Google+ and the Interest Graph

Gideon Rosenblatt I share these disappointments.

Why does G+ need to innovate Gideon Rosenblatt? I think the environment, tools and control are there.

Instead, it should have been 1000% focused on helping people to build a rich information network around the things we care most about – our interest graph – and then to use that interest graph to connect us with new people who share those interests with us – our “shared interest graph.”

This quote perfectly describes how I have used and benefited from Google+. Maybe I am unusual in that doing this was easy for me. What is missing that makes you say “it should have been”?

Gideon Rosenblatt But i must also say that very often just the people who demand more “engagement” and complain about less innovation on G+ are the ones who are too lazy (or too busy) to deal with the platform’s specific conditions.

I mean, take Chris Messina’s stream: 130K followers, he follows not even 2K. A few posts since summer, a lot of them posted into his own small community (i mean, hey, they are also other Cocktail Communities on G+, no?).

Reshares, yes a few, but nothing “special”, a lot of me-too posts. 

I searched for https://plus.google.com/s/%22Chris%20Messina%22 to see if he’s active on other people’s posts and participates in a few discussions – nada, though i scrolled down to May.

I really don’t see where he’s (quote) “working on something” here on G+, from my and the algorithm’s POV he is, in fact, a nobody. No #ConnectingTheDots , no “authority”, no attraction …

This is key:

But this was all wrong. By starting off on a defensive footing, Google+ didn’t defiantly stand for something special in the world. Instead it defined itself by what it wasn’t — i.e. Facebook — though it was positioned internally as chasing after their success. And while Facebook executed a bold, ambitious (and uncomfortable) plan to create a “more open and connected world”, Google+ confusingly claimed to be rethinking real-life sharing on the web, with “nuance and richness”, even though we clearly hadn’t figured it out. Indeed, our solution (Circles (read: “lists”) put the onus on the user to manually curate groups of people — a great concept in theory, but too arduous and awkward in practice.

Chris has expressed eloquently the thing that has pained me about Google+ for a long time now, and I’m only just recently facing up to it and being ready to talk about it: the complete “meh” of what should have been amazing.

He’s right. It is severely disappointing after three years to realize that Google apparently had no grander vision than building another Facebook. And who needs another Facebook? 

What Google should have done is what he’s saying: take the bold step of saying “come build your online identity around our profiles and we’ll help you do amazing things with it. We’ll help connect you to people and places and information you could never get otherwise.”

Instead we just got a Facebook that’s only fun for geeks to play with. 

It’s why I’m spending more of my energies on LinkedIn these days. LinkedIn still has huge inadequacies, but at least they are trying to innovate, trying to experiment with new ways to use intelligence to help people connect with other people who will matter to them.

Mark Traphagen, it is actually very interesting to hear this critique. I actually remember seeing some leak at the very beginning that talked about the initial impetus behind G+ being that “sharing was broken on the web” – and so this note from Chris seems to reinforce some of that. 

I’ve always thought that sharing was just a much faster form of linking and that Google was really afraid that it would eclipse the linking we do in documents in terms of validating the quality of content. 

Gideon Rosenblatt No, i didn’t knew that. But … July, June, May, that’s an infinite period of time on a Social Platform. I can delete 2K of my contacts on G+ tomorrow and my stream will change completely, within 5 minutes. In contrast to Chris Messina i don’t see where circle management on G+ is “arduous and awkward in practice” at all, for example, and i can hardly overview the activity in my more than 90 topic related circles.

On the other hand i strongly agree with Chris’ points about G+ as an internet idenity service. I had several one or two discussions with Yonatan Zunger on this topic and still can’t believe that Google misses the opportunity to establish an optional user verification or internet identity system, based on the data and the connections they already have. A checkmark for everyone, if the virtual and real life identity match.

