Google’s Management Doesn’t Use Google+

This thought: Further, I think it’s reasonable to assume a correlation between private use & public use kills the whole article. No, it isn't a reasonable assumption. If you look at my Facebook without being a friend of mine, you get a picture of me. Five years of use and that is the only public thing I have published. And I am just another dude no one cares about. I am sure billionaire CEOs and board members who have actual reporters, normal everyday gossiphounds and even crazies caring about their personal lives have even more incentive to be private. Google+'s promise isn't that is a combination of Facebook and Twitter, it is a social network where it does what you want it to. And if Google management wants their sharing to be private, that is good. I suspect a large number of their users have a similar outlook.

This article is flawed. It is making an assumption that public posts correlates with private posts.

"Further, I think it’s reasonable to assume a correlation between private use & public use: if you were constantly posting things on a service and each time you were given the option to make it public or private, surely sometimes you’d make it public, especially as a somewhat public figure wanting to help your own company’s new service get going."

This is fallacy, and it is not even persuasive fallacy.

I make significantly more private posts than I do public posts. I've made exactly two public posts since using it in the early field testing days, and have many more private posts. The friends in my circle tends to share privately, not publicly. You don't have to make public posts to use Google+.

We can say for certain that Google management do not make public posts. We cannot say for certain that Google management do not use Google+ at all.

Remember that Larry re-org'd Google into product groups, and the SVP of Social is Vic Gundorota. My understanding is that these groups are supposed to work in a more autonomous fashion, with Larry more of a Jobsian gatekeeper and guiding hand.

If you are to make some sort of conclusion based on whether the boss is using it or not, you need to actually choose the boss. Vic is the boss of Google+, and he's made 150+ posts. Seems pretty good to me.

Maybe they all have their accounts in Google Apps and G+ is just not available to them yet :-)

> Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg really does use Facebook all day. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo tweeted at least 30 times just yesterday.

And, likewise, I'm sure Google's management uses Google Search on a regular basis.

The correct title should have been: "Google's Management Doesn't Use Google+ For Public Posts". But not so good for pageviews, is it?

"Management caring deeply about their company’s products and using them every day is almost always a prerequisite of making great products."

From my time on Google+, the Google+ team seems to be highly visible and doing a terrific job interacting on the site. It seems like a useful update is announced by the team - not management - almost weekly.

"Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg really does use Facebook all day."

Of course, quite obvious from the sheer volume of daily public posts Zuckerberg makes on Facebook.

It seems pointless to continue to dissect this post any further.

I'd bet Google management doesn't click on Google ads very often, either.

Nothing embarrasing here. I'm sure it's just that Google's management are very private people who wouldn't like their personal information exposed and spread about to third parties.

This is really a big news because apparently 25 percent of employee bonuses are tied to the success of Google+.

The news is that Larry didn't convince his management team and the board that G+ is very important for the future of Google.

I'm not sure this is fair. Google is a large company with a lot of products. You simply can't expect top management to be an active user of all of them. I'm sure Apple doesn't require its top execs to own an iPhone, iPod, iPod nano, iPod touch, iMac, MacBook Air.... you get the idea. The comparison with Twitter is even worse. Twitter really only has one product.

The way this data is organized, I don't see any top executives not using Google+ that "should" be using it.

Maybe they have actual work to do and can not procrastinate on Twitter or G+ like the rest of us.

Google+ was supposed to compete with Facebook and having people's salaries tied to something this big, you would expect EVERYBODY to be on board.

I'd be pretty pissed if my salary was tied up in this and articles like this come out basically saying, "Your own execs don't think this is a good enough product to use themselves."

Regardless of how private they want to be, they should be using the product or at the very least have some assistant or intern posting for them. I'm pretty certain most celebs and top tech execs don't do all of their updates. You don't have to post private stuff, just make an effort to show you're using the product.

What an utterly awful use of a pie chart.

I suppose if Google+ was a conventional product--and one could get accurate information about whether or not Google's execs actually used it--this article might have a point.

But Google+ isn't a product. It's more like an API that uses a graphic user interface to transfer personal data from users to Google. Google then uses that data to provide an actual product to its actual customers: advertisers.

http://investor.google.com/corporate/faq.html

"Management caring deeply about their company’s products and using them every day is almost always a prerequisite of making great products"

..when management is also happens to be in the target market of the product. Quite a broad and incorrect generalization to kick off an analysis like this.

