Google is making a huge and annoying mistake
wilwheaton.typepad.com
wilwheaton.typepad.com
First, a question: any random person on the internet, without being logged in, used to be able to Thumb Up a YouTube video?
If that's true, then I bet it was very easy to spam. Giving it a Thumb Up, without being logged in, would also mean that none of your friends had any idea that you had given it a Thumb Up, and you could never again find a history of things you had Thumbed Up.
And now, to upvote, you need to be logged in...
What website, anywhere on the internet, allows you to upvote without being logged in? Not HackerNews. Not Reddit. Not Facebook.
By knowing who you Follow, Google and YouTube now have a much better way to find information that you care about. If I search on YouTube for "python", it has a chance to know that I mean the programming language, because of who I'm Following.
Also, every single +1 that you get on your YouTube videos now has a real person behind it. Every single +1 is now worth Gold. Every single +1 has a better chance to go viral, because the Followers of that person who clicked +1 have a chance to see it.
If I search on YouTube for something, and I see "Wil Wheaton +1d this," I'm MUCH more likely to want to check it out.
Business Insider, the largest business site, allows it (Quantcast #235).
It's premised on the notion that for 99.999% of people, they're not going to bother going through any amount of hassle to bolster votes artificially. It works, it's not worth the time or effort to game content and comments that are modest in traffic and throw-away in nature. The only way it's worth gaming, is on front pages like Reddit where there's a massive simultaneous concentration of traffic.
Commenting with zero accountability (authenticated accounts, voting, flagging, whatever) is basically doomed to be awful and a net negative to the service.
And, I already get the +1s (or thumbs up, or whatever it's called) of the people I follow on Youtube, in my Youtube stream. And I do like things there. On the other hand, sharing ? I'd think twice before doing it.
As far as I know, the migration from Youtube accounts to Google accounts has been forced some time ago (I tried to avoid it as long as I could).
We do it on our server at home.
To make other people happy, it would be completely optional to link those accounts together - but keep them separate, for some reason.
To make other people happy, they should be able to use one account to do all of the those things.
Finally, to make other people happy, Google should just be a search engine with 10 blue links.
BUt I don't have a Google + account. Though not for Google not trying. And frankly I don't want one. FB is enough for me.
What changes (if they really do what the original blog post suggests) is this: * They remove the up/down votes system internal to Youtube (which is already a full-fledged system, where you have a stream where you can see when someone you follow likes something, etc) * They move 'share to Google+' from the 'Share' submenu (where it already is, alongside with Facebook, Twitter) to where the up/down votes were
I think users innately understand this and are shying away from Google+ because they can sniff where all this is heading - my boss reading that I "liked" a LOLcats video while at work or my wife seeing that I "plussed" a review of Avengers by a woman in lingerie or something. If users don't know what their actions will produce (especially socially) they are going to avoid it!
It does not exist. You can specifically Share a video with Circles.
> influence your search results in ways you don't want,
In the upper right on your Search page, you can click "Hide personal results."
> or show up awkwardly in other strange ways while using other Google products like Gmail
[citation needed]
> The real problem is the effects are unknown and upvoting is no longer a contained action with a specific social purpose.
What if you want to share with your circles, what if you want things you've +1'd to influence your search results, what if you want to see better ads rather than crappy ads?
> my boss reading that I "liked" a LOLcats video while at work
Don't Share that with your boss. That's what Circles are for.
> my wife seeing that I "plussed" a review of Avengers by a woman in lingerie or something
+1's are inherently public.
I can appreciate that you like to give feedback to content creators saying, "Hey, I liked this!" Google is tying the "I" in that sentence to your Google+ account.
I think the days of "Anonymous Likes" are somewhat over... They were always susceptible to spamming, anyway. And they were never really as anonymous as we liked to think they were.
[Citation Needed]
Should content show up higher in Google Search Results, if it is more Liked? By whatever system of Likes you care to design... I say "yes."
That makes the "Anonymous Like" system a clear target for Search Engine Optimization.
People have to pay for ads. If it turns out that the Conversion numbers for a set of search words are lousy, then advertisers will give up on those words, and the price on those words will plummet. It's to Google's advantage to find GOOD ads, that users actually WANT to see. It's good for advertisers to only have their ads up if users WANT to see them. And it's good for users to only see ads that they WANT to see. The economy on ad words helps solve those problems.
