Anyone working at Facebook: what happening at Facebook on Google+? | Hacker News Reader

Anyone working at Facebook: what happening at Facebook on Google+?

95 pointsevolution89 comments

Facebook's response to Google+ actually took place last summer and last fall. I was an intern there at the time, so I got to see it.

Google Me, as it was known at the time, was clearly Google's first serious attempt at moving into social, and everyone was a little bit nervous. So, Zuck declared "Lockdown" for sixty days. "Lockdown" was a term from Facebook's early days, which meant when they had a serious competitor emerge at a particular school, they would stop everything and redouble their efforts until the new threat was gone.

This time, Lockdown meant removing all the obvious shortcomings from Facebook that Google could possibly beat us on. Since most of these were already in the pipeline, this meant shipping everything, now. For sixty days there was a constant fervor in the office, with fewer meetings, late(r) nights, and many people coming in on weekends. They even extended cafeteria hours.

The results of Lockdown were visible last fall, with the almost-monthly new product launches. New Messages (Titan), High-res photos, the new photo viewer, New Groups, Profile, and several other non-obvious additions were accelerated by Lockdown.

I think it is very indicative of the company's culture that their "response" was so pro-active. As to what they will do now that G+ is out there, I have no idea. Zuck did say to expect an "awesome" announcement next week, so I wouldn't expect them to be quiet.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/faster-forward/post/face...

Was the new photo viewer really looked at as a "feature" by facebook staff?

It seemed to me like it was facebook's way of saying "we're sick of being a free image host".

It certainly is a feature. I often browse Facebook on a netbook which has a smaller screen. Before, photos didn't fit on my screen. Now they do.

You'll notice that Google+ has the same type of viewer.

G+'s Circles are a killer feature and they alone make me hope G+ takes off. Circles solve some very entrenched problems in social networking. So I really hope Facebook is working on a quality response to that.

I think Facebook has had groups for a while - they just aren't exposed that well in the UI. (I don't think I've ever tried to use them, though, so maybe they're different from Circles in some way.)

Yeah but the key difference is G+ is pushing Circles upfront and hard from the get go. They are also implemented far better than anything Facebook has done along these lines. To truly get the benefit of Circles, not only do I need to be able to take advantage them but all my friends need to be using them too. If everyone is on board and using Circles effectively, the amount of noise overall goes down, and signal can go way up.

Circles are awesome. The implementation is fun and animated. I think it would be awesome if you could share them as well. Make them grow as groups.

.. oh yeah and of course. What about, intersection? Friends intersected with Work.

Tim Bray touched on this/math/permutations recently as well: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2011/07/04/Google-plu...

My opinions are my own and I can't speak for Facebook as a whole (or in any capacity, really, which is why this will forever remain an anonymous post).

I think Google will gain some traction initially, but what we're working on in my group is light years ahead of the Facebook you see and use today, and probably not the same direction that Google is (or can be) heading.

Yes, we've had our stumbles with privacy, but will Google be any better? Any legitimate complaints that I've heard are either something we're resolving or is an inherent problem that any social networking site will face.

Am I worried about attrition of users as Google ramps up? Not really. It's too much work to maintain multiple social networking accounts and at the end of the day, all your profile are belong to us.

You may want to rephrase that last sentence. I doubt it was your intention, but it sounds a little arrogant.

It may, but I think it's a refreshingly honest view. Facebook -- perhaps rightly so -- feels like they have people locked in to their service.

" and at the end of the day, all your profile are belong to us."

i think this is the exact sentiment that makes FB vulnerable in many ways. as i user, i dont want a company controlling my personal bits that just shits on the user base with an arrogant attitude "we have your personal info already". What drives internal innovation if everyone goes around thinking "fuck these fish in this barrel"

Assuming you meant "vulnerable." If so, agree completely. If the company that Facebook overthrew, with hundreds of millions of users, can lose over 90% of its value in a few years, there's no reason Facebook is immune.

Facebook's new motto: It's like fucking fish in a barrel.

"Facebook's new motto: It's like fucking fish in a barrel. "

sounds like directly from Zuck's mouth

Have you ever heard Zuck speak? He doesn't talk like that.

of course he is a polite, accurate boy enjoying simple quiet pleasures like cutting throat of a goat or taking the head off a chicken.

"Have you ever heard Zuck speak? He doesn't talk like that."