Probably for the same reason I stopped: it's not fun.

Given I have a finite amount of time to socialize my identity online, the value proposition of a service has to extend into emotion rather than pure pragmatism.

Fun and joy: maximize this for me and my loyalty follows. If you want me to switch, you had best maximize these more than the existing player.

In Googles case, the service just isn't fun. I always feel like I am missing things, it's hard to track comments you have read and the circle interface is klunky. Facebook has the same type of issues as an information service, but makes up for it in being a fun service for identity curation. Twitter is the best for a river-of-discourse type use case.

Yes there might be a good correlation between dogfooding in senior management and great products, but it's not worth shoving a square peg into a round hole to meet this superficial criteria.

The reason Facebook and Twitter executives use their respective services is because that is the core product from the very beginning. Google+ on the other hand is a tertiary product. Just because management realizes they need a foothold in social doesn't mean that they should forcibly try to transmute themselves into the target market. Instead they should have people in charge of the product that care enough to use it naturally, and I think that's what they're doing.

Google+ has made a point to enforce a real names policy - no pseudonyms allowed. Surely high level executives have things they would like to say publicly or comment on posts which they see. Reading articles is one thing, but taking the time to form a cohesive argument or opinion required to make comment on public articles can greatly enhance comprehension of a topic. Responding to criticism is also a part of this.

Are we to believe that people rise the ranks to a position of power where they suddenly need not debate issues in the public sphere and take the criticism that goes along with it?

Surely not. So wouldn't it then make sense to at least allow pseudonyms?

There aren't exactly doing much for their brand are they? It's not about what they do privately.. I mean, hire some PR lackey to post "public" recipes or list your favoriate bands - whatever.

It's perceptions that matter.

This is an opportunity for the Google leadership to be leaders not only in their company but outside of it by contributing their knowledge and lessons learned to the public. Unfortunately, they are not taking this leadership opportunity, since most of the posts from Larry Page and Sergey Brin are from their amazing adventures and travels, which shows that they themselves don't understand the real power of social media and how they can use it to actually contribute to the world.

I'm really hoping David Drummond will use G+ to tell us all about the lawsuits his staff is in the process of deposing. That's sure to happen.

So will people believe me now that google+ is dead?

Eric Schmidt was actually registered at Google+, but removed his account within the first week when it was "launched" back in jun/july

I like Google Plus, I post many things every day. But I'm among those worried about its future. Out of over 700 people I follow, only around 30 post daily, most posted at one point (I don't follow people who never posted) but don't anymore. I think people have a use for Twitter, Facebook, but G+ is inbetween and doesn't have enough of an obvious use yet.

In the same way google has their own internal version of gmail with features that aren't publicly they will have in internal version of G+. I expect they all use that internal G+ even if they don't use the public one.

One of the problems with being somewhat famous and being on these things is that you get barraged with stuff from random people.

I was mentioned in an early Googler's post and I still get barraged with stuff.

Not to worry, I got plenty of free invites. I'll send them a few.

Neither Facebook nor Twitter are public companies. Is it possible that Google execs are in a quiet period due to the Motorola Mobility deal?

The author is right. Those senior managers need to ask themselves why they used a competing service instead of their own.

The article failed to mention SVP of Commerce and Local: Jeff Huber. He's posted about 40 times. Seems pretty active.

Strange...Alan Eustace has made 3 public posts on October 5, 2011. Perhaps he's a HN reader.

i'd be willing to bet google execs use hangouts quite a bit, which is technically google+..

Perhaps Google uses Google Apps internally, Google+ is not yet available on Apps

Larry and Sergey are probably just posting under pen names. ;)

This is perfectly normal. Carol Bartz (and most of the executive team) didn't use Yahoo's products either...

Why, next you'll tell me Zynga execs don't play Farmville, and TV execs don't watch reality shows!

The author is wrong..there is a Google+ sandbox and I am told that Google management is in fact using Google+ through that from Google insiders..

Apparently they took one look at how Google would be using their information and said "fuck that".

Kind of hard to use Google+ when Google Apps doesn't even support it!

/sarcasm