For YouTube videos, Google knows how many people watch all the way through a video - which is one metric. They know how many times people start watching the video. They could know how many "Anonymous Likes" there are. And they can know how many +1s and Shares there are. The number of replays, too. How often people click on the video, when it shows up in search results.
Given all of that data, I assert that it's possible that Anonymous Likes have no technical value. The task: given all of the metrics, predict the likelihood that User B will enjoy watching a video. I think it's possible that Google / YouTube have determined that the number of Anonymous Likes has no statistical correlation to the likelihood that User B will enjoy watching the video. I think it's possible that the number of Anonymous Likes should have no bearing on the Rank of a video in Search Results.
Your assertion is that "The decision to eliminate 'Anonymous Likes' is not a result of technical needs". That's possible, but I think you're only speculating. Otherwise, [Citation Needed].
> it's a decision "from the above" to force a "more social" Google.
If I'm correct, that Anonymous Likes have no statistical correlation to whether User B will enjoy the video, then don't you think it's possible that having Google+ users, who are signed in, be able to +1 and Share a video might actually create BETTER RESULTS for users? Not just "more social," but more "ME" based on things I've liked, and based somewhat on the things the people in my Circles have liked?
If you feel like you have the time, please try to explain roughly the same message that I tried to express, but with a posting style that is not obnoxious.
clue #2: do not use overused internet trailer trash phrases like "Citation Needed" when you aren't on Wikipedia, or the phrases "Really? Seriously?"
clue #3: try to emotionally detach yourself from the topic and engage the merits of the topic, no need to capitalize words, etc. ALL CAPS won't help you.
Is spamming likes really a problem now, and will the SEO target evaporate once the number of accounts is reduced? I don't think so. Quite the opposite, actually.
You say people should not have to see ads they don't want to see - good luck with that. A good deal of marketing is selling to people who aren't looking to buy.
Lubujackson's entire point is that we don't know what the consequences will be.
Or as Dr. Buckaroo Banzai once said, "Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
> It does not exist. You can specifically Share a video with Circles.
https://plus.google.com/109412257237874861202/plusones
> +1's are inherently public.
> I can appreciate that you like to give feedback to content creators saying, "Hey, I liked this!" Google is tying the "I" in that sentence to your Google+ account.
> I think the days of "Anonymous Likes" are somewhat over... They were always susceptible to spamming, anyway. And they were never really as anonymous as we liked to think they were.
There is a big difference between unauthenticated and anonymous, even if from the perspective of the viewer they look identical. On Hacker News, you can't tell whether I +1'd or -1'd you, but I certainly have an account that I must be logged in to in order to vote.
That's right... that's exactly the issue captured in nutshell.
now, you're +1ing a video from your google account. your +1s are visible somewhere in google+ and are reported back to google and influence your search results.
it's the exact same thing, the button just looks different.
For me, a crucial difference is that Google+ is linked publicly to my real name, while YouTube was always confined to a pseudonym.
The OP is correct; while technically slightly different (perhaps closer to tweeting to a protected twitter account), its basically the same thing:
Your votes are publicly viewable by your social network friends.
This just completes Googles utter failure with Google Video and YouTube. They never understood why Google Video failed, and YouTube remains a steaming pile of shit under Google's ownership. And it's getting worse.
"If I search on YouTube for "python", it has a chance to know that I mean the programming language, because of who I'm Following."
Are you really not interested in the snake just because you follow a lot of programmers?
For example, I follow the hacker news circle on Google+, because I respect technical expertise and interests of you guys. Some of you might like to write about some other topic like sports, but that's not why I'm following you.
Now if I do a Google search for "running shoes", how can Google know that everything you wrote about this topic is not to be used to "improve" my ranking?
I think you needed to be logged in (or it would ask you to log in), but the point was that it didn't require a Google Plus account.
Google saying that Youtube is now, fundamentally, a G+ territory means that social video is no longer something we can take for granted; expect Facebook and Apple to jump ship, and Youtube is left with, what, only the loyal G+ users?
