The One Google Plus Feature Facebook Should Fear
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I especially like default use of groups and how it forces users to think about privacy from the get go. This is very different from my FB experience years ago and why I quit using FB.
Unlike Microsoft's control of the desktop, people choose to use Google everyday. It would be so very very easy to switch to Bing tomorrow (even easier than choosing not to use Facebook!) but people have chosen not to switch.
Just because you have a lot of marketshare doesn't mean you are a monopoly.
It's also quite easy to say that consumers will benefit from the increased competition with Facebook. This is what anti-trust tries to promote, not restrict.
I am not saying it's a good situation, just that that's reality.
MS had a set of legal contracts which gave them total control over PC distribution and pre-installed software. (And, they even had deals with their main competitors, Apple and IBM.) That was a much lower bar and easier for the government to make their case. In fact, the IE "tying" case was ultimately tossed out.
If anything, Google probably has more potential Antitrust issues in their relationship with Android handset makers than they do cross-promoting products on the web.
Tying laws, and antitrust broadly are a way for regulators to forcibly dictate what companies create. As stated above what's really revolting is this typically comes as a result of competitors lobbying to cripple the top player in the industry.
I assume that Bing also offers free e-mail with as many features, a calendar system, an equivalent of Google Reader, etc? Unless it can deliver all of that, it wouldn't be a very easy switch for me - whereas ditching Facebook is literally something I contemplate every time I access it and see the crap that's on my feed.
But all these Google products are hard to switch from because they are kick-ass. It's hard for me to switch away, not because Google has me trapped, but because the competition sucks.
You can export all your data from Google and import it wherever you want. I did so with Google Reader (since you mentioned), but I came back to it since it's better than any desktop client I tried.
But this doesn't mean Google has lock-in, unless you extend the definition to include "being better than the competition" and that shouldn't trigger antitrust regulation; and if it did, you could say that the system is terribly broken.
It's very frustrating. I love the ideas in Google+ and want to use it, but I've got no ability to share or add friends.
Basically add everyone you want to circles and make a post. They'll likely get through the invite within a day or less based on my current experience.
It got even better once i realized that because of the way circles work, this kind of feeling might actually be preserved without much effort on my behalf.
I had to give up the site because I have to keep those lives separate for my own sanity.
I have a more thorough explanation here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2714333
I think the real problem is that there's no easy mental model for the way information flows through the system. That's what metaphors are for. A "Circle" is not a metaphor. It's just a brand.
So what if they use + the same way. Ignore them, move them to a quieter circle. And for their benefit, it defaults to a more protective privacy setting than Facebook, especially for pictures.
I don't think Circles intends to aid in setting social context for other people. It's intended to help the sharer set context for who will see their content. Google is betting that people will share more information if they can limit it to the right groups of people.
As a commenter on this content, I don't get to reset the context or modify it. I can either trust the initial poster's choice or I can dig in further. The mental model is pretty simple: I trust the poster or I take a look around the room and see who else is there. I think when people do dig in further, they will either see a small group of people that they recognize or a large group of people which will set them in "public" context mode for commenting.
The invite-only, throttled approach worked for GMail because you could use it to talk to people who aren't on GMail. Facebook's gradual launch worked because entire social networks (universities) could join at once. Wave and Google+, however, were/are worthless in closed beta.
It's because Google+'s social signal to noise ratio is so much higher than Facebook. I dread the red notifications in FB's upper left corner bc they're usually from some friend of friend's irrelevant spam event/survey/tagging etc. Google+ Circles really filters thats out.
Facebook's mistake was introducing Groups so late. With Circles, users can create Circles AS friends join. I will never retroactively organize my Facebook "friends" into Groups. I will, however, take a little time each day as new REAL friends come to Google+ to organize them to reflect real social structure.
Google 1. Facebook 0.
That said, it's not like there's a choice.
The fact that it's a different form of social network (more refined imho) and has new features (hangouts, circles) is bonus.
Google's bottom-line success with + will be the mitigation of the Facebook social search threat... anything else is gravy.
More thorough explanation here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2714333
IE, Alice posts a blog, which is available to Group A. Bob posts a comment to the blog, and members of Group A are notified (even if they're not on Bob's friends list). Chris, who is on Bob's friends list, but not a member of Group A, will not receive a notification.
So there's two problems: 1. Bob might comment on Alice's post thinking he's in his own social context, which is reinforced by the fact that on Google+, he's in his own UI and Alice's post shows up in his Circle; 2. Bob has to consciously check to see what the context is every time he wants to make a comment on Alice's post.
My idea for a potential solution is "Places." Which is through the link I posted above.
On the other hand, google+ has the might of one of the web's most powerful and innovative companies investing tons of R&D into the psychology and science of human friendships behind it. The fruits of all this research are plain to see in everything from the way it maintains circles to the implementation of hangouts. Ultimately, its just a better product. Not that it guarantees success, but it does a good chance at it.
Maybe Baby Boomers will like it over Facebook or not at all for either, if it's aimed at a younger crowd I can't see it working unless as stated it's forced upon people.
With iPads and other tablets and mobile devices becoming more powerful with bigger and better screens I think a stripped down mobile social network app would be the best way to attract attention or a completely different concept.
It looks good and has some interesting features such as 'nearby view' similar to Facebook Places, the instant upload looks convenient and dangerous, is Huddle just Google Wave mobile light?
At least it looks like they are aware the mobile aspect is important.
Facebook can easily mimic google circles. But, who will be better at combining search and social to add some new value to both?
And hangouts? It could be quite hard for someone to make a good implementation, and still have a huge user base as google.
Anyway, circles seems like the easiest feature to implement for the likes of facebook. Good social search, and group video chat, this might be more difficult (facebooks classic chat isn't even working most of the time).
If you're Google in 2011, you bake it into search.
All you do is make your core product heavier. The thing you wanted to kill doesn't go anywhere. It hardly notices what you did: http://scripting.com/stories/2011/06/28/googleYawn.html
Look at how Gmail contacts are treated in Google+, they're relegated to a stopgap. Look at the privacy settings for various fields in your profile - they default to sharing with your Gmail Contacts and once you chose a circle, you never have any context of Gmail Contacts anymore.
I love unification and data aggregation, especially with Google's Data Liberation efforts and the export they already have for taking your social data (potentially elsewhere).
As it is, I can't wait for it to die like Google Wave. More worthless web apps from Google will come to fill its place.