Craig Burton I srsly doubt that the platform is predominantly US populated, just have a look at the profiles (and their followers) in Asia: http://www.circlecount.com/popular/ 

Mark Traphagen I had the idea that users who are already verified can verify the identity of others, like a snowball system. At least three verifications (plus your URL, your credit card info from the Play Store, your e-mail, etc.) – and whooops you get your checkmark. “Yes, this is my husband/wife, yes this is my colleague/boss, yes this is my friend, …”

Make it optionally public, this would be a real connection between the virtual and RL layer, something that people still miss here, compared to Facebook. It could also help to prevent bullying, identity theft, etc. etc.

Mark Traphagen, yes, that’s a big part of the frustration I’m feeling. It’s like there were two sets of architects building this network. The original set seem to have had some real vision for something that was different, but then as they ramped up the hiring to build things out, that vision was quickly diluted by a next wave of people who probably just found it much easier to simply copy an existing strategy.

I have no proof of this, of course. It’s just a feeling, but the things Chris says in the article and other little things I’ve picked up over the past few years seem to point that way. Plus, the service just kind of feels that way. The circles thing might have been something very interesting. Search might have been something very interesting. Sparks might have been something very interesting (remember that one?). Comments might have been something very interesting. But then, it’s like some additional layer just got plastered on top, mucking it all up with blue and white Facebook veneer that made no strategic sense. Many of us who used the system heavily could see it. It’s so painfully obvious. We kept at it. We stuck our necks out, in many cases putting our reputations on the line publicly, all in the hope that what was so obvious would eventually be picked up by Google itself. 

I’m not saying I regret my time here. The “bones” to this place are really pretty solid. Most importantly, at this point, I’ve met amazing people (like you, for instance), and I’ve learned a ton here from those people. I learn way, way more here than any other online place. And that’s part of the frustration. I have great conversations with really smart people. And I just wish I could open it up more to include all the other people who I just know would really enjoy it here if the ramp weren’t so steep and there were greater confidence from people on the outside that the network will still matter in five years from now. I recognize this feeling from having played on a couple losing sports teams. It doesn’t feel good. Last spring, I was already feeling like I might have picked the wrong team, and the announcements that happened then just reinforced that sense for me even though I understood the larger context for the company. As a result, I’ve lost some of my passion for being here. I get it back now and again, but the original fire has definitely diminished.

As you noted, we all have limited time and we need to be smart about where we invest it. Perhaps that’s what’s so frustrating. I just wish Google could help make it more of a no-brainer to double down here. But lately, it just doesn’t feel that way to me. 

Alan Dayley​ I disagree with your Helpouts by Google​ assessment; go into the Analytics developer site and look at the new integration. As that service gets expanded I believe you’ll see a much much bigger interest in Helpouts in the near future.

Alan Dayley​​​ I remember seeing the Helpout ads at the beginning, but I had actually completely forgotten about it till now. I fear that’s a common thing for Google to do. Promote it briefly with a couple of videos and posts, and then let it run its course, even though some products like Sparks and Helpouts could / could’ve benefitted from a prolonged exposure to keep introducing new groups of people to it.

Features I miss from the early days:

– Sparks. Even though it was implemented in a too cumbersome way (hidden in its own module instead of being able to make it part of a circle or homestream), I liked the idea of following topics instead of people. It sort of set G+ aside from Facebook, by focusing on interests instead of people.

– Stream of people that follow you. It was a handy way to see which of your new followers shared interests with you, which ones were spammers and should be muted/blocked/reported, and which ones were just silent followers. Bring that back with quick ways to mute/hide people that don’t interest you, and report spammers with a single click, and you have an interesting tool to potentially reduce spammers, and increase interaction.

– Photo details such as histograms. While we still have the various embedded IPTC/Exif meta data, I miss the handy/interesting histogram view we used to have. Bring that back, and give us options to search for specific metadata as well, so we can look for other pictures taken with a specific brand of camera, certain kinds of long/short exposure pictures, or photos of the same photographer (when shared by someone else).

– Simple photo editing tools that work on all platforms. While the new editing tools might be powerful, I don’t like not being able to use it on browsers / gpus that lack the support for the hardware rendering.