I miss the days when Google, Apple, and Facebook cooperated rather than squabbled. The internet has gotten crappier lately.
This is why I often prefer things that I either have to pay for or that are OSS because then at least I feel like I have some of influence in the relationship.
I dread the day that google slap a login page up in front of their search engine service.
> I miss the days when Google, Apple, and Facebook cooperated rather than squabbled.
I don't; competition is good.
By purchasing Instagram, Facebook prevented themselves from being edged out in photos the way Google is shouldering them out in video sharing.
But with Instagram, they wanted the name-brand.
So instead of simply correcting that failure, Google paid $1.6 billion for something it already had.
I think it's a great move. Personally, I even want them to integrate their G+ commenting system into all their services. It's one of the best commenting systems out there, and certainly much better than the Youtube one. It might even encourage better comments on Youtube.
I'm not a heavy Youtube user and don't care that much, but it was not intuitive or apparent.
Further, I mostly like G+ (except for one complaint [1]), and I'm all for better integration of their properties with it.
It's almost like the Internet is lots of different people with wildly divergent opinions!
The rest of your point was well-made (not that I expect you to care about what I think; I'm just some random git off the Internet, after all).
I always fancied threaded comment systems, but they can spiral off topic. That's not in tiself a bad thing. Loads of comments can be hard to read, or rather take a long time to read. Perhaps a character limit - and a comment limit would make them more succinct and better all round.
Wasn't the +1 just a shortcut for those that used to just cut and paste someone else's comment to signify that they were in agreement with what the other person said anyway? Perhaps I'm wrong and it means something different to other people.
Part of me says do anything to make the YouTube comment system better. But I'm not sure if Google+ is the right way to go about it.
No, not true.
No, they don't. They just suspend your G+ account. GMail is unaffected.
Yes, there are stories of people getting both their G+ and GMail accounts suspended, but it was always for other reasons than not using a real name. One I recall was that a user was under 13, but hadn't entered his birthday until activating the G+ portion of his account, which triggered the GMail suspension. (Google doesn't allow under-13 users to have Google accounts since under US law there are extra requirements that Google doesn't want to deal with.)
Instead of there being a way to "like" this thing on an external social network (like G+ or Facebook), what about just "liking" it on a system that exists only on the site itself (in this case, on YouTube)?
Then after that, how about a system to Share the item? This doesn't really exist on the web, but the Sharing system on Android solves this problem well.
Latest news seems to be on G+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/116171619992010691739/posts
Grab a Canary build, start playing with it right now.
It's about as valuable as those old CGI "000000017 people have viewed this page!"
And there's a great way to share the item - use the URL. Google is really aggressive about making sure that its web pages, even though they feel like rich internet applications, still allow linking.
I don't think the move to G+ will affect Youtube comment quality at all.
No, they didn't. Who in hell would complain about that? Who cares?
http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/03/15/dislike-youtube-cons...
While my visceral reaction is basically the same as Wil's, I actually think that this is something Google needs to do if they believe in this vision. Time will tell if it's justified: when they removed social features from Reader I basically stopped using it. I probably won't stop using YouTube, but this may be annoying enough for me to stop giving feedback (apart from the navigation event itself, of course).
Also on the plus side, since Google insists on real identities on G+ then we can at least look forward to more civil comments on YouTube, which I think we all agree would be a net benefit.
The better they know their users, the more specifically they can target ads to them. For example, if I wanted to reach 20-somethings, who really like pizza and motorbikes, travel widely and currently reside on the west coast, FB can put ads in front of that group (I don't know if Google can, but I assume it's more tricky for them).
Since there are likely a large number of people that use the web while still logged in to FB, then FB could feasibly start offering to place highly-targeted ads out on the web at large. This could obviously have a dramatic effect on Google's dominance.
In other words, it's not just social per se, but being able to learn more about users in order to ensure that they can keep their hold over advertising revenue. Once I looked at it this way, Google's 'need' for social made more sense.
To test the above, we could look at what Google offers in terms of demographics/interest filtering when you buy/place ads around the web. If the ability to refine who sees your ads is really part of the plan then there should be signs that it's happening. I've never used any of Google's ad stuff so I wouldn't know where to look.
