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Thursday, June 30, 2011

Teh Internets A Few Thoughts on Google+

Posted by Paul Constant on Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 3:45 PM

Last night, I got an invitation to join Google's new social network. I've played around with it for a few hours, and I'm nowhere near ready to write a strict up-or-down review for a few reasons: First, it's obviously a beta test, and second, there aren't enough people on it yet to really see how it operates as a social network. I don't have the capability to invite people—it seems like Google put the brakes on invitations for just about everyone last night—so I can't really test all the different social features yet. But I've downloaded the Android app and messed around on the site, and here's what I think:

1. I love how fast Google+ is. If I take a photo on my slow-as-hell, 2-year-old phone, the app immediately uploads the photo to a private photo album section of my Google+ profile (and I mean immediately, as in: Take a photo, set the phone down, go to the site on my desktop and find the photo there, waiting to be delivered to the contacts of my choice). Everything feels instantaneous like that.

2. I love the Circles feature, where you can organize contacts in one circle (or multiple circles) and restrict sharing of information to certain circles. I know Facebook has this feature, but it's a chore, and not nearly as fun as Circles. I could see certain fastidious people spending hours organizing their friends and coworkers into various categories and subcategories just for the OCD thrill of it. (A pleasant part of Circles is that people never get to see the name of the Circle you put them in, so if you put someone in a "Distant Friends," or a "Necessary Evil" Circle, they'll be none the wiser.) And I like that on most screens you have the option to view your page as any of your contacts would see it; that resolves a lot of privacy issues that people may have.

3. For me, the Sparks feature is a dud. It's just an RSS feed based on your interests, with no fine-tune control available. I imagine the Google team is offering Sparks as a feature for people who are not internet-savvy, but if you have an RSS reader, or Twitter (or both), you'll probably not find much that's new here.

4. I think Google+ might be a hard sell. In the past, I've considered getting a private Facebook profile under a fake name for the use of just 20 or so of my closest friends (one reason why: a frequent Slog commenter once trolled some vacation pictures of mine a couple years back, and so I don't really use Facebook for photos anymore because it's not worth the effort to patrol my own profile) and Google+ is definitely an attractive solution for keeping my life compartmentalized. I assume that a few people—and, specifically, a lot of tech writers who have been similarly waxing rhapsodic over Circles—are in the same boat as me. But I don't think that's a common problem, is it? I think most people are fine with keeping their Facebooks as an open firehose and letting their information go wherever Facebook wants, and so Google+ doesn't solve any problems for them.

5. It is at once great and annoying that Google+ information is available to you on any Google site via that new spruced-up toolbar at the top of their pages. Whenever anyone you know does something, the right-hand corner of the bar shows a number, like so:

It's not annoying like a vibrating phone, but it is another number to keep track of, and if you're on the internet a lot, it does a fine job of attracting your attention.

6. I'm looking forward to using the video chat and texting features. If they behave like the photo-sharing features, they should be a joy to use.

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I think everybody has the "Circle" problem. A lot of people have their nieces, nephews, bosses, ex-bosses, lovers, ex-lovers, parents, children, etc, as Facebook friends, and so suddenly everyone is very careful about what they say. A lot of times, that becomes "nothing at all".

Posted by Judas on June 30, 2011 at 3:58 PM

I have a lot of the same reaction with my first day of using gPlus. I can't wait til I can start giving out invitations to friends so I can let my FB profile wither away.
It's also a nice feature that you can include people in updates that aren't a part of gPlus. I know a few people that never signed up for FB, but a lot of my friends use it as an event planning site, so we have to remember to email the one person who won't see the general event invite.
Circles seems to solve that as the non-joiner will be automatically included through email. (I know FB does this, but the person still has to go to FB to see the details, so what's the point?)

Posted by Enigma

on June 30, 2011 at 4:09 PM

The group video chat is supposedly the killer-app.

Posted by clintboxe on June 30, 2011 at 4:12 PM

I am surprised that people who are surely far more savvy than I am find it so difficult to group friends into different categories on Facebook. I've been doing that forever and I think it's simple. I name the categories too -- work, friends, etc.-- and Facebook let's me categorize new people every time I add someone. It also has the feature where you can see exactly what any of your 'friends' see when they look at your profile. Clearly Facebook needs to do a better job of publicizing this.

