Explaining Google+ To The Norms | Hacker News Reader

Explaining Google+ To The Norms

betabeat.com

78 pointspadrack40 comments

My wife has always been an intermittent Facebook user, because she was never sure how private anything was, and the periodic UI changes confused her. She's perfectly intelligent and reasonably technically savvy, but not a huge tech nerd, and not willing to invest time into figuring out all the nuances of FB. So I was really surprised when, after trying Google+ for a few days, she said, "I think this is really going to make my family closer."

I don't know if there's a better measure of success for a social networking service than that.

My wife was the same way.

With regards to the original blog post, I think holes are a stupid analogy since holes by definition can't overlap without modification. Personal Venn diagrams is what you should be going for, with the key being that your Venn diagram might contain some of the same people as the next guy's Venn diagram, but there will almost certainly be differences/gaps, too.

Will user A see my post? http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-RIL_CvjOmVY/ThQKTNckBYI/AA...

This has been one of the interesting aspects of it. You can direct message someone by sharing it only with them.

Also if you send something to one circle and then add someone to that circle later, they get to see everything sent to that circle.

The bottom right of that flowchart is a little scary. So anything you post, no matter how private you want it to be, can be seen by anyone that it gets re-shared to?

Nevermind: just noticed that that only applies to posts you share publically.

Yes, any user that can see your post can reshare it to people you did not originally share it to by clicking the share button.

They could also just tell person A or repost it if there wasn't a share button, though. Just use good sense.

wrong.. if you mark it as a limited share...no one outside that circle can share it..try it yourself and see...it is a new change that went into effect over the weekend

That's a good change, but that's not my point. My point is that things don't automatically become unprivate because there's a share button. Somebody has to make the decision to share these things, and they still have the ability to do so without a convenient button. The point is that users should still maintain good sense about what they post.

It would be nice if you could add a blocklist for a given post (so you don't have to remove people from circles or create temp-circles).

e.g: You and your friends are throwing a surprise party for one circle-member's birthday.

Hmm, unless the planning literally involved a cast of hundreds, I'd just create a temporary circle.

My wife and her friends (who amazingly all accepted her G+ invites and immediately started the service) like it much more than Facebook. My wife's an RN, and reasonably technically savvy, but not someone I'd call a "geek". I asked her why she liked it more and she said two things that I thought were interesting:

1) "Well, I like Google better anyway. So I'd rather use their service."

2) "It just feels better than facebook to me."

Really surprised me, considering that we're going to replace her Android phone that she's only been using for 6 months or so because she hates it so much and because she really likes to use facebook.

I'm not sure if her experience is going to be the norm, but it seems to bode well for Google.

This was nearly the same experience for me.

Background:

I am a rather technical person -- been messing with computers since MS-DOS 4 at the age of 8ish (sorry, not trying to show my epeen, just giving context) -- and was always apprehensive with social media.

Recently, when my work position became more of a project management position, I had to start getting to know Facebook -- which, previously, I've never touched at all before. This was about 2-3 months ago.

Starting with Google+, as a relatively new Facebook user, I just don't want to use Facebook anymore solely because of reason #2.

wonder if a lot of people think of Android not so much as a Google thing but as an "off-brand iPhone"

Most of my conversations with "norms":

"Hey, want a Google+ invite?"

"What's that?"

"It's like Facebook, but without Farmville."

"Sweet, send it over!"

"I guess that's all I really wanted."

I see the inverse - not the FB in G+, rather the Google in G+. Something like "all of Google's sharing sites are connected now, so it's great way to talk to people and share photos".

"It's like Facebook, but the font is bigger."

You should have said "... but without Farmville, yet." since we all know Zynga has a team clicking 'reload' 24/7 on the Google search "Google+ Application API" :-)

Reading the comments of this thread, I wonder if anyone actually reads the linked articles anymore. A bunch of discussions about why Google+ is better then Facebook etc... no one seeming to notice the article was comedy, and hilarious.

>A bunch of discussions about why Google+ is better then Facebook etc...

Deflection, a common strategy by those who have not taken a walk with Mark Zuckerberg. By changing the topic, they avoid the social discomfort that comes with acknowledging they were not woodsworthy.

maybe.. a little too many instances of "a walk in the woods"

Perhaps because it's not that funny?