I think it's important to realise that the advertisers don't necessarily know about you. Google/Facebook do and they're the ones who provide the 'filtering' service for folks who want to place ads in front of certain groups.
Since it's not in Google's or Facebook's best interest to allow a direct connection between their advertiser's and users (if they no longer act as the proxy, where's the money?) I'm not terribly worried about it.
I would like there to be more than just a vested interest in not revealing my identity though. Something legal ensuring they take it seriously would be nice. Like being able to sue them should they mistakenly expose my identity via some third party's clever fingerprinting etc. As long as I stay anonymous and protected (from big brother etc.) though I really don't care. I just think we need more assurances that we are indeed anonymous, gov included, which currently isn't the case.
If you see a random ad for a company on Google, click on it and then supply your email. Then they would know a lot more about than just your email. They would know every demographic filter they used to create that ad. That could be quite specific.
Browser fingerprinting is far more alarming: http://panopticlick.eff.org/
Let's say there's a SASS service you can tie into that has a massive database of browser fingerprint activity. Potentially you could get quite a significant amount of browsing history once enough websites are using the service. You can tie this to an email address etc. when a site requests a signup.
It's like a stock exchange -- you say you want to sell 30 shares of AAPL, and you're anonymously matched with someone that wants to buy 30 shares of AAPL. Only the exchange knows who both parties to the transaction are, protecting you from evil transaction partners.
Now, if you don't trust the exchange, that's a problem. But if you are worried about using the exchange because you don't trust every possible trading party, that's incorrect.
Only sort of. Let's say I'm doing general advertising but want to know the age and gender of people who click on my ads. So I place ads for "men age 18-20", "men age 21-24", "men age 25-35", ..., "women age 18-20", ... . I give each a different landing url. Then I as the advertiser learn more about my incoming users than I would without targeting. I can't pull all the demographic information the ad network knows because if the buckets are too small things like CTR estimation work poorly, but if I'm high volume I can get good resolution.
It's a bunch of servers that know lots about you. Google then uses these servers to match ads to you. There is no team of Google employees who knows every detail of your life and personally matches ads to you. It's servers and algorithms all the way down.
A server has as much use for your likes and dislikes as it does for a piece of pizza (which you may or may not like).
Along comes Facebook, which could (in theory, at least) roll out a perfectly competitive product to threaten AdWords. If social really does provide better context for advertising, and advertising within the world's prevailing social network is deemed superior to advertising within search, then Google is fucked. Some degree of 97% fucked, to be precise.
This is why Google's so feverishly obsessed with social in general, and Facebook in particular. They see this -- rightly so -- as no less than an existential threat. Now, their approach to the problem is up for debate. But the extent of the problem is, if anything, popularly underestimated.
What Google needs, in this case, is more information on its users, which is not a particularly social thing to need.
Say Google is approaching social as an information gathering problem, and Facebook is approaching social as a users-interacting problem, then who will always win social under those conditions?
Actually, my intent was just the opposite: to explain why Google "needs" social (but not so much to explain why its efforts have been weak). That said, I think it does offer explanation for their weakness in social to date: they didn't really see it as a threat until it became one. It's very easy to see why Facebook's ad platform can be a threat to Google's ad platform in hindsight (i.e., right now), but it wasn't back when Facebook was first taking off. It's hard to blame Google for not seeing Facebook as an existential threat before it turned into one.
"Say Google is approaching social as an information gathering problem, and Facebook is approaching social as a users-interacting problem, then who will always win social under those conditions?"
For Google, it's not about winning social, per se; it's about winning advertising. Facebook is trying to win social. Google is trying to prevent social from devastating its ad platform, and at the moment, it seems to think that putting up a valiant fight to carve out a piece of social is the best solution to that problem. That's why Google thinks it "needs" social. It may or may not actually need to win social, but it needs to defend and improve its ad platform, and social is a big threat to that platform. Accordingly, I'd argue that Google's approach to social has been defensive, and not offensive. (Ironically, that may also explain its not being able to "get" social so far).
At least Google seems to think so. (If they just thought FB was a threat to display ads, they probably wouldn't be making social such a huge, life-or-death deal).
Here's hoping Google Glass will be successful.