Posted by avocado on June 30, 2011 at 4:20 PM

I am apparently insufficiently cool to even get a glimpse of Google+. Oh, I went to the preview, clicked to be notified, but come on.

How do you get in if you're not a tech columnist?

Posted by John D on June 30, 2011 at 4:22 PM

Oh, and Avocado, I think the point of Circles is that it's like the long-lost Facebook feature where you could post something to a group of friends. As a result, I have groups in Facebook like "family," "fandom," and so forth, none of which are useful anymore.

Posted by John D on June 30, 2011 at 4:23 PM

@4: Part of the problem is nothing is truly hidden on Facebook, even if you mark something private or friends only. Admittedly, it usually takes a desire to find these 'hidden' or private posts, but it can often be found in just a few clicks.

Posted by Judas on June 30, 2011 at 4:29 PM

Will trade 52 Wave invites for 1 + invite.

Posted by stinkbug on June 30, 2011 at 4:39 PM

I think you're underestimating the amount of ill-will Facebook's managed to build up with their general disregard for privacy, buggy interfaces and 'take it or leave it' attitude towards their customers.

It might be overly optimistic to think Google will be all that different (especially in the privacy dept), but if they're smart they'll make every effort distinguish themselves in these areas.

Posted by dak7e on June 30, 2011 at 5:00 PM

I can't find an iPhone app for G+, so I'm stuck using it in my stupid safari browser.

Posted by fourfingersdown on June 30, 2011 at 5:17 PM

Well, on #4 in your post, teachers are a pretty big demographic that generally (if they're reasonably smart) are pretty concerned about exactly what gets out there in the world in terms of pictures, etc. I have a couple of teacher friends who use fake names on Facebook...

Posted by Julie in Eugene on June 30, 2011 at 5:19 PM

http://checkthis.com/41p
This is apparently a way you can get invited to it if you know someone who already has it.

Posted by Renée Krulich (Nay) on June 30, 2011 at 5:21 PM

I am by all means a regular person, and I deleted my Faceplant account because it became onerous to sort work people from private life people. I also have a stalker from a past life, and I went apeshit when they updated the privacy settings and a bunch of my shit became public. I really don't want that person to know what I'm up to, what I look like now, or where I went on vacation.

I think a lot of people want more control over what's public and private in their online lives.

Posted by TVDinner

on June 30, 2011 at 5:22 PM

@9: Your mistake is to assume that Facebook's customers are you and I, the users. Customers are the people that actually pay for services, which in Facebook's (and Google's) case are the advertisers. When you keep this in mind, their attitude towards us makes a lot more sense. We are product. They are nice to us, enough that we stay on to remain part of the product that they sell to their real customers. In Facebook's case, they have clearly found that they don't have to try very hard.

Posted by Stowe on June 30, 2011 at 5:29 PM

@4: Facebook just isn't as intuitive as it should be when it comes to privacy. They seem to really want everything to be as public as possible. Google+ does a very good job of telling you what you're releasing to which people as you're sending it. It's very transparent, and I like that. I've made a few egregious errors with Facebook, and I like to think I'm at least a little savvier than the normal Facebook user.

@9: If Facebook has built up ill will, why aren't we all on Diaspora right now? That's kind of a snarky question, but there's something to it. Google is doing a very good job, at the moment, of explaining privacy; I think they're going to milk it as much as they can.

@10: No iPhone app yet, but I think they're working on it.

@11: I think you're right; I seem to have underestimated the appeal of Circles. I thought everyone was happy with deluging everyone with information. I'm happy to hear that I might be wrong.

Posted by Paul Constant

on June 30, 2011 at 5:35 PM

It's pretty bad. :(. Did they just buy friendster and sloppily smush together 1000 other google sites that you never wanted to use the first time around? MySpace has a better chance to be the new Facebook than this mess.

Posted by raku on June 30, 2011 at 6:43 PM

diaspora is more of a college dissertation than an actual product (no matter what the people behind it might claim). It's a cool concept that might eventually form the foundation for a commercially viable product, but what they've got now is clearly not intended for general consumption (rough interface, no marketing budget, etc)

And yeah, I'm aware that facebook's "real" customers are the advertisers. But they're only gonna stick around so long as fb has millions upon millions of "fake" customers. Get rid of the fake customers/real people and the real customers/fake people evaporate.

