Why Google+ is Poised to Fail | Hacker News Reader

Why Google+ is Poised to Fail

blogs.forbes.com

58 pointsFilterJoe53 comments

Given that we already understand how Google will likely solve this problem (e.g. "shared circles"), the problem is not that big of a deal. The cognitive load to add that feature will be low and I can't imagine it will be that challenging to develop.

The article really reduces to "Google+ will fail because Google+ is new and is missing features", which is obviously just silly. If Google+ fails, I guarantee it will not be from a scarcity of features. More importantly, Google+ doesn't have to become as widely used as Facebook to be a success.

The article is simply a plea for Google to speed up the evolution of the Circles concept... author doesn't seem to actually think Google+ will fail (he doesn't even define the context of what failure means here).

Missing features and Apple has dominated many markets it stepped into... the flipside being the key feature-set should be done well and polished to perfection.

The key is UX. I'm still waiting for an easy way to easily add one person to multiple circles without repeated click-drags... Circle auto-discovery (or suggestion) would be even better.

> The key is UX. I'm still waiting for an easy way to easily add one person to multiple circles without repeated click-drags... Circle auto-discovery (or suggestion) would be even better.

While it's not auto-discovery or suggesting circles, in the profile of a person who's using G+ you can hover over the "add to circles" button, which then expands into a list of circles you have, with checkboxes next to each. It would be nice if they included that interface in the drag-and-drop circle-adding pages, which allow you to sort large numbers of people at once, though.

Adding a person to multiple circles is easy. Click the name and you should get an option for circles that gives you a list of checkboxes. Check the appropriate circles.

>"Google+ doesn't have to become as widely used as Facebook to be a success"

For Google, Google+ is probably already a success. Aside from having given them enormous coverage in the press, it has provided them with huge amounts of data about social relationships to mine for the purposes of improving the advertising upon which their revenue model depends.

As I've speculated is the case with Microsoft and Bing, the first benefit of Google+ is in the data it generates as a research project. Ten million members is nothing compared with Facebook - but it is a statistically significant sample size for analyzing the social graph.

No, the article reduces to Google+ will not overtake Facebook if it ignores adoption strategies mentioned by Reed's Law.

I highly doubt that 'shared circles' is the solution, I believe there is a huge strategy needed which not only include the space needed to interact (shared circles, fan pages, games), but the median in which that interaction takes place (mobile, pc, camera, video game, tablet).

Thanks for mentioning Reed's Law. TIL.

According to that, the network value to an individual grows like 2^N - N - 1, which is the number of all possible subsets minus two obviously "useless" ones, The singletons (N) and the empty set (1). In the case of Facebook this seems to ignore plenty of other useless subsets, overestimating the value of the social network.

Simple example. Think about 2 of my friends that don't like each other. I would be better off with two networks, one for each. Every division I can think of leads to a new circle, so the value of a network offering circles grows more like C (2^(N-C)). This looks like its smaller than Reed's Law, (more circles even makes it look worse!) but is actually more achievable. My Facebook network value is really more like 2^("max number of friends with no issues"). In the worst case this leas you to a network value of N^2 which is well-served by email.

I'm sure somebody has thought of a more refined analysis.

Perhaps you should have read the article. (The second paragraph of page 1 was entirely about Reed's Law.)

Reed's Law ignores the relative weight people place on connections. Concider most americans there is little difference between everyone in india joining Google+ and nobody in india joining Google+. Having your dentist on Google+ might be helpful but it's hardly on the same scale as your wife.

Which raises an interesting and valid point; I believe many people are confusing VALUE for WORTH, whereas worth is self-determined.

Indeed. Any critique which is of the form "X will fail in the long run because it lacks some important, but readily implementable feature Y" is doomed to look silly in retrospect.

PS: This is especially true when talking about Google. They are the king of iterative development, if they have a product with sound fundamentals and a few flaws you can bet that those flaws will get ironed out quickly.