Dunno about talking, but he sure does IM like that:

http://boingboing.net/2010/09/14/damning-zuckerberg-i.html

ZUCK: yea so if you ever need info about anyone at harvard

ZUCK: just ask

ZUCK: i have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns

FRIEND: what!? how'd you manage that one?

ZUCK: people just submitted it

ZUCK: i don't know why

ZUCK: they "trust me"

ZUCK: dumb fucks

...

FRIEND: so have you decided what you are going to do about the websites?

ZUCK: yea i'm going to fuck them

ZUCK: probably in the year

ZUCK: *ear

That was how he IMed in 2004 when he was 20. People change.

As evidenced by his recent interest in killing animals, I suppose.

I doubt he actually works at Faecbook. I can assure you that is not the sentiment prevalent in the office.

I know a few people at facebook and it is certainly possible he works there (this kind of attitude seems slightly more prevalent amongst newer hires), but I agree it definitely is not the general sentiment around the company nor amongst most of the people making strategic decisions.

Looking at his account history, I get a troll vibe from him.

The problem is of course that people will believe what they want to believe

> at the end of the day, all your profile are belong to us.

Tell that to MySpace?

This may just be my favourite HN comment of all time.

I really doubt that this guy works for Facebook.

Actually he sounds like a fairly typical Facebook Brogrammer.

it won't be for long until people realize what amount of information facebook collects - and that it shouldn't be allowed to do so. privacy might not be such an issue right now, but it will be in the future. the consequences will be simple - the government will intervene and limit the amount of information facebook (or any social network / service / etc.) can collect. don't get too excited about your employer...

"Yes, we've had our stumbles with privacy, but will Google be any better? Any legitimate complaints that I've heard are either something we're resolving or is an inherent problem that any social networking site will face."

I would argue that Google will be better because it's clear they've made privacy the most important part of their offering. By making circles one of the topmost items, they take something that most people don't even know Facebook can do (post statuses to specific groups of people) and make it the standard method of sharing. While it certainly can be overcome with UI, it would require some massive changes to Facebook to make it anywhere near as prominent as it is with G+.

  it certainly can be overcome with UI, it would require
  some massive changes to Facebook

Agreed here. I've known for a long time that Facebook had near-identical groups functionality, but the interface is simply so painful to use that I barely even notice it. G+, on the other hand, has created a simple and intuitive privacy interface, and everything clearly shows who can see it. They haven't just made privacy an important part of their offering, they've also made privacy easy and obvious. As password-reuse statistics show, it doesn't matter how good your security is if people refuse to lift a finger to use it.

There's a persistent myth that Facebook Group is the same as Google+ Circles. They are nowhere near each other. In fact, Google+ does not have the equivalent of Facebook Groups, unless you count in the older Google Groups.

Facebook Group is closer to Google Groups or Yahoo Groups or any one of the dozens of forum-type sites. You create a space in which people join. It creates a venue. Google+ Circles is much closer to Livejournal friend filters. You have overlapping contexts but no single, formal venue that you join. Psychologically and sociologically, it works differently. It takes a lot more engineering work to get circles implemented than it does Facebook Groups (as it is implemented today).

I've been revisiting sending messages to specific groups of people in Facebook, outside the Groups context:

- To send to specific people on Facebook, you specify them directly. There are no pre-defined lists of people. Further, you have to jump extra hoops to do this, by clicking on the tiny lock icon, and then clicking on custom, and then typing in the names of the people you want to send this to. You have to do this for every single post you want to send out on a limited scope. Clearly, the Facebook UX designers want you to send it out to everyone.

- You can do the equivalent of private message to a group of people for an ad-hoc group. The last time I tried that, I hit its biggest limitation. I wanted to add more people into the running thread and it would not allow me to do that. Fortunately, everyone involved are current Livejournal contacts and we moved the conversation over there. Google+ does not allow you to add more people or circles to a running thread, but it does allow you to add more people into the circles which are dynamically computed into existing threads. As it should work.

- Google+ Profiles lets you specify exactly which part of the profile is viewable by which circle + people. You may not want your business phone number available to your drinking buddies, and you may not want your home phone number available to your business contacts.

- Google+ has a tool that lets you view what your stream looks like to other people. Admittedly, this is somewhat buried in the site.