Google has always been attempting to enter new markets, but the new attempts amounted to a lot of moderately useful utilities, some questionably useful toys and curiosities, and a lot of misses. Mostly, the attempts seemed like random offshoots -- the products of a company that was supremely dominant in its position, flush with cash, and free to experiment in any way it so chose.
As I mentioned in a previous comment, it's very easy in hindsight to blame Google for having essentially rested on its laurels, squandering its lead and its position. And it's very easy to claim that certain threats (i.e., Facebook) were "always" obvious. They weren't. There were certainly some critical junctures at which Google should have focused its efforts on expansion in one or two directions. But Google was making attempts at expansion -- just not the right ones.
Harvard's Clayton Christensen famously described this situation as "The Innovator's Dilemma." There is a well-documented and almost axiomatic pattern, throughout history, of innovative companies rising to the top and then failing to predict who or what would eventually disrupt them. (If disruption were easily predictable, after all, it wouldn't be disruptive).
http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-B...
It's worth checking out.
"pictures of Dan's wedding" "those backpacks John keeps talking about" and "where the fuck are my car keys" are all queries that require people-data in order to dereference whom you're talking about
So, your logic is that because human-savvy products can not be reproduced, it is incumbent upon Google to reproduce them?
Another way to describe it would be inertia. It is a lot easier to switch programs and leave nothing behind than it is to switch social networks and leave your history behind.
[1] these are just examples from my own usage - lets not argue about specifics. Never let facts can get in the way of a good story.
Social networks have been part of the Internet since before it was an Internet: mailing lists, Usenet, BBS systems, AOL chat rooms, Geocities, Friendster, Grokster, Orkut, MySpace, Bebo, Facebook.... Each has ahd its time in the sun. And then faded.
Of course, single-focus tech and consumer sites have come and gone as well. But sites which serve a clear and persistent service seem to have done better than those which stuck strictly to a flash-in-the-pan concept.
Most of the time I see facebook comments on an external site (I don't use facebook personally), they're little better than the average youtube comment. It's amazing what kinds of mind-bogglingly stupid, racist, sexist, and inflammatory stuff people are perfectly happy to say with they real name and photo just off to the left.
Really, the only thing I see changing with a real identity policy on youtube is that if some of the kids posting such stuff grow up, they will no longer be able to shed their past comments.
It's all about baby steps. The chicken and egg problem sometimes needs coercion in the beginning
Perhaps on its own this single dimension doesn't add all that much value, but in aggregate and with a mass number of participants, it should.
Like most people, all of my friends use Facebook more or less exclusively. But I know if I have a photo in my G+ account (the Android app syncs all photos to the G+ cloud by default) I can send people a link and have a pretty reasonable assurance they can see it.
Do they, or do they just piss people off and result in them using their services less? When Google mandated migrating youtube accounts to G+, I just let mine rot.
What is "astounding" about that? They sound like synonyms to me. Do you have an argument with the substance of what I wrote (regarding average users' reacions to youtube merging accounts with G+)?
This UK source isn't quite the connotation, though the reference to the Irish usage matches the American English one pretty well: http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/30/messages/2182.ht...
Given that two of you now have gone out of your way to deliberately (and uncharitably) misinterpret me: are you sure that I am the one with a preexisting grudge?
There is no way to have a youtube account anymore, Google required creating a Google account years ago.
> They just click "OK" and continue using youtube as before.
Not really, since with this new change it won't be possible to "dislike" videos (at all) and won't be possible to "like" them without splattering your watching of lolcats onto your G+ by default.
> You have a bone to pick with Google
I "have a bone to pick with Google" because I don't like the way they go about their business and scummily attempt to force me into a service I have no interest whatsoever in?
NB: I haven't done the upgrade, but I'm presuming that when you opt into it you come to a page that exhorts you to give them your profile with your 'real' name on there instead of whatever you might have had previously in your Google account.
Overall, it seems to me it's probably both more likely than a random family member will have a Google account, and/or be willing to sign up for one, than sign up for a different service that's less well-known and has fewer services based on that login.
I could have just emailed them the document. But it was a work in progress. I just wanted them to give it a once over.
In part this is why Google are integrating their services in the first place. Centralising signing in increases the chance of participation in their other apps.