I remember going through some old computing magazines reading an article about how AOL was doomed to fail because it was still lacking internet access, whereas compuserve and prodigy were already including it.

> More importantly, Google+ doesn't have to become as widely used as Facebook to be a success.

That is the point! I don't think that this is a winner take all situation. Google has always wanted access to information on Facebook and maybe this will nudge Facebook to open up a little. Having at least three good social sites (I include Twitter) seems like a good thing - some diversification. If in a year's time G+ has even 20% of the active users of FB, I would call that a success.

I am not a typical user so this may not be a valid data point, but: I do use FB but spend just a minute or two on my front page and do this 2 or 3 times a week. Maybe just because it is new, but I have been spending 15 minutes solid on a day on G+.

"You don't even know what the thing is yet."

Sorry for the Social Network quote, I didn't like the movie, but I kept thinking about this line.

Look at the success of 4chan or IRC channels or Usenet groups or twitter (140 messages) or Facebook or the blogs or reddit or whatever. They are all different, groups form differently in each of them and they have attracted different types of people sometimes. Sometimes new technology goes in a new direction, sometimes and old one is rediscovered.

You cannot really know sometimes who will adopt your site, especially if doesn't come with built in communities or a particular focus.

You make two different points.

> "You don't even know what the thing is yet."

That's a good point, and Google+ is likely to change significantly. They may make stuff way better as it progresses; who knows?

> <the comments about 4chan, IRC, usenet, etc.>

The difference is, only Facebook was successful in getting tens of millions of non-geek users to sign up and use it. If you're going to deviate from the Facebook model of users, sure, you may end up getting users (4chan has lots of users!), but not on the same magnitude and of the same diversity. Since in the end of the day it all comes down to "how much cash are these users worth?", the facebook model appears to be the one Google+ is trying to emulate, they better make sure it's as easy or easier to for non-geeks to socialize using their service. The complaint raised by the article is a good one.

"You don't even know what the thing is yet."

True, true.

I'll admit to being a pretty big G+ fanboi so far, but there are definitely some things I'm hoping to see, both because I want them personally, and because I think they'll make the service more attractive to others. Personally, I'm hoping for:

  Something along the lines of shared circles / groups /     
  google groups integration 

  Content search for "stuff" in your stream.

  Integration of "sparks" with Google news (news alerts in 
  particular)

  Better import / discovery tools.  I'm still struggling to   
  make sure I got all my old facebook contacts added to 
  circles / invited / etc.

  Ability to collapse comments on a post in the Stream

  More control over which circles are currently active for the stream.  I   
  want "all but this one" or "these (3 | 4 | 5 |n ) only" etc.

  Nested Circles would be kinda cool.

  Deeper integration of G+ with Google Calendar, Google Reader, GMail, 
  etc.

  Hashtags

  A quick way to navigate to / view / list all my comments

  Apps support using OpenSocial.

  Developer APIs

I'm guessing we'll see some of that stuff, since a few of those are things that a lot of people seem to be asking for. If Google follow through and deliver, G+ is going to be very awesome.

Quite a while ago here on HN, someone posted a link to a description of what makes posts show up in one's Facebook feed ("home page"). Links I found by a Google search just now

http://www.science20.com/science_and_music_your_ears/blog/ho...

http://www.bizchickblogs.com/2011/06/facebook-edgerank-or-im...

describe what process appears to be happening, according to reverse-engineering by observation of what Facebook does.

My own recent comment, from before when any of us had tried out Google+, on the Facebook user experience

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2661316

largely relates to the high relevance of the home page feed and the convenience of forming private groups, so I think the author of the submitted article is on to something. I like Facebook because it shows me what I like. Google+ is failing to do that so far. Another HN user

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2736693

specifically noted two weeks ago Facebook feed relevance as a point of superiority over some competing services.

Before Facebook fixed this problem, it was very off-putting.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=689842

Google+ could easily have the same problem for a long time if it doesn't fix it, and that would cause Google+ to lose engagement, big-time.

