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Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

If this is true, Google+ with limited availability and limited geographic reach is essentially still born as a Facebook killer because there is no reason for your mom to switch.

Sure Google will mine some meaningful user data and Google+ will almost certainly be a success in terms of generating additional advertising revenue. But it's now even less unlikely to take off with consumers.

The problem is that Google+ is an attempt to solve Google's problem - shareholders' demand for a presence in "Social Networking," rather than solving an actual problem experienced by social networking service consumers.

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I personally think Google's killer feature here isn't really a feature at all. It's the notifications on all Google properties.

As I'm using Gmail, search, documents, finance, whatever -- I get + notifications about friends, their updates, and photos. It's very distracting! But it also gets me to use the service more than I use Facebook -- and it's just started.

That's what's so good about Google+ right now (and why it's so interesting)... there is a lot of potential.

There are also rough edges (updating circles while trying to share something requires a page reload for me. ick).

Google is back in a big way, and it's exciting.

Ironically, I have a Gmail account which I made exclusively for all that crap Facebook spews forth just to keep it all out of my inbox.

You know you can turn them off right? https://www.facebook.com/editaccount.php?notifications

Facebook changes stuff all the time, and thus I would have to keep tweeking the settings. Instead, it all just goes into a circular file at Google which I empty from time to time.

And that's why Google+ circles don't aren't really a game changer - it doesn't significantly reduce the friction of managing notifications except for the small segment of people who are already interested in managing those notifications.

Not the mail stuff they don't. I have not received an email from facebook since 2006, so no worries really.

I had all e-mail notifications turned off from when I first logged into facebook. When they added the new groups I started getting e-mails again. I have to go into settings about once a month to turn off the e-mails in some different part of facebook.

You can add "+facebookcrap" (or anything else after the plus) to the end of your gmail address for things like that and the mail still hits your account, but it makes it really easy to filter out.

> The problem is that Google+ is an attempt to solve Google's problem ... rather than solving an actual problem experienced by social networking service consumers

I disagree that it's not solving users' problems. Circles seems to be an intuitive way to group people that you have different conversations with. Yes, FB has lists but IMHO circles is a better approach.

Facebook also has groups, which seem to do the job for most users.

I agree that it makes sense - then again so do group security policies under Windows. And managing Circles will appeal to pretty much the same set of people who would find an afternoon of setting security policies appealing.

Circles are just not something which is going to cause a quarter of a billion people to switch away from Facebook - particularly given Google+ is invitation only. And even if that many people switched, Google+ would be half the current size of Facebook.

Having your boss viewing the same pictures as your friends from your college frat is a huge problem a lot of people face.

Even if you just have two circles - "work" and "personal" I think a lot of people will benefit from this.

When I first signed into it, I thought that's how it would be, but what I've found is that as people added me, and I get the notification, I just add them to appropriate circles then.

It's pretty painless.

I like that at least Google is trying new ideas. Consumers in general are experiencing problems in social networking. At least, they are not satisfied with current social networking products. I think a lot of people are looking for something better than what exists today. Google, with its scale, engineers, and obvious commitment to the social space, is in a position to make a difference.

Competition is good.

My whole family is now on plus.

As will be mine and the rest of my friends that I care about once another round of G+ invites goes out.

If Facebook's video chat debut is anything like their text chat debut, I think Google+ still has the edge here. Facebook chat was (and to a degree, still is) pretty flaky. I've stopped holding my breath for new Facebook features because I find them to usually be buggy, especially when they debut. Hell, all day today my Facebook has been on the fritz. There's some random mesh of newsfeed/friend list on the right that is either the ugliest thing they've ever devised or somebody screwed up.

Also, a huge benefit of g+ that I saw somebody point out was that I get my social presence on other google properties like Gmail, Gcal, Finance, etc via the new top navigator bar. So I don't think G+ is only video chat.

> there is no reason for your mom to switch

What about family-wide hangouts? Seems like a pretty killer feature for families spread across different cities.

Also, what is the deal with 'mom' always being the example. What about dad? Everyone seems to have really low opinions of their mothers...

For a lot of people, not having their mom switch will be considered a feature.

Parents being on Google+ is a non-problem. Facebook's "friend bucket" is what makes your parents being on your social network a problem.

> there is no reason for your mom to switch

That may not be such a bad thing. On top of that, unless they fix their privacy concerns, some people will always prefer Google+.

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