– A single search for hashtags and keywords. It’s rubbish that searching for a hashtag now opens the explore view instead.

– Saved searches, even though here are browser extensions to replace it.

– Link previews. Well, I should say ‘missed’, because it’s great to see they recently actually brought this back!

Bernd Rubel​​, you say you don’t find G+ circle management cumbersome. I do…

– You can’t quickly toggle the ‘volume’ of multiple circles at once.

– You can’t merge circles.

– The web interface is slow, and focuses too much on drag’ndrop, while lists with checkboxes and action buttons would’ve been been far quicker

I try to avoid circle management as much as possible. I tried redoing my circles and especially their volume, a while ago, but had to stop because it was too slow and too timeconsuming. Sure, it works fairly quickly if you just add people and watch individual circke streams, but if you want to do some serious ‘maintenance’, it becomes cumbersome.

Also, circles don’t quite reflect topics. People will post about different things, and while I might put someone like Debashish Samaddar​​ in my photography circle, it doesn’t mean my photography circle as a result will just contain photography posts, as he, and the others in that circle, obviousky have other interests as well.

I’d love if people were able to tag their posts with categories, and allow me to put that person’s categories/interests in a circle. Allowing me for instance to follow Google+​​’s posts about new features to Google+, but not have to see the useless crap about ‘celebrities’ holding hangouts or joining some kind of other uninteresting event.

Thanks for sharing my post Gideon Rosenblatt — I’ve really appreciated the conversation here. I really have the sense that you guys understand what I’m talking about — as you’ve been here as long as I have.

First, Bernd Rubel — I appreciate you looking back at my history here on Google+ to judge whether I know what I’m talking about. Looking back on my stream, no — you won’t see a lot of activity. You’re right: I did give up. I got completely fed up with Google+’s iOS app. It’s unusable. Meanwhile both Twitter and Facebook’s mobile apps (not to mention Instagram’s) continued to improve at a rapid clip (hence the chart in the middle of my post). Nothing from Google+. I got the feeling that the Google+ team had become a ghost town!

I also tried to like the network, and while I worked on it, I did like it. Google+ is a solid desktop web product. It just never made the leap to mobile, or understanding the mobile paradigm (ironically, considering how much Android has improved in recent years). Google+ also lead the design renaissance at Google — until Android’s Material design eclipsed it. Why is Gmail’s Inbox using Material and Google+ isn’t? What happened to OneGoogle (i.e. the effort to unify all of Google’s design language, a la Apple’s flat design)?

I have 63 circles. I’ve put all of the people I follow into one or more circle. I follow a similar amount on Twitter and Facebook. But I have had to put in far less work on those latter two networks to get value out. Furthermore, Facebook actually helps me sort my friends, contacts, and brands by suggesting lists to put people in. Google+ forces me to make a decision about which circle to put someone in every time. When I’m on my phone, I just don’t have the attention for that. The payoff just isn’t big enough. I expect to be able to create a connection on a network (follow, add, or invite), and then the network should figure out the nature of my relationship over time based on my interactions. Google+ has never done that — and yet it’s got some of the smartest developers and engineers on earth working on the same problem in search. Why haven’t these efforts been applied to the social/interest graph on Google+? When will that happen?

The biggest thing that I want to reiterate here is that my complaints and concerns aren’t about features. Features come, and features go. Technology is always changing what’s possible, and what’s necessary. But what shouldn’t change, at least significantly, over time — is unifying vision. That’s what I want from Dave Besbris. I want to know where this network is headed, and what I should expect to be able to do for my 130K followers that I can’t do elsewhere. What are the guiding principles that make Google+ more trustworthy than the competition? Or in what way will Google+ help me build my following in the real world, through integration with real world screens and surfaces?

It’s all well and good if Google wants to have a successor to Orkut and an excuse for you to articulate your relationships to other people and interests — but that doesn’t really interest me as a user, as an individual, as a technologist, or as a digital libertarian. I want a bold vision for a more connected Google that’s oriented around me. There certainly are building blocks in the existing platform, but staying still is death when it comes to building the future of digital identity systems.