After edit: I'm also not sure when I +1 a post whether I'm giving karma to the submission or to the poster. One plainly superior feature of Facebook's interface so far is that if lots of friends share the same link, I see that as a statement in my feed that "Jim-Bob Smith and five other friends shared a link" rather than having each reshare of the same link show up in my Google+ feed as a separate thread. It's annoying to see the same thing over and over again.

> Facebook feed relevance as a point of superiority over some competing services

When I disabled my Facebook account in early March I gave two reasons:

(a) The newly introduced forced sharing of my address and phone number with third party app developers[1] and lack of granular deny on data items for third party apps.

(b) The "edge ranked" news feed suddenly full of social butterflies[2] instead of thoughtful friends' occasional remarks. I very specifically want to see the comments from those who might share something insightful once a quarter, instead of those who chatter several times daily about their snacks.

Most in my "circles" have found Facebook less engaging and less useful this year. Discussion usually ends up pointing at this default feed filter as the reason.

1. http://mashable.com/2011/03/01/facebook-third-party-share-ad...

2. http://www.bizchickblogs.com/2011/06/facebook-edgerank-or-im... (your link explains it wasn't my imagination, thanks for this)

Some anecdotal usability fails watching a non-tech user go through the process of joining Google+: The 'bait' was a Photo album which was shared with her. She thought she needed to join to see the album although she could actually see it without joining. She joined anyway, but was whisked off into the overly complicated process of accepting t&cs, creating her 'profile' (which she didn't want to do right now) and adding to her 'circles'. Most of the people suggested to be added to her circles were people already on Google+, rather than the people she is actually friends with (say based on frequent emailing). After skipping that step as there was no-one there that she wanted to add, she proceeded to the 'home' page, where the original photo album wasn't listed, and there was nothing she could do. She concluded that Google+ was built for somebody else, and will never use it again.

The Google+ team needs to stop signing up new users, and instead have a look at concepts such as 'lazy registration'.

Same thing with my wife. The registration process was a big turn-off, especially being faced with lists of random people, lack of explanation of what's going on, and confusing interaction on the circles page.

That's the stuff Facebook has perfected over the years through relentless optimization.

Wrong. In Facebook most 'groups' are formed only from the people you know. The 750 million people has zero relationship to how many groups I'll be involved in, so there's a strong upper limit to potential group formation that is nowhere near what Reed's law predicts.

I've largely filled up my FB friends and rarely add new members anymore. I'm pretty sure that I'll be adding links (and being added) indefinitely with G+. On G+ I've already had more interesting discussions with people who relate to me in different ways from my real-life friends. These are spontaneous 'groups' that have formed briefly around a post, and from which links have been made that would normally not have been made. I wouldn't friend someone on Facebook just because they said something interesting, but on G+ I might follow them much more easily. There's less of a big deal with having to be 'friends' - you can just subscribe to their posts and might end up in many more discussions with them in future.

Think about HN. It's created friendships and careers and companies. If we were all doing this only via our Facebook friends, how much of this would have happened?

G+ has more people you'd interact with, more posts to interact with them, more dimensions to add links by. Not just friends, but interest groups, industry leaders, etc etc.

I think the article's discussion about the importance of groups is interesting but the headline is silly. Google+ is a 2 week old field trial. I too want groups (shared circles?). Perhaps Google+ will have groups before it is officially released.

It's a shame that smart articles need stupid headlines to draw pageveiws.

If Google had come out and said "Nope, not going to do shared circles." then I might give the headline some credit, but basically saying "Hey they missed this feature that will be important, they will fail if they don't implement it." doesn't get the clicks.

I've been puzzling out how they have implemented this stuff and from what I have seen / poked at, I don't think it will be that big a deal to implement shared circles.

I agree. The article is clever, but it looks like a The Sun headline.

Um, Google Groups? It's not perfect, but it does exist. They could easily add a list of my Groups in the sidebar under my Circles list. My guess is "shared Circles" is going to be real, as many people in this two week Beta trial have expressed that as a need.

