Google Plus

[01101010]

Yes but it is really the only alternative for those of us who told Facebook to go fuck themselves with their streaming-life-timeline bullshit.

[Lantyssa]

I reactivated my account and the only active people I know on it are either posting everything to everything through a third party program or they work for google.

I was going to say I'm on there... but I'm not active.

[JWIV]

I'm on there and relatively active, but I do tend to make a lot of use out of the circles feature.

[apocrypha]

Haven't used it for weeks. Felt like a text-based Second Life really. Still, I did get in touch with some old friends I'd lost contact with via G+, thanks to the initial mass geek sign-up.

[apocrypha]

Hey, look, Google's management don't use it either.



I find their lack of faith.... disturbing. 

[Ironwood]

Dogfood failure.

 

[Quinton]

Of course this is a social platform that advertises being able to share with only the people you want to share with instead of the whole world as a major feature...

[Margalis]

A big conceptual problem is that if someone posts something to their circle I see that it is "limited" but I have no idea who is in their circle and who will read my response.

[Prospero]

Isn't that true in Facebook as well? I don't use it often, so maybe there is subtlety I'm missing.

[Yegolev]

G+ is mainly useful so I can know what Felicia Day is thinking at any hour of the day.

[Lucas]

G+ is mainly useful so I can know what Felicia Day is thinking at any hour of the day.

LOL, yeah.

[Margalis]

Isn't that true in Facebook as well? I don't use it often, so maybe there is subtlety I'm missing.

Yeah but better control over who reads what is supposed to be the main selling point of G+.

[Xuri]

My main reason for liking G+ right now? Most of the people on Facebook aren't there.

[apocrypha]

My main reason for liking G+ right now? Most of the people on Facebook aren't there.

That seems to be the crux of the matter for a lot of people. Facebook without the people you don't like. However, I don't see that as being enough to get G+ any higher in the social networking market than it is now, i.e. somewhere below MySpace and of absolutely zero concern to Facebook.

[NowhereMan]

I think the big problem is it's none of the people you don't like on Facebook and very few of the ones you do.

[Ironwood]

G+ is mainly useful so I can know what Felicia Day is thinking at any hour of the day.

I use Twitter for that.  Is G+ better ?  Do we get tastefully clothed and posed pics ?

[Lucas]

G+ is mainly useful so I can know what Felicia Day is thinking at any hour of the day.

I use Twitter for that.  Is G+ better ?  Do we get tastefully clothed and posed pics ?

Umm...I'll leave it to your own judgement 

[Ironwood]

She really is rather pretty in a strange way.

True story tho :  I have a friend who looks exactly like her except blonde.  It just doesn't work.  At all.

[01101010]

Umm...I'll leave it to your own judgement 

Funny, I don't see a +1 or G+ share button in the slew of other twitter/mail/facebook buttons in that picture. 

[Yegolev]

She really is rather pretty in a strange way.

True story tho :  I have a friend who looks exactly like her except blonde.  It just doesn't work.  At all.

I know someone who looks very much like her also, to the point I'm wondering if they are related.

She posts a lot of pictures of food.  Today we got a link to Uncharted 3 on youtube, which she captioned as a reason to dust off the PS3.  So, obviously it would never work due to disagreement on gaming preferences.

[Chimpy]

Just because every time you plug a PS3 into your wall, it dies, is no grounds for shunning a woman!

[Yegolev]

I suppose that was badly worded.  I meant I think she's not into Dark Souls or Disgaea, or possibly other awesome things.

[KallDrexx]

Supposedly Google+ has lost 60 per cent of active users

[01101010]

Of course it has. This is precisely what happens when the chastity belt is removed.

I can't fathom what G+ will become, but it certainly is too chaotic for its own good.

semi-on-topic: I am running the new 2.0 mobile version on my INC2 and it is full of lag, missing comments, and a cartoonish interface which my buddies have also noted. Granted, this is an unreleased version so the lag and wonky commenting might be coming with the rawness, but the interface is kinda silly. Seems they (Google) are inevitably slipping down the same holes.

[Margalis]

Google plus seems destined to be yet another google offering that is left in half-finished state forever, eventually withering away.

It's really pretty amazing how many people Google employs and how much they talk about how their employees have to pass tests and have PhD's and such, compared to what they actually accomplish.

[tazelbain]

Half of it is being fashonable, can't really engineer that.

[Prospero]

If only the drop were true....

[01101010]

Typical MMO syndrome. Have beta, spin the hype machine, release the product, have a huge swell, tide rolls back.

I think more people thought G+ could sustain the masses. And that article cuts both ways. Yes, there was a huge drop in activity. And yes, G+ did gain a net increase, but that is hardly a stable figure this early in the game. It could dwindle further in the coming weeks.  

edit: Give me a "T" 

[Ingmar]

If only the drop were true....

This article is kind of retarded, in that it leads with the same headline that all the non-skeptical ones about it do, so anyone who doesn't read the article itself will see it as they go by and think that yes, it really did drop or whatever.

[Prospero]

Yeah, I'm not sure why the hell he buried the lead like that.

[Prospero]

An interesting rant about Google's problem with building platforms. I've been figuring that G+ was a need basic building block that they would use for all of their other apps, but it sounds like that may not be the case. It does seem like sharing in Reader should have been folded into G+ by this point. It will be interesting to see what the social app world will look like next year.

[MahrinSkel]

An interesting rant about Google's problem with building platforms. I've been figuring that G+ was a need basic building block that they would use for all of their other apps, but it sounds like that may not be the case. It does seem like sharing in Reader should have been folded into G+ by this point. It will be interesting to see what the social app world will look like next year.

Yeah, that's about right.  The first thing I thought when the Google Maps API was announced was "I wonder if I could build a game on that?"  And the conclusion I came to was "Not a chance."  There's not even enough "there" there to use it as a starting point for anything significant, you can (with far more effort than it should take) build a searchable "overlay" for the map, but the fucked-up thing is that unless you're Wikipedia and have a huge amount of volunteer time to throw at it, you can't do anything useful with it in Android.  Making something game-like enough it's actually fun?  Forget it.  There's just a never ending series of things that would be trivially easy if you had the kind of API access the internal Google stuff obviously has, but is difficult to the point of insanity with what you've actually got (which is itself completely different from what's documented).

--Dave

[Tale]

Just got an email from Diaspora, the decentralised social network (peer to peer) that was going to save us all from Facebook and Google: https://joindiaspora.com

They're asking for $25 donations :(

[schild]

Just got an email from Diaspora, the decentralised social network (peer to peer) that was going to save us all from Facebook and Google: https://joindiaspora.com

They're asking for $25 donations :(

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-personally-controlled-do-it-all-distr?ref=live

Time for a second round of Kickstarter.

[Ingmar]

An interesting rant about Google's problem with building platforms. I've been figuring that G+ was a need basic building block that they would use for all of their other apps, but it sounds like that may not be the case. It does seem like sharing in Reader should have been folded into G+ by this point. It will be interesting to see what the social app world will look like next year.

I was just coming here to post this. Fascinating post, really.