Posted by dak7e on June 30, 2011 at 7:56 PM

I snagged an invite and played with Gplus yesterday. It's just a very thinly disguised honey trap, a faux social network whose real purpose is to make you loosen your Google account's privacy settings.

You have to create a publicly exposed Google profile to use it. It allows your friends to expose your private Picasa albums to others without your knowledge or approval. It automatically mines your Google contacts to 'suggest' new victims. And of course it exposes some of the social graph you've been building on Facebook, beyond the reach of Google's busy little spiders.

However, a high score on the Asperger's index is apparently a requirement for working at Google, so they lack the social skills to make this honey trap work. Gplus is too cold, artificial, and unsocial to fool anyone for long. I hope.

Posted by memphisdavid on June 30, 2011 at 8:42 PM

And their "Join" button should read "Join/(Just Kidding)"

Posted by John D on June 30, 2011 at 10:16 PM

Facebook does offer the ability to post to specific groups but its a pain and does not work with their mobile apps(or at least the ones I've used). Best you can do there is have a restrictive default.

Circles though is so much easier and nicer and you can post one thing to multiple groups wit ha couple clicks. I also like that the default is no one and I have to affirmatively select who sees it. That's a nice touch.

I don't get why people seem to view these services as some sort of charitable benefit. Any talk of payment for it brings cries of protest, but yet people also don't want them targeting ads and people like @18 up there think a business making money is some vast trick. You're getting something for free, that limits the amount of whining you get to do.

Posted by giffy on June 30, 2011 at 10:35 PM

Seems like the biggest positives about G+ are the "circles" and the more user-friendly privacy controls. All the same things are available on Facebook, and I use my Facebook "groups" extensively (even on the mobile app to a limited extent), as well as the friend-specific privacy preview, but I can see why people don't find these intuitive.

But if these are really the only main advantages of G+, then I think Facebook will respond in-kind and make their "groups/circles" & privacy settings similar to G+. And if FB does that, I don't think they need to be to worried about a mass exodus. It'll take a good long while for Google+ to build up enough steam to challenge Facebook.

Posted by wm9605 on June 30, 2011 at 11:26 PM

Facebook already has a 'circles' feature, it's called 'friend lists'.

Very cumbersome to manage, like everything on FB, it's buried in their inconsistent user interface.

Google's gonna have a tough time getting past the Buzz and Wave embarassments. Good luck. @18's Picasa findings are disturbing.

Posted by Karlheinz Arschbomber

on July 1, 2011 at 12:23 AM

Clicking on one of my posts down carets, I noticed a couple features:
Disable comments
Disable reshare

Also, "Edit this post"

@18 You can disable pretty much everything in the Edit Profile mode, there is a slightly hidden "In Circles" button, which controls who sees the people you have in your circles. Each section of your profile can be disabled. And as for the Picasa thing: "People whose tags of you are automatically approved to link to your Profile:" in the Photos section.

Posted by LQ on July 1, 2011 at 3:31 AM

The video chat ('hangout') is a joy to use -- it's super fast, easy, you say who you want to invite (or which circle), and then it's there. The best part is that it's aware of who's talking, and if you even remotely take turns speaking, it makes the speaker's video bigger. The auto switching feels very much like the future. Or like a reality TV show.

Video conferencing is not difficult technology, but I haven't seen anyone else implement this well (or for free) (except Manhunt) (but if you, say, wanted to teach a class remotely, it would be a hard sell to get everyone to sign up for Manhunt, whereas here you could have a Students circle, not sacrifice your privacy, and have a slick, fast, video conference).

I also think Circles is a much more common problem than you're giving in credit. At the very least, pretty much everyone has parents they don't want to see all their posts, not to mention bosses, coworkers, students, reports, etc.

One issue right now is re-sharing -- unless you disable re-sharing (from the arrow dropdown on the right of a new post), anyone you shared with can re-share your item to everyone else. oops.

Posted by epunch on July 1, 2011 at 7:39 AM