die out, because directly competing with Facebook will not work at this point in time.
By logging in, your search results leverage your profile information and connections. I guess a pretty strong "nudge" would simply be to aggressive promote that when you're not logged in.
Not to hijack this thread, but no wonder Google+ isn't going away when they invite your work contacts and everyone else without warning you first. See this thread on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3219443
Whether G+ is dead or not, or if it will be killed as a product in 1 year or 5 is not entirely clear. What is sure is that Google is adding social to all of their products in the form of +1 buttons. So even if G+ is shut down like Google Buzz, Google is betting on social.
I'll be happy with Google+ if it better connects all of the various apps in the Google eco-system like GMail, Apps, etc.
Right now its such a pain to invite people via email addresses in Google Docs and Calendar. I should just be able to type in peoples' names and it just works.
In terms of the average quality of their content, G+ : FB :: HN : /. That's just my experience, and YMMV, but if it's globally true then I expect G+ to win in the long run.
> a social network for the more technically inclined
I wouldn't be making many bets on that premise. It's a clearly defined reaction to Facebook designed and built by engineers lacking the empathy gene. Facebook defines relationships and has impact beyond what the user reads on the screen. G+ has none of that and is already being abandoned by early adopters.
I know google won't kill it for a long time, but in most ways it is going away since no one is using it. Then hopefully one day they'll finally admit failure and it will go the way of google buzz.
After listening to the zuck talk about facebook as a platform and the owner of the graph, I'm developing this scary feeling that it is going to be imposible for anyone else to break into that space.
Flash back to an anonymous Stanford office, circa 1996, where two ambitious graduate students are sitting in front of a pile of lego servers:
Larry: "Hey Sergey...you know what the world needs? A place where people can share cat photos with their friends."
Sergey: "Oh, Larry...how many times have I dreamed of such a thing!?!? But...how will we get people to join our site if nobody is already sharing cat photos?"
Larry: (thinks for a moment) "I've got it, Sergey! We'll create a search engine! Once we gain market dominance, we can use our captive audience to build our social network!"
Sergey: "Brilliant! They'll never see it coming!"
...