I think Chris Messina is right about most of it. The part that baffles me is the premise. Was g+ better under Vic? I oppose that view 100%. G+ had the worst case of NIH syndrome I’ve ever seen. That might have been fun for designers, but it made an incredibly brittle product. Orkut had groups and would suggest groups, and it had worked on a group management UX together with novice and power users. Was that even analyzed by the G+ team building circles? I doubt it. They were worried about the opacity of the drag and drop.

Vic did a wonderful job of promoting the illusion of a vision. It was so good that even Larry bought it. But it was a second fb, no denying it. A second orkut, really, making the same mistakes we had already made again. There was no vision. It’s a cool product, sure, Google has amazing talent. You can tell there was no vision because Vic wanted to approve every single thing, like he was Steve Jobs. Had there been a vision, we’d just run for it.

But now the Wizard of Oz has left and the company doesn’t have social okrs all over, so it will be pretty tough to keep up that pace… unless a legitimate vision develops. I do believe they can pull it off, though. I think g+ has a much brighter future ahead, but it will take a while to reassemble.

Of course, I left g+ a long time ago, and Google a short time ago, so my opinions are just opinions.

David Kutcher blame the users? and the “gurus”? Really? Do you realize you’re one of the latter (at least from the Helpouts side) and your comment shows it?

I have been too, but the difference is, I’m willing to come clean now and stop pretending that this network is truly revolutionary for the average user.

The problem here for many of us has been that we can’t take our early-adopter-geek-glasses off. Yes, we DO see the value here. We see the tremendous potential. But we should also be honest about two things:

1) The average social media user can not be expected (nor should she be) to put in the tremendous amount of hard work that all of us have invested to mine the value from G+.

2) The disappointment is not with what many of us understand G+ is under the surface (as elucidated by David Amerland above) but with what it could have been for the average user. And for me the greatest “could have been” that was missed was the opportunity to build an amazing automated interest graph:  an engine that intelligently figures out what you’re interested in and connects you with other people you never knew who share those interests.

You need look no further than the little “people you may know” box that comes up in your stream, which almost always has people barely or not at all active on G+ but who are in your gmail contacts. That’s Google+ still trying to be Facebook 3-1/2 years after it lost that game. Still trying to beg you to get your college buds and Aunt Mary to come here.

We’re not mourning the features that G+ has, many of which we all enjoy. (I for one disagree with Chris Messina about the G+ iOS app.) It’s the tremendous lost potential, and as Chris says, especially the lack of leadership and vision from the top that we see now:

“The biggest thing that I want to reiterate here is that my complaints and concerns aren’t about features. Features come, and features go. Technology is always changing what’s possible, and what’s necessary. But what shouldn’t change, at least significantly, over time — is unifying vision. That’s what I want from +Dave Besbris. I want to know where this network is headed, and what I should expect to be able to do for my 130K followers that I can’t do elsewhere. What are the guiding principles that make Google+ more trustworthy than the competition? Or in what way will Google+ help me build my following in the real world, through integration with real world screens and surfaces?”

Please don’t mistake my comments to think that I’ve switched over to a Google+ hater. Far from it. This is still my #1 network and where I get the best value. But that doesn’t negate my right to be a critic where I think criticism is warranted.

Filip H.F. Slagter, yes, yes, and yes. Much of what you are talking about could have been important seedbeds for something truly different here. Sparks might have been a powerful way for us all to share interests and it might have been superior to groups, had it been given a chance to breath and develop – especially had it been connected with hashtags, saved search and even with some of the interesting “curated search” experiments that have long since been buried here: 

https://plus.google.com/u/0/105103058358743760661/posts/jhm19qZAe3q

But instead, I guess it was easier to simply copy what Facebook was doing with its groups feature. And now, G+ suffers from a stream fragmentation as people largely have to choose where to focus, communities or streams. It’s a social fragmentation that may seem like it’s not a problem for people who’ve joined in the last two years, but for those of us who remember what it was like before, it’s an issue that still hasn’t been solved fully. More background: 

