Comment by michaelochurch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by michaelochurch | Hacker News Reader

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Why keep working at big bureaucratic businesses?

I really believed that Google culture was still alive, and not just a bunch of marketing drivel.

By the way, most startups aren't much better. The best startups are great, but there's a major survivorship bias in what we think of as "startup culture". The ones that implement shitty MBA culture don't get off the ground because people leave.

I think it's impossible to say that any particular strategy will allow Google to beat Facebook.

Sure, and "beat Facebook" was bad word choice on my part. I don't think "beating" Facebook would even be desirable. Right now, though, G+ would do well to have 1% the relevance of Facebook in the social space.

People have short memories. In mid-2011, a lot of people hated Facebook. That was a selling point of G+: we're like Facebook, but we're not Facebook. Ok, cool. Except... no one uses it yet, and there's a major critical-mass effect to social networking sites. Also, in mid-2012, I think the hatred for Facebook (a consequence of those shitty Zynga games, which Facebook has seriously curtailed) has waned and people like it again. As I said, short memories. Google+ was perfectly timed to take advantage of Facebook fatigue by providing something more... qualitative is, I guess, the word... but they blew it.

My thought on games was that getting a few very high quality games would give people an incentive to use G+ even if they were the first ones on it. We wouldn't make money on the games, but that would get people into and comfortable with the system and give G+, at the least, a fighting chance.

Instead, they put huge amounts of money and gambled internal engineer morale for... a "Me, too" product that will probably be shuttered in 5 years.

no one uses it yet

Totally untrue. I have almost 10K users who have circled me, and my G+ network is very active. The quality of engagement I get at G+ is leagues higher than Facebook. A lot of the people I interact with on G+ are engineers, programmers, artists, designers, scientists, and other "knowledge workers", whereas while I've tried to grow out my Facebook network, it appears to be mentally challenged. Hey, a lot of users I know on G+ have deleted their Facebook accounts and aren't coming back.

Now, that's a personal data point, and by no means a scientific poll. But it's clear to me that Google+ is very much here to stay. Even if you only look at the design and UI side of it, G+ is considerably more advanced than Facebook. You can see the influence of Edward Tufte on the Google+ DNA.

I think he meant to say "no nonprogrammers use it". Of course that isn't entirely true either, but the point is that it was able to get mass adoption among people in tech but (according to my understanding) not for people at large.

Also, design/UI isn't really all that different than Facebook, especially after the changes made by Facebook after Google+'s release.

Edit: Google+'s real advantages right now are that 1) it is not Facebook (so if Facebook's perception worsens a lot, people have a choice and Google+ growth could increase a lot), 2) you automatically become a member if you have a Google account and content is present in various Google properties (including message notifications) 3) hangouts, and 4) many of the people you wish weren't your Facebook friends aren't on Google+ yet (although this would likely change if Google+ became popular)

The fact that Google+ can strongly appeal to a particular niche is a good sign. I don't know of any massively-viral social applications with staying power that didn't begin in a similar fashion.

That said, I don't think programmers are a particularly great niche for eventual viral growth. We're sort of the default niche for every new product in the valley. Whether we can sustain a product until it becomes mainstream is a complete toss-up. It happened with Twitter, but even then, the main catalysts were celebrities like Ashton Kutcher creating profiles.

Compare that to Pinterest, which strongly appeals to women of all ages and locations. Or to early Facebook, which targeted college students. These groups are almost defined by their social behavior and their "mainstream-ness". College students get older, leave college, and become hair stylists/grocery baggers/whatever kids are going to school for these days, where they make even more social connections.

So I'm curious how G+ can exploit the particular niche(s) they've had success with. I doubt they'll be able to do it well by simply parroting Facebook's features.

Google+ adoption among my social circles (makers, programmers, burners, hippies, ravers, kinksters) is around 50-75% of Facebook adoption. It's more than enough that if G+ added a few critical features I'd jump ship.

If G+ had Events, I would stop posting events to FB, as would a large number of my friends. This would rapidly cause our remaining friends to join G+ in order to see/RSVP our events.

If G+ had Groups, I could migrate my FB groups over, and this would also lead to a rapid spike in new users.

Google already has Calendar and Groups, so we are just waiting for integration at this point.

"No one uses it yet" I meant to apply to the time (spring and summer) when these discussions were occurring. It's not accurate to say that "no one" uses G+ now.

I think the hatred for Facebook [...] has waned and people like it again.

I think that there are a couple important reasons for this. Google+, a big alternative to Facebook, wasn't a viable option for most people, so they recognized the comfort of Facebook's features. Also, Facebook implemented a bunch of new features that made Facebook more lively (friend lists, timeline, ticker, etc.).

Google had a great opportunity, but they really missed out. Games could have been a great factor in getting more users, but I think that the fundamental issue lies with the actual sharing and interaction mechanisms! Not being able to write on someone's profile was a huge mistake for familiarizing Facebook users with the site, and getting new users. The circling and filtering behaviors still haven't changed. Pinterest came along and did sharing the right way: users posting categories of posts that other people can choose to voluntarily follow. Google+ isn't useful to me because the signal/noise ratio is through the roof because of this fundamental flaw. And there is still no way to exclude individuals from seeing a post.

In many ways, Pinterest is wiping the floor with Google+... an actual content-sharing network, with a well-designed intuitive sharing mechanism. An actual companion to Facebook rather than competitor. Making people choose between the two (Google+/Facebook) was far too large of a challenge.

"(a consequence of those shitty Zynga games, which Facebook has seriously curtailed)"

Not just that. Remember the privacy fiascos?

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