- saurih brings up a very good point, "it doesn't matter how good your security is if people refuse to lift a finger to use it." A large % of the people in my circles are using it as public posts -- either thinking it in terms of Twitter-public, or they don't really care to. One of the people on there twigged on an insight: public posts on Google+ are meant for things that are relavent to everyone. People tend to post publicly and ignore much of the circle functionality; and as such, the interface will feel clunkier because you're not making full use of it.

On the other hand, all my friends who are expats from Livejournal and had been itching to ditch Facebook for something that provides this granularity of social contexts have set up the different streams.

In any case. Google+ scratches an itch I had. I'm glad it is here. It is the right tool for me, whether or not it is the right tool for the vast majority of Facebook users.

I think you misinterpreted the parent post. It's saying not saying that Facebook Groups is the same as Google Circles, it is saying that both Facebook and Google+ have the group functionality (in the sense of Unix groups - ie, grouping users for access restriction purposes).

In Facebook it is called user lists.

Yeah, my mistake. Thanks for pointing it out.

nl pointed out some things and I went back and checked it again. I was wrong about some things.

@nl: I thought he was talking about user lists at first too, but he kept talking about groups, so I tried addressing both. You can see it in my reply.

But just to be sure, I had attempted to use user lists in the same way to restrict posting out and I was not able to.

Further, I reiterate: Google+ does not work like Unix groups. It works like Livejournal friend filters. The groups are relative to whatever you define and it is not global across the entire domain, unlike with Unix groups.

To implement circles/friends list as Unix groups, you would have to introduce the concept of namespaces in which the set of groups is scoped within a namespace. Then you attach individual namespaces for each person. In other words, named sets of named sets. The named sets themselves are not global, even though the members are.

So I just checked again. I see that after I click on -> lock button -> drop-down customize -> Specific People and then type in the list, I can restrict the update there.

I am testing this now: Once I select it, it says "Custom Setting saved" ?? Wait, does that mean I can only have ONE custom setting?

I just posted a test post. The resulting post has no indications that it is a special-restricted post. Along with the customized setting, does that mean that I can set a single default friend's list that I then blurt out to? What if I want to switch around?

If you know of an easier way, I will gladly say, I was wrong about Facebook lacking in the functionality I want.

I've mentioned in other comments here, Google+ defaults to "warren" and Facebook defaults to "plaza". Each can simulate the other with some contortions. That makes this more like a set of Evil Twins (http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/09/17/your-evil-twins-and-how...).

Meaning, if you don't get why Google+ is a killer app for me, then you don't really need the functionality it provides like I do. And that's reasonable by me. Whether or not this means that Google+ will "kill" Facebook (I doubt it) or not, I don't really care much about it.

I was replying to this:

There's a persistent myth that Facebook Group is the same as Google+ Circles.

I don't think that myth exists at all - I've never seen anyone say it until you brought it up. The parent post used the word "groups", but didn't specify they meant "grouping people" as opposed to the Facebook group functionality.

Further, I reiterate: Google+ does not work like Unix groups

Again - no one is claiming that. I used Unix groups as an analogy (because they let you group people together).

"I don't think that myth exists at all - I've never seen anyone say it until you brought it up."

Fair enough.

I didn't think about this until I saw these slides: https://plus.google.com/photos/100238778462210489846/albums/...

Friends List sounds like the same as Google+ Circles. However, FB Friends List requires both parties to accept friendship, whereas Google+ Circles does not. That's a fundamental difference in the resulting social dynamic.

Besides, I agree with Vincent Wong. G+ really isn't about social.

I'll say one thing about Circles... Google doesn't really have any social users yet.

Facebook, to implement Circles as it exists in Google now, will have to retrain their users. Not an easy feat.

The concept of a quick pivot to add new features or markets is silly. If your users expect you to do it the old way, you'll face a long uphill battle.

Circles are nice, but not a game changer. People are on Facebook because of features. They are on Facebook because of people.

There's a huge difference in the way that Facebook and Google look at privacy and data ownership. And I think that difference comes from the founders of each company and has become firmly embedded in each company's DNA.

The difference has a name: Mark Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg is an obviously amoral individual who has a history of violating other people's privacy (e.g. breaking into their email accounts) and who believes that all personal information should by default be public. He also has stated that freedom of speech is culturally relative, in a repulsive attempt to curry favor with the Chinese government. Contrast that with the bold stand that Google took when the Chinese government demanded that the company acquiesce in their repression of Chinese citizens.