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+GideonRosenblatt/posts/UgsR4PAhQtz

I think there’s a partial fix, by the way, at least for being able to get a consolidated view of all of your communities: 

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+GideonRosenblatt/posts/VGvbQtcyDvK

Also, circle streams are broken simply by the fact that they still seem to apply relevance filtering. If I’ve gone to the trouble of creating a circle and curating the people in it, then I want to see all of the posts from the people in that stream. Don’t filter people out just because I haven’t interacted with them lately. I put them there for a reason, and I know better than the algorithm in this case. For the consolidated stream, the relevance algorithm is great. But not for the circle streams. 

Chris Messina, thanks for weighing in here, and for being the catalyst for expressing some things that I think clearly needed saying. 

And to echo Mark Traphagen’s comment above, none of this is said out of “hate” for Google or Google+. In fact, it’s the opposite. It’s because I care deeply about this network. I really thought it was going to be something different. I’m assuming that’s why you took the time and energy to write up your Medium post too, Chris. 

I actually was really excited about circles because I’d come out of a CRM background and saw it as a low-end version of relationship management for the masses. But you’re right, Chris, it’s an idea that was just too hard to use…too much overhead. Why is it that Facebook can use the technology to come up with thoughtful suggestions for how to segment your friends, but there’s no real effort towards anything like that here? I personally invested a ton of time into circle management in the beginning and used it in some really interesting ways to help connect people around shared interests. But when communities came out, none of those circles seemed to make sense anymore and I stopped investing all the effort in curating them. Plus, there’s zero connection between circles and communities. All I use circles for now is prioritizing my relationships here into tiers. There could have been a really interesting marriage between Sparks (or just interests) and circles that could have been way better than communities, in my opinion.

What communities are really good for is creating a sense of community or intimacy in a big, big place like this. John Kellden’s Conversation community is like that and there are others that are using the tool quite effectively for that. But most of the big topic-related communities are big spam bullseyes and could have been implemented much more effectively through another approach that wasn’t just copying FB. 

And David Amerland, you’re right and thanks for calling out this part of Chris’ post that I didn’t really touch on. There is so much backend information being collected on us that we don’t really know about or understand. Much of it is probably accurate, but I’m guessing much of it is not. I’m guessing it’s not, because I really have no idea what’s been collected. Implemented in a smart and sensitive way, Google’s assumptions about what my interests are could have been really useful – both for users and for the company itself. All this effort is going into quality control for the Knowledge Graph, but hardly any into QA for the interest graph. That’s an area where Facebook is going to kick Google’s ass, if left uncorrected. 

On your last paragraph Gideon Rosenblatt, I think that is why we get the “we’re happy with It” comments for Besbris and other Google brass. It is working from the standpoint of a data collection system. And maybe that’s why they don’t give a flip anymore about true innovation for users.

Great perspective, Eli Fennell. Thanks for sharing that. I agree with your take and think that the challenge will be in managing the tension between the stream of content from the social graphs and the interest graphs as they span Inbox and G+. 

David Kutcher I hope so.

Gideon Rosenblatt​​ it’s not just the SEO gurus, I see it in the blogging communities I’m a part of. Rather than come in, discuss, and earn respect and an audience through conversation, this “use Google+ to earn SEO bonus” mentality pervades the Network. And not to pick on Mark Traphagen​​ but even the things that you are looking for, while not necessarily SEO targeted, are SEO related and feed into this mindset.

Fuck SEO, I’m here for the interesting people I’ve met. I’m here for the conversation, not the quote graphics, inbound links, plus ones or authorrank. I’m here to build authority, not via so techniques and marketing, but through earned respect of peers.

And in that I believe google+ is a great network. And I hope that as this upheaval continues, that it shifts out the shallow users from the real value players.

While I can understand that Google+ staff such as Yonatan Zunger​ likely won’t be able to participate in this discussion, I do hope they actively follow this discussion and convey our sentiment to the rest of the team, and their ‘superiors’.