The article makes a valid enough point, but the headline is stupid and sensationalist. If a product isn't all things to everyone on day one it's "poised to fail"? Know how many FB groups I belong to? Zero.

My response:

https://plus.google.com/114301088526097505896/posts/7wEKgXp1...

Chunka Mui makes a good point, and I hope Google are listening... I think a lot of people want some notion of "groups" or "shared circle" or what-have-you. Integrating G+ with the existing Google Groups functionality might go a long way towards addressing this.

My observation with why it has the potential to fail has to do with the sub-set of my friends who have accounts and those that don't.

There are two groups I noticed that signed up. I know lots of people that got invitations and didn't sign up for various reasons as well. But two main demographics appeared:

1) my techy introvert friends

2) my attention whore friends which to be part of the in crowd

Group 1 is a pointless demographic as they don't tend to express on social networks, and have small groups of associates.

Group 2 are full of hot air and even on Facebook I have many of them blocked so I don't have to listen to dribble about how great they are.

I added maybe 30 or 40 people from my friend set, and over the span of a week 3 things where posted. My attention whore friends posted recently on Facebook about how they had G+ accounts, but not one of them posted anything, well at least publicly.

I consider both groups rather caustic. Group 1 tends to be quite depressive and negative as a bunch, they also prone to being preachy fan boys and interjecting opinion whether asked or not. Group 2 tends to get annoying although they often have things of interest going on, the tirade of babble is enough for me to off dealing with them often.

So I closed my G+ account, and I'm secretly hoping that both groups stays over at G+ and doesn't pipe there content into Facebook. Since closing I've had a few conversations with people interested in why I closed it, and several people have commented they don't like the current crowd all that much either. And thats dangerous.

Why are so many people comparing g+ to facebook? Isn't it more of threat to sites such as linkedin? Google+ imho asks what interests you and facebook asks who are you.

The Vorlons and Shadows of social networking!

I thought Google+ was going to add public circles and the ability to share circles?

Isn't it a bit early comment? The article takes G+ as it's initial version, and does not give it a chance to develop, whereas it took many years for facebook to become what it is...

Weird thing is many articles comparing these two social networking sites fall into same problem. These services are dynamic and with every feature they implement, they put a new value in the market, thus they change the balances.

I think it's great that finally facebook has an "alternative". I think it's great that a software giant is in this game now. This will fasten things up and increase overall quality (hence the comptetetion).

Long in short: too early to judge and compare g+ with fb. G+ has great potential.

One thing I don't get is how Google+ could be worse in supporting groups then Facebook? Maybe my Facebook usage is somehow fringe - but all Facebook Groups I belong to are dead - there is no conversation happening there - the interface kills it.

I've seen quite a few articles saying and describing how or why Google+ is going to fail. But so far Google+ has been only growing, and according to the figures released yesterday, they are doing great. I don't think it's anything revolutionary, but at least I like it better than Facebook (maybe exactly because it doesn't have so much crap), and that's enough for me to use it more, and will probably even stop using Facebook once all my friends are there (currently I have about a third).

What need is Google+ filling? The few people I know that are interested in it are interested in it for very specific reasons, like Circles (one feature that could easily be copped) or that they have something against Facebook. Yes it has a lovely design but why should I spend attention on it when 98% of my friends are on Facebook? I still maintain that the mesh of relationships on Facebook is more valuable and more defensible than an index of the web.

It give me one less site I need to check.

Going to facebook.com is psychologically saying "I want to waste time". Going to gmail.com is saying "I plan to be productive" (not always, but often so).

G+ brings social out of the time-wasting world and into the productive world. Now with Circles I can post a programming question to my "Hackers Circle". I can ask my fellow engineering students about the latest homework assignment. I could ask my "Coworkers" Circle if anyone can cover my shift.

Facebook is entertainment. Google+ is productivity. Yammer is dead in the water when G+ for Google Apps comes out.

They aren't apples to oranges, G+ and Facebook, but perhaps Gala to Granny Smith. A great snack and a great pie. They can substitute for each other if needed, but each do far better in their designed task.