It's a case of what you already know and anything beyond that is a barrier to entry.
It would take pretty deep pockets to compete with YouTube at this point. Content isn't like search, so YouTube can tick a lot of people off and still not notice.
If Hulu (or Yahoo) had built professional channels, then they might have taken some of the high traffic stuff from YouTube. If the cable-viewers only rule is implemented on Hulu, then they might take myspace's crown away.
Google has realized it NEEDS to have some social layer and influence integrated into its services in order to compete and not fade into the archives of the web. A much lower # of likes from identified users is MUCH more valuable to Google than millions of anonymous likes.
What's happened here is replacing needing a 'Youtube' account with a 'Google' account, which for all intents and purposes has been a Google account for a while now anyway. I have a feeling that this is the beginning of consolidating the various ways in which you hold a google account for any of the services under one G+ bannner.
The problem I see they might have with this is issues of association on non-social networked activity with the G+ social network. I've found amongst my non-tech friends a strong opposition to moving from Facebook to G+ as they perceive Google to be less trustworthy than Facebook when it comes to matters of privacy, and in extreme cases to think that Google is actively evil in its data sucking in comparison.
No, that happened years ago, you haven't been able to log into Youtube with a Youtube account for a very, very long time. Instead, you've been greeted with this:
> Update your YouTube account by linking to a Google Account
> You will no longer be able to sign in to YouTube without a Google Account.
> If you do not want to link this YouTube account, you can sign out here.
This new move is about forcefully shoving G+ further down user throats in the hope of ever making it relevant.
Hey, it might work. Got to get those numbers up, right? But they can't make me USE my G+ account.
sometimes, things change.
And this is a terrible interpretation of what I intended on saying. :)
I was mocking the validity of the parents assertion because I find it has as much credibility as my ridiculous assertion.
Perhaps you were mocking mine? and if so, kudos to you sir.
Let's be honest. Google+ is almost identical to Facebook. It has equivalent functionality in every respect, and in most respects it improves on that functionality. The only reason you're not using it is because nobody is there. How do you fix that? Force people to use it. As soon as a handful of people realise that it's actually better and more well designed than Facebook, people will flock there.
Personally, I would be happy to see G+ get a little more traction among my less-techy friends and family which isn't going to happen without Google doing stuff like this.
Condé Nast owns reddit, remember?
I don't want to link my personal email (Gmail) account with the what cats I watch on the Internet.
If done wrong it can be crippling. But then it's a problem of that specific implementation, and you could make a constructive critic to improve it. Instead, the author is just raging against g+ for no good reason.
The same thing happened when they linked up gmail accounts to YT logins. I just stopped watching videos that required a login, because I didn't want to link my YT account to my gmail account for privacy reasons.
If you want to talk about huge mistakes of Goog, count the seconds it takes to execute all the JS crap they have stuffed even into the simplest of their pages now. Or talk about their failed attempt of a re-design and even them following the current position:fixed; hype, cluttering small screens with headers and footers that don't scroll (the rainbow <hr> of our times).
Wow... can you say overreacting? Is this really that bad? Is it even bad at all? Wow.
Both the apps (and Dailymotion) are deeply integrated with the FB timeline and hence getting a lot of views because of it.
People will laugh if they integrated Youtube with FB timeline. So, I think it was in their best interest to integrate it with Google+.
So, either Google+ wins or Youtube loses. I believe that most likely the latter will come true because of this move.
I think Google should buy social networks like Pinterest, Viddy or Socialcam (and leaving them they way they are) instead of ruining its own products by integrating them with Google+.
Facebook acquired Instagram in spite of it being integrated with Twitter. Google should also play the same game.
The web is built on URLs. If you like something and want to share it with people, send them a URL. That's what they're for.
as an aside, I say 'in theory' because with the millions of 'me too' buttons scattered around the web, in even my modestly small socially networked connections, the S/N ratio has made them near enough useless.
Feedback to the author, and crowd-rating for people you don't know.
What do you think the point of HN's up and down arrows are?
In this case, the problem is that people without G+ cannot voice their approval. This is obviously a deliberate ploy to coerce people into joining G+, but motives aside the issue is that Google are forcing people to share when perhaps, some only want to approve.