Unlike FB, Google doesn't have a history of constantly changing privacy policies and making it very difficult to preserve privacy. And unlike FB, Google doesn't make it virtually impossible for a user to export the data that lives in their various services. In fact, provision of plans for export is a key requirement for Google products.

Google: don't be evil. FB: eh, who cares -- we're talking about making money here.

It's too much work to maintain multiple social networking accounts

If you truly believe it is going to be all or nothing Google, then this article (http://www.allfacebook.com/the-one-google-plus-feature-faceb...) and the HN discussion (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2715521) makes me think Google will have the upper hand. IMHO, Google is getting closer to one true online identity and one place to do everything online with their offering of Google+ than Facebook.

I agree. Google already had all of the services down and well done, they just needed something to unify them. Google+ makes everything fit together and with Google's already prominent position on the web it is quite the formidable opponent.

at the end of the day, all your profile are belong to us.

That one line was enough to convince me to delete my Facebook account again, once and for all. Thank you.

"to convince ... again" or "to delete ... again" ? I mean have you tried to delete already ? :)

Was thinking the same. Fuck any company with that level of lock-in.

I take it you don't use gmail as your email provider then?

gmail doesn't lock you in... so I am not sure what your point is.

My point was that Facebook don't also provide email services. Perhaps lock-in is too strong a term, but it's certainly convenient enough to discourage using anything other than gmail - and means that google will own a much larger chunk of your online identity than Facebook does now.

> My point was that Facebook don't also provide email services.

Incorrect, as of a few months ago. Every(?) Facebook user now has an email address: <userID>@facebook.com. You can send messages to external email addresses from the messages tab.

Actually, I do, but I do it by redirecting mail to my DNS to my gmail account. If I change provider, I don't need to tell everyone my new email address.

He's a troll. That sentiment is not prevalent in the company.

Then why I can't easily export my friends list from Facebook to Google+?

Someone published a hack:

(1) Open up a Yahoo account (2) Import Facebook contacts into the Yahoo account (3) In the add people to circles page, import from the Yahoo account.

Because Google is too proud to use the simple AJAX API that Facebook provides to do so.

https://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer/?method=GET&#...

that seemed weird that they wouldn't just use that, but the facebook platform policies don't seem too keen on that kind of use (which makes more sense than your post, considering the legal claims facebook has made in the past against harvesters of their data, but I could still be wrong).

https://developers.facebook.com/policy/

Is this how those facebook -> google+ exporters are working, though?

Why did you expect anything else from either company? By profile they really mean data. Every company out there offering free services is after your data and it definitely belongs to them since they have the context for it. Your name and number and interests by themselves don't mean anything but put a context around it and that is what belongs to them.

     Why did you expect anything else from either company?

Google makes it easier on all of their services to download your data. Including the phone numbers and emails of your own contacts.

     Every company out there offering free services is
     after your data

That quote is not in the context you're putting it -- the original comment meant that your profile belongs to Facebook and you can't move it easily.

I really hope that was a troll and not a Facebook employee.

     it definitely belongs to them since they have the 
     context for it

No it doesn't. By law your data belongs to you and you're granting them the privilege of using it.

http://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=2715787&whence=item...

Like others, I question whether this guy actually works for Facebook, but the "all your profile are belong to us." has done it's damage, because while perhaps you don't work there, it's highlighting a culture I know to be there.

You're more likely to be a google+ team member, simply genius!

You got me, I'm a google+ engineer.

I don't always pretend to work for Facebook...

but when I do I'm an arrogant prick.

Well played.

It's funny. Google Profiles actually exposes your email addresses to harvestors: (ie profiles.google.com/GMAIL_USERNAME). Google+ at least fixes that.

I actually preferred that since it made the URL easy to remember and easy to link. gmail's spam protection is extremely good.

The word "extremely" in that sentence is extremely accurate.

At the end of the day, I wonder if it really matters what Facebook does.

Once Google gets everyone on Plus then that omnipresent black bar will be at the top of every Google site, constantly sucking you back in with alerts of what's happening in your social stream. People will de facto head to Plus whenever they search, check finance, check their Gmail, look at their calendar, etc.

Ultimately, it's going to be hard for Facebook to compete with that level of constant activity.

Don't worry, the US DOJ Antitrust Division will soon be to your rescue.