I just got invited to G+ , and found a few friends in there. I noticed that all of their status updates were in the first day or two of their joining G+ ; after that, silence. So people are joining G+ due to the novelty factor; but they seem to go awfully quiet pretty soon after. If this continues, it doesn't bode well for G+ .

As a counter anecdote, the traffic in my feed has been picking up exponentially. More people join which means a larger audience for posts which causes people to post more.

Hm I heard they are already working on a similar feature, so it shouldn't be too long for groups to appear on G+. Don't really think it was necessary to have them at launch though - their task right now is to built a decent user base. After that's done groups make a lot more sense.

Did you hear it in an article, and if so, do you have a link?

I'm sure Google will fill in some of the gaps and improve functionality over time but without some radical changes I don't think Google+ is different enough from Facebook to make much of an impact. If they're lucky they can be the Pepsi to Facebook's Coke.

That's silly. Most people I know just mute facebook groups and move on.

I agree, I don't think anyone I know uses facebook groups and many don't even know what they are. They might become fans of some product and post on a fan page, but that's not the same thing. I think part of the reason that Facebook overtook myspace was because of the user interface improvement and part of it is a non-quantifiable hotness factor that causes fads in society in general.

Did facebook launch with groups out of the box? I remember them being there fairly on, but I don't think they were there when I first joined. I could be wrong though.

Facebook only recently added groups after years in existence, they seem to be doing alright.

honest question: is "sparks" not good enough ? or am i missing something fundamental ?

Sparks isn't like shared circles as I understand. They just bring up articles on selected topics to be used as conversation starters. I like the idea but I think the implementation of sparks is a bit rubbish. I think Twitter does a better job in this space actually.

The article was advocating for something more back and forth, like a chatroom or forum, rather than a newsfeed.

With Google+ just starting out (even at 10m users), there's already a feeling of exclusivity and community. Groups would definitely help keep that feeling going as Google+ goes public, though, as long as it's implemented right. With public circles, groups, tags, etc being advocated, I hope the simplicity of Google+ isn't lost.

I hope so too. Google has a poor track record at getting group-stuff right. Google Groups being a great example.

That said, I'm liking Google+ so far. The circle model lets you operate in a way that is similar to real life, unlike Facebook. IMO, wall posts are about 75% of Facebook, and Google+ is already superior to what they are doing.

My understanding (please correct if I'm wrong) is that Sparks is about consuming content, and using signals (especially social signals) to better target that content to individual tastes over time.

A group is a social group, where all agree to be members. Let's say you have a set of 8 friends who love baseball and you all love to chat about everything baseball. In real life you get together frequently to watch baseball on TV, go to ball games, etc. and primarily discuss baseball. That can be done on Facebook, but not yet on Google+. You want "shared circles" where the name of the circle is the same for all 8 baseball friends and their chit chat about baseball only stays within the group.

People naturally group around interests like this. And online, it is a great way to filter noise and get relevant information.

I have a number of online acquaintances around my interest in passwords. At the moment, email is the most useful way to exchange targeted password information with them. One of us just started a password reddit - but that's kind of public and subject to the usual reddit nonsense. I follow 2 of them on Twitter but find most of the information not relevant to me because they have many interests besides just passwords.

In a private group setting, things could get more in depth, and stay focused on the subject in which we all have an interest.

I was thinking the same thing. It's not clear to me though how the search results / feed in sparks is sourced. I assume it's a merging of +1 and shares with some sort of keyword matching, but it seems to show articles in random order and I haven't really figured out what makes it better than a google or twitter search. It seems like they are trying to make it better than a static group because it will include content from any user related to a topic, but it doesn't let me find other people who share my interests to add to my circles and it doesn't show me why something appears in the Spark feed.

people want subreddits.

facebook will suffer the same fate as myspace and google+ will suffer the same fate as facebook.

early adopters are already loosing interest in facebook and moving to the next thing(s). the masses will follow.

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