As people have noted, whilst the frictionless sharing is good for viral marketing, in the long term it's devastating to signal vs. noise. I left Facebook largely because my stream was full of updates from people - good friends, who I enjoy talking to - that said 'John Doe likes this: "Click like for a chance to Win!"'
They are even worse than Microsoft was back in the days, when Google came along with a clean search engine and a clean slate. These days, "dont do evil" is as ridicolous as Obamas "Change!" campaign.
Google is a strong supporter of CISPA as well. Whats left to like in this company? They make a good browser and good apps, but its not worth what they are doing to their customers.
Google supportive of CISPA: http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/report-google-...
Which we all know, are always the good guys and they want to help you with your life knowing what you search for and which websites you visit.
I'm assuming the changes are site wide, and not just targeted at you? If so, everyone will get less votes. Therefore it doesn't matter in regards to this point at all. Supply and demand right?
> You don't get people to enthusiastically use your services by forcing them to.
We're talking about a button.
It's amazing how much hyperbole and irrationality comes out the woodwork when small changes are made. How is such an angry meaningless blog post making it's way to front page of HN?
Stupid? Yes, but it's dangerous to just assume they'll do the right thing. Frankly they should have added a + button on top of thumbs up/down so you could easily share as a separate feature, not replace the thumbs.
I had no idea, until I got told (in person) much, much later at some party that I was "spamming them".
Thanks for handling your social network in a non-evil way Google. Appreciated.
Not quite, but nice try. Though, in a way, even if it did apply, it's still holds water. If you are 100% dependent on VC funding you for your survival and operations, then yeah, mistakes are being made.
Rather, it's like resting your entire business on a single entity, one big customer. If that customer goes away, you lose your funding. Sorry, but if you think being reliant on another businesses for all your funding is smart, you're in for a rude awakening.
Google needs to refocus on search and advertising, and put more effort into R&D that might actually have world impact and significant ROI like perfecting and licensing driverless car technology.
The point seems to be don't rob people of functionality they've come to expect just to push sign-ups.
It sounds like it's more his feedback as a creator, worried about what the functionality will do to users. But, you know, those are the breaks when you sharecrop on someone else's land: they retain the right to change things for their own benefit.
Still don't quite understand the complaint, though. You've long needed a Google account to give feedback on YouTube. Now they call those accounts G+ accounts (just as Hotmail accounts became Live accounts, etc). What's the problem?
sidenote -- gah, accidentally downvoted you when I was trying to select text. Apologies.
My understanding of his complaint is that he was signed in to youtube, which is why it's billed as an 'upgrade.' He should be able to easily use YouTube with a YouTube account. I think that's where the complaint comes in, it's not just calling the account something different, it's making things more difficult for those who might want to keep some things separate.
That doesn't make your points any less true, but I at least think I understand the complaint.
edit: also no worries on the downvote ;)
[1]http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...
Guess which market Wheaton is going after?
what you said is literally false. here's his in-depth critique:
"I’m going to lose a crapton of potential upvotes for Tabletop, because the core of my audience is tech-savvy and may not want to “upgrade” to yet another fucking social network they don’t want or need...
Those upvotes are incredibly important to us, because we need them to earn another season of our show...
[this] will negatively affect how users can interact with us on YouTube."
translation: "we might lose the ability to do our show, because this G+ +1 button introduces friction and a sign-up process we don't expect our users will bother to complete."
Yeah, but he misses the next step in logical thinking which is that the changes will apply to everyone. This new button is for everyone, which means everyone will get less votes which means less are needed for him to continue to run the show.
It's not a linear adjustment for everyone.
That's not the point the author is arguing anyway.
no he doesn't, not at all. he "misses" this step because while it might be logical over the long term for the world on average, it's irrelevant to his business.
if you've got a deal in place, based on existing expectations of the number of upvotes, and Google changes how upvotes happen, your existing deal is threatened. it's like if you agree to work for an hourly rate right before your government devalues their currency.
I believe what's happening here is he has a certain number of upvotes which he needs to obtain if his show is going to continue. for instance he might have a deal with investors, or he might just want to compete with pre-existing vidoes whose upvotes (achieved under the previous system) are already secure. Google made it harder for him to get upvotes, thus disrupting his business.
it's cool to disrupt businesses but if you set yourself up as a platform and then you disrupt businesses built on your platform, that's less cool. that's an unstable platform and a dangerous place to do business.