The thing I like about google+ is all the things I usually use are built into one 'platform' (gmail, videos, images, google apps) which in the end saves me time and allows me to lazy. I don't know how it will fare with the less technical inclined but for me, I like it.

FB employee:

- "but what we're working on in my group is light years ahead of the Facebook you see and use today"

- "at the end of the day, all your profile are belong to us."

Nice. With that kind of attitude, I hope that your group FAILS.

Wow, some people are really overreacting to the humor in the last sentence. He's just saying that people are likely to maintain only 1 primary social networking account, which is FB right now. There's no compelling reason for a significant fraction of FB's 600M users to switch to Google+.

  all your profile are belong to us.

You had me until this.

I'm going to venture a guess that you're only going to get politically correct answers on a public forum like HN.

Something along the lines of:

"We're happy to have some competition! By the way, did you know that facebook has had something like circles since 2009? Go to preferences and blah blah blah to enable it!"

"G+ and facebook fall into different categories and, in some ways, compliment one another! We're happy for google in this, but don't think it will effect facebook."

maybe if they get bold

"We'll be happy to see what google comes up with! Of course facebook employees are encouraged to sign up for the service, if they can get invites! We've heard it's quite the contest to get them right now! The couple of people that have tried it around my office said it was a bit buggy, but it is a good start!"

etc.

On a public forum like HN or Reddit many people are anonymous. I find the provided answers so far honest and insightful.

Did you expect an "official" replay by PR?

https://plus.google.com/104560124403688998123/buzz?tab=mX

looks legit based on the people he's following. Mark doesnt look very happy :-).

I know 1 or 2 of the people in his circle's who work at Facebook which adds to the legitimacy.

Check Scobles updates. The account is legit and not surprising. Do you think nobody at Twitter has a Facebook account and nobody in Google has Twitter or Facebook?

Well, here's one thing that happened the other night:

http://circlehack.com

Edit: This is the circles UI implemented for Facebook friend lists. Three FB engineers put it together the night Google+ launched.

Since I'm wary of clicking random FB buttons, would you mind explaining what this is?

It looks to be a quickly-hacked together interface for making Facebook user lists with the Circle interface.

Sorry, I forgot I'd already authorized it. It's the circles UI for Facebook friend lists. Three FB engineers put it together the night Google+ launched.

Thanks, it looks cool.

I don't know, I think this is a good thing for everyone. With all the hiring wars going on between Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc., we're bound to see some really cool advancements from these companies in the near future. Plus, to have something pose as a direct competition to Facebook's core mission is exciting; Zuck won't back down, and neither will Page, and hopefully out of that comes innovation.

So far Google+ is rather boring. Probably cause I only have 9 people on there and no one is posting anything other then their new profile picture and a test post. Other then that it's been quiet. Meanwhile on Facebook where I have many more "Friends" it's business as usually, same number of post etc.

I'm sure it'll take a long time for Google to catch up, I just don't see most people moving to Google+.

I don't know about that. I've been extremely reluctant to connect with my parents or anyone in my family on facebook, just because of all the possible social clashes that may occur once they have access to my profile. I don't think I'm alone in this situation and I feel that many people, like me, would really welcome an environment where they can truly and safely connect with the different people that color their lives.

Facebook has taught us a lot of lessons about having an online social life, but it appears to me that it hasn't learned much from us in return, other than what it wanted to learn. G+ feels to me like a second chance to get it right with better tools. To be honest, I would have no problem letting my facebook profile go stale, while I rebuild a better profile with G+. Something that prevented me from leaving facebook behind in the past was that there was no alternative. Now, I can gladly tell people "I'm outta here, if you wanna find me, I'm at G+", exactly like I did when I abandoned my hotmail account for gmail.

There's nothing wrong with your comment and yet it is downvoted. What's going on?

Anyway, I think Google+ will stay around and replace/fulfill communication needs for a lot of people but it won't beat Facebook. People LIKE seeing everything their friends post - even if they complain about it.

Zuckerberg is running around killing animals, just as usual

http://theseattlesalmon.com/business-vs-cultural-news/busine...

I never understood the outrage over this. He's advocating ethical farming practice, not going on a killing rampage. The "only eat things I kill" is his way of highlighting the ways that the meat industry is doing the world wrong.

I wasn't even aware there was outrage. I mentioned it to my vegan friends and they thought it was great.

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