Here's how I explain it: if you want to keep talking to me (and your other nerd friends), you have to start using this.

The part that struck true with me about this article was 'telling different lies to different circles of people'. That really is what people do in real life.

Is it just me, or is this writer ALL OVER THE PLACE?

Personally I like Google+ because it combines some of the things I enjoy most about Twitter (being able to follow/listen to people post things publicly) and my varied social networks (being able to segment users -- "put them in a hole" -- and speak to each individually as opposed to having to blast to the entire world every time).

The ultimate test, however, is how many people end up using it long-term. Because eventually I'm going to want to make a decision whether to use one or the other. I don't have time for both Facebook AND Google+.

Is it just me, or is this writer ALL OVER THE PLACE?

That's kinda the point. It's comedy.

Here's how I explained it to my facebook friends:

"It's like facebook and twitter had a baby and let skype watch."

"It's like Facebook, but you can but your friends in different buckets. So you put your family in one bucket and your friends in another bucket. Then when you post pictures of yourself being drunk, you can post it only to your friends-bucket and your family-bucket doesn't see them." - There you go.

I sent my wife a G+ invite, but things fell apart when her Google account with Gmail address and Google account with Yahoo! address turned out to be not the same, and she will not be bothered to figure out how to delete one and add the email to the other. Too many hoops to jump through.

I started to explain it to her, but then I became embarrassed at my subtle knowledge of the history of Google account identification and conflicts* and realized that the look on her face was right: no one should have to care about that shit.

* eg. Google Apps account and Gmail account with Google Apps email being different and having no knowledge of each other.

"Like I could have a friend hole and an acquaintance hole and a K-hole. And they give you a list of friends and you stuff them in the hole, like Silence of the Lambs, except you are sending them images and text messages and hanging out with them on video chats."

Totally family friendly ;)

I didn't understand why he said "K-hole". This kind of K-hole? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-hole

Misery loves company

The "holes" metaphor doesn't really work; something can't be in more than one hole. Holes are also not an easier abstraction to understand than groups or sets. I think this article does a poor job explaining Google+.

I guess 'Venn Diagrams' wouldn't have worked with their target audience :-)

explaining google+ and its appeal has pretty much just been this: http://xkcd.com/918/

For me using tweetdeck with a column per twitter group gives me everything that I use in Google+.

even the title of this article smacks of nerd exclusivism/elitism

thanks for helping to perpetuate the idea that smart people in technology are bizarre outcast freaks

Not sure I'd use this explanation to convince any normals of anything if I would in fact try to convince them, but I think the reason that Fb took off beyond the early adopters is that there was a conversation taking place without them on Fb, which had become the post-email convention, and as social creatures they felt the inherent need to become a part of it and share/friend/poke accordingly, just like everyone else was doing, but I don't see that same need present with G+, aside from shiny new thing, and without the aura of exclusivity (friending), I see no value that normals would derive from it, especially if content producers continue to share among various communication networks.

I'll be the first to admit that I made a lot of new connections, strengthened current ones or reignited friendships based on the social need to be a pat of Fb, but after four years of Fb, I'm pretty sure that I won't carry that type of loose social activity forward and use G+ exclusively as an information share/catalog with my professional peers.

tl;dr: I hope my donkey friends don't follow me on G+ nor request a follow-back. I have enough cringe-inducing moments already.

It'll be interesting to see if people start requesting to be followed back on G+. The thing I've increasingly hated about FB is that I have to deny people access to me because I don't give a shit about what they are saying. Sure, I could friend them and then just hide them from my feed, but that's not giving me enough control over what they can see. With G+, I have complete control over that, after all, I don't mind them checking out what I'm doing, I just don't need to see their kid's pictures.

It'll also be great for following celebrities/people that you care about but don't know you. The best parts of Facebook and Twitter.

> I just don't need to see their kid's pictures

Exactly. Also, someone, by request, added me to a circle and now I get those limited posts and I have now way to unsubscribe without unsubscribing that person entirely. They're putting the onus on the content creator to admin their circles. That's counter-productive.

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