If he does share it, that just gives your video and even greater probability of going viral. Why cant content publishers get this?
Look at where that G+ button is. It's big, its first, and it combines, as-one, an already existing feature -- the "Like" button.
The G+ button isn't optionial, placed in a "secondary" position (i.e. to the right), or a single feature/choice.
That's probably why users are getting upset with this, UX background or not.
Well it's good that in addition to "go fuck yourself", he offered an in-depth critique of why these changes are wrong. I guess maybe you stopped reading before that?
> Leave the analyses to the real UX folks.
Whoa now, hold on just a goddamned minute. What "real UX folks" say only holds weight insofar as it accurately pertains to the interaction and communication of producers and consumers. When content producers say "This change breaks an important connection to our users", then "UX folks" had better listen good and hard.
Uh, no, it doesn't, at least not at any responsible software project I've worked on. The whole reason you run experiments, A/B testing, etc is so that this doesn't happen.
Please try my extension if you're interested -
Forcing people to use it is one way of getting more people on there. If even on in a thousand people stays to look around, that could mean a snowball effect that causes a massive spike in G+ users.
I don't think it is "just as bad" but it is quite obnoxious.
Stick to your core competence always.
Which imo is looking increasingly likely.
Vimeo is one competitor which seems to already be growing like crazy for example.
Youtube has lost their total dominance. Youtube is no longer the be all and end all of online video. Vimeo started off capturing business videos from youtube as they looked more professional, now they're capturing the indie filmmakers.
I said they need to be careful about not pushing YouTube into MySpace territory, not that they will. Nor did I say Vimeo are the next YouTube. You could see the video market fragment as it's not all or nothing as Social Networks are.
And who cares about the quantity that gets uploaded to YouTube, you know most of it's long tail junk. It's where the viewers go, not who has the most crappy video of their dog rolling around for a tasty treat.
As a user and a video creator this would annoy me a lot. If they want to add a G+ button fine, but replacing a core feature? Unacceptable.
If you want to be pedantic then sure, they removed a core part of Youtube when they removed the rating system, but in reality the system evolved. 1 - 5 was (at it's core) a way to rate videos: like / dislike is (at it's core) a way to rate videos, the interface and finer points are different but it's still the same thing overall.
You somehow boiled it down to a discussion on the lack of a "thumbs down" button. I think you're off track here. YMMV.
I could like videos on Youtube without the risk of them appearing anywhere or being used for anything. This has changed. And frankly it sucks.
YouTube is a social network in itself (at this point a much more powerful one than Google+) so they have to respect its users and not try to force them to signup for the other network.
I don't personally vote on Youtube videos but I can understand how a video publisher might be upset that he's suddenly going to be getting fewer likes on his content.
Again it seems this was just a test, so considering the negative user feedback I certainly hope it stays just that.
I have a real hatred for the merging of Google services - and I'm not even sure why. I think it's because it just feels like the erosion of my privacy. I've become someone that uses multiple browsers. I'm logging in and out of services - just because I want to shed my persistent identity - that I probably have exposed anyway.
Not having to sign into different services with different credentials is one of the only benefits I feel I get, and yet I'm doing more logging in and out then I ever did before.
And then sites began adding the bookmarklet code directly to their pages. Which seemed like a good idea - until they had to add a button for everyone's favorite service. And then they had 10-20 buttons on each page, each using javascript to call a remote service on the backend. And then it wasn't such a good idea... so we started to see consolidation.
I miss my old bookmarklets.
(and get off my lawn).
at least g+ is the same 'account' as your youtube one. they already have your data.
PITA still.
Downvote away, I look forward to the next rant about Google's social unification as if it's a big shock and surprise, maybe we can also discuss semicolons in Javascript.
(everything else aside, I have no idea why they would throw away everything they've invested in the '+1' branding)
Funny, both of my comments shaking my head in disbelief at unexplained Google hate are commentlessly downvoted. Let the rage at Google flow through you and the downvote arrow!
TL;DR I am a facebook hipster. Facebook isn't cool anymore.