Announcing Google+ Events | Hacker News Reader

Announcing Google+ Events

google.com

111 pointsdiwank48 comments

Very cool-looking, especially the cover photo for events. Should companies/bands/artists and the like start taking G+ seriously, this will be a big selling point (they love little branding opportunities like that).

Calendar integration: Just makes sense. Not really a feature so much as an obvious subfeature.

"Party Mode" looks promising. I'd say the only thing I don't like about Facebook's events is the lack of a group photo album for events, so Google have done well in integrating this.

But, again, until the people I know are actually on Plus, G+ events are just going to be something else just for the geeks.

    until the people I know are actually on Plus, 
    G+ events are just going to be something else 
    just for the geeks

That should not a problem, as most of the people you know, have a Google account, and implicitly are subscribers of Google+

That's interesting. I like Google+, but none of my friends use it. Inviting them to events would be one way of getting them started. Would be even better if I could invite people without Google accounts by e-mail, to make it generally usable for everyone.

> Would be even better if I could invite people without Google accounts by e-mail, to make it generally usable for everyone.

You can do this now. Just type in an email address in the field where you add people/circles. The user who receives the invite can set his availability-status without having a + account. Anything else (posting, commenting, adding photos etc.) requires an account though.

Anything else (posting, commenting, adding photos etc.) requires an account though.

For now. Google's patent on "ghost profiles"[1] is probably intended to fix that.

[1]: http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=_FULAgAAEBAJ&dq=s...

That's great! I'm trying this now. Hopefully Google isn't too clever here, though... I know that of the people I e-mailed use Google Apps, so perhaps Google detects that it's an Google Apps address and enforces Google+ account creation.

Sure. On paper, as a Google account holder, I'm a G+ user. But I'm not.

I haven't used it but I'm guessing that the invites will be tightly integrated with email. The user experience will probably be something like invite users by email. Ones that have gmail/G+ can click through to further integration. Others will simply see an invite page (a la evite).

It's only not a problem if they get alerted via email when people invite them to events. Unlike Facebook, people don't check their G+ every day, so it's more likely that they won't see that event being posted without explicitly being invited by email. And if that's the way G+ events are being promoted, I might as well just set up an email list.

There are opt-out email alerts, and you can also invite people without G+ profiles to the event. The advantages over an email list can be convenience for the sender, the look of the invitation, and additional features for those who have G+ profiles.

Just to reiterate, you can invite people using email addresses. They don't have to use G+, or even have a Google account, I believe.

I tested that with a yahoo address yesterday. And the yahoo address never showed up on G+ event page as Not Responded even though there was no error when I entered it. And I checked the yahoo mailbox and there was no invite email.

Wild. I'll see if I can test that out myself. It's possible that Yahoo was marking the email invites as spam, which would be a separate issue.

I can easily see Facebook implementing "party mode" for their events, especially with their new Camera app. If you take a photo, it checks if you are supposed to be at an event, and asks if you should post it there. No-brainer.

This is the first time I've looked at all of Google's social offerings and thought... wow this is a cohesive, thoughtful, and well-executed set of products. I do hope this reaches some sort of critical mass and takes off. Even if it doesn't its nice to see them really pushing the envelope and putting the fire under everyone else.

Share instantly with Party Mode

Snap photos during the event and share them with everyone at the party in real time, right from your phone.

Thanks, but no, thanks. Life looks more and more like a Nathan Barley episode.

That might be fun for a lot of people. You might say, "they should be enjoying the moment, not artificially posing for photos, blah, blah, etc, etc..." but it's probably just not your idea of fun.

EDIT: Think I'm trying to say that showing off is a lot of fun for many people.

Nathan Barley has aged so well, hasn't it?

With things like Google Glass on the horizon, it's just going to get worse ..

Pretty poor implementation. Random people are inviting me to events and I see no way to block that. Linus says his homescreen is filled with invites - https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/Lwz4yjas...

Google, the default should be such that only people in your circles can invite you.

That was a bug and was fixed a few hours after launch.

There is or was another when inviting people without g+ account, I had a "can't add too many people" warning.

The limits on inviting non G+ users are being tuned. I believe the change should roll out today or tomorrow.

Or if people outside your circles invite you it goes "somewhere else". This would be a perfect use for the (now gone?) Incoming.

I just invited all of my family members who are attending our July 4th Beach Week, and so far it looks like an excellent way for us to plan the meals and share our pictures.

It's also great for people who can't make it. They can watch the live-stream during the event and will be able to browse through all the pictures after the event.

It's a bad day to be a Wedding-organising startup.

Absolutely not. Managing the Google+ event(s) becomes just one more service you can provide. People who would downsize from a professional wedding organizer to Google+ event(s) weren't your bread-and-butter anyway.

In addition, one could use Google+ as the back-end for your wedding service start-up anyway.

People are essentially paying for your services, not the data. If Google+/Facebook is the best way to provide your services, it's more of an opportunity than a threat to your business.

Would love to, but they _still_ don't have the Google Apps for Domains migration tool working.

_This_. I'm frustrated already with having to attach my cellphone to an @gmail.com address (yes, you can have Google Apps for Domains addresses as secondaries, but you're not billed through it).

Regarding party mode, every photo that I take is not worth sharing. I'll often snap 2-3 trying to get one that looks halfway decent. I don't want to automatically share the poor quality ones along the way.

Me too. Our usage pattern might not be typical though.

The event search is not very smart. I created an event in Brighton (UK).

Search for: "Events brighton" returns my event plus many other events in other Brightons around the world.

Search for: "Events brighton uk" only returns 1 event (not mine) as they explicitly mentioned 'uk' in the location name.

So the search doesn't really understand that my event is in the UK, it is just doing a string match - even though Google knows the exact longitude and latitude of the event.

It would be great if Google+ Events can compete with Meetup.com. Meetup is woefully inadequate for more professional (such as the techie) meetups.

Know what? I'm most interested in events near me. Apparently that can't be done with the current interface.

There is an app for iOS (since a long time ago) that does exactly that: http://www.onthehive.com/getapp

I wonder how having photos showing up in real time, in "Party Mode", would effect the dynamics of events/parties (if it would in fact make a difference)?

The Youtube flash video player is displayed on top of the create event form. (On my MBP screen). Looks like they haven't tested it with smaller screens.

Happens to me too on a large screen. While an annoying bug, you can drag the "Create Event" window out from under the flash video.

my screen is 1080p and this still happens.

The flash video seems to overlay itself on the event popup - Chrome 21/Linux

Events should have been there from the start. Events are the only reason many people use Facebook. I was inclined to try and get people to switch over to Google+ when it first launched, but the lack of Events was a turn off. I'm no longer inclined to use Google+ for anything.

"Events are the only reason many people use Facebook."

Is this true? Do we know this? I tried looking up stats on fb's events app usage and wasn't able to dig anything up.

It's purely anecdotal. I've heard the claim many times that people want to leave Facebook but are worried they wont be invited to stuff so keep it open just for the events functionality. If Facebook didn't have the events feature and it was basically just the status updates, games and profiles, I reckon it would be a lot easier for people to leave it.

Well, now we know what Kevin Rose has been up to at Google.

This would be very useful, if I used Google+ and knew more than 5 people who did too. But sadly, I don't. So I guess I'll just have to use the nearly-identical feature on Facebook.

A year too late.

any info on an API to the events?

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