Robert Scoble rages over Google Events spam | Hacker News Reader

Robert Scoble rages over Google Events spam

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27 pointsmirceagoia18 comments

Top comment on Youtube:

"Robert Scoble, you asked for it. Under Calendar Settings>General Automatically add invitations to my calendar: - Yes - Yes, but don't send event reminders unless I have responded "Yes" or "Maybe" - No, only show invitations to which I have responded Check the settings, dumbfuck. "

The default was set to the first option, which (as much as I hate to say it), still gives his argument some grounds. Google should've set it as opt-in instead of opt-out.

But, man, talk about being over the top. It's Google's products that he's using for free. They don't owe anything to him. His rant does more damage to his character than to Google's profits, IMO.

EDIT: It goes without saying that I prefer Will Wheaton's post much more than Scoble's. And he's not 'freaking out' as Scoble claims.

They actually do owe him something, like being the evangelist for their platform. Scoble did do free marketing for G+ (on every place he is/was - I know this from Quora, for example).

At least Google could have asked the top users on G+ before releasing this. Is that hard to do? You suppose not to alienate your users, especially when something you are competing against (Facebook) is already established and you want those users.

Ah true, I take back that part of my argument then. Maybe Google does owe him something.

I still think he was being childish and over the top, though.

> But, man, talk about being over the top. It's Google's products that he's using for free. They don't owe anything to him.

So how do you feel about Facebook's email fuckup?

I feel 'meh'. I just fixed mine, and that's it. People shouldn't rely on Facebook for making new connections anyway. And my friends who are there know how to contact me better than to rely on Facebook only.

I mean, do people seriously expect these things not to happen? We don't have absolute control over these things. These companies only give us the illusion of control so we can make them some cash, at the end of the day.

IBM didn't get the PC, so they lost relevance. Microsoft didn't get the web, so they lost relevance. Both are still huge companies, grossing billions a year (but hit on their valuation by the public market). Maybe in 10 years we'll be saying "google didn't get social", so they lost their relevance. Would that be the case? Only time will tell.

i hate to agree with scoble but he's 100% right -- google gives you no control over who can invite you to an event, and that's bad usability. i was also really sort of shocked to find that a user can't control who can invite them to an event. honestly over the past year every time that google tries to "improve" the quality of the service goes down...

I agree with him too. Google doesn't get social (we thought they finally did)...it's being said and this one proves it yet again.

I hate to agree too, but he is right. Now, compared to him I don't have a lot of people following me and even I got a lot of weird event invites. I can only imagine the number of invites he received from his 1.8 million followers. This feature was not Scoble tested.

Seems this will be fixed in some manner. From Wil Wheatons post on the same topic -

+Vic Gundotra says "We are doing exactly what you requested. We should have contemplated and anticipated how people would abuse this and how painful this could be for celebrities with large followings.

We have pushed a number of fixes yesterday (some were bug fixes that showed up at scale). Expect more fixes today. Sorry for the trouble Will."

https://plus.google.com/108176814619778619437/posts/BC8NZR8b...

It's very "hard" to anticipate this, what can I say...very "hard".

Scoble is one of those people who sound really funny when they swear. He sounds really out a character and despite his point having merit, he sounds like a whiny little nerd.

He swears a fair amount in real life even though I've only met him briefly on a few occasions.

I invited him to come watch the sunset in Bernal Heights. My bad Robert!

like, i understand why he's frustrated but.. really? is that all it takes for scoble to get that upset?

People really hate uncontrolable spams. Think of the email spams we have to deal with over the decade.

coughs first world problem coughs

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