I don’t think I have a particular axe to grind on this one, David Kutcher (aside from the fact that I do have a blog and occasionally share my articles here), so I guess I’m just curious about a couple things. 

The first is that it seems to me that many of the supposed SEO benefits of being active here on Google+ have largely gone away, and really how big they were is still somewhat debatable, I think, even in the heyday. 

The second is that, again, I don’t see the SEO stuff as the major polluters of the streams – at least not the ones I follow. I mean that stuff is there if you want it, but I do think that one of the things that works pretty well here is that you can tune it out if you so desire. 

Maybe I’m just missing something here. It’s obvious that you feel pretty strongly about it. And you’re not alone. I know there are many pockets here that feel this way and it seems to have gotten a lot stronger of this least six months or so. 

No, Nadia Korths, the person who created the circle decides who is in it. You can copy that circle if they decide to share it and then add whomever you like to it. 

Haha yes what Dustin W. Stout said while reading the comments.

Something like that Gideon Rosenblatt 😀

A lot of great points already made (or repeated, since really many of us have been having these same discussions for about 2 years) all around, and interesting to see that even very pro-G+ people are no longer holding back on voicing their deepening frustrations.

A few points that I feel haven’t been raised, for brevity’s sake bullet style:

1) Eli Fennell is correct in that while Google was busy trying to take on the (old) desktop Facebook, Mobile happened in full force, which proves that usually when playing catch-up, one tends to fight the last war… ask MSFT about that…

2) For anyone who isn’t aware, Chris Messina basically invented the #hashtag and helped build G+, so I’d be a little careful with accusing him of stuff a la “not using the product right” (even though Vic G. unfortunately put that anti-UX meme into circulation early on…).

I am of the Dave Winer school of thought on this sort of thing: “A poorly designed system makes you feel bad for ‘only’ doing 95%, a well designed system is making you feel good for doing a mere 5%.”

*Needing “Helpout” helpers, how-to manuals, etc. etc. was clearly always a VERY bad sign in that regard,* and also completely non-scalable. Your product should not depend on endless “tips and tricks” WORK to make it work. Count it as a semi-PR-coup for Google to convince some people that this was ever an OK state of affairs…

3) I’ve said it to too many times before, but it cannot be underestimated how many times Google/G+ Team shot itself in the foot during the launch phase (BrandGate, Nymwars, etc. etc.) , with what I take to have been a design by committee approach, with Vic a very imperfect final arbiter despite his presumed passion and internal clout.

One may think that these shouldn’t have been such a big deal, but I’ve always believed that *it set them on a path to playing catch up not just with Facebook (which was largely a mistake, as amply pointed out by various comments further up), but WITH THEIR OWN MISTAKES…*

4) E.g. the SUL was most likely a reaction to the stalled launch momentum circa Fall 2011, the endless attempts at rejiggering the stream weighting a reaction to the inevitable massive Power Law Effect distortions that the SUL brought (on top of the naturally present effects from the Follow metaphor, all of the same things happened with Twitter before, which is why they are looking at similar 60-70% account abandonment rates…).

5) Which leads to the semi-desperate, semi-bolt-on in feel Communities feature, which COULD have been a great stand-alone product to revamp Google Groups, IF 1) Google had not first trained all pre-Communities “era” users in using/tuning G+ totally differently, 2) hadn’t semi-shamefully buried C’s in the UI, and 3) had given C’s features beyond a (felt) circa 2009 level. Which is BTW why said Google Groups are still around… because they are still NEEDED, which should be telling you something…

6) Incidentally, there is STILL no API for getting a stream of Community posts, not even READ (and no new G+ API development since mid 2012 incidentally, that’s 2.5 years, or an eon in Internet time…). You read that right: There is no way, even with elaborate scraping, to get more than 20 posts per Community Category out for further processing to make up for the many sort/filter features they are missing.

7) To sum up, Google/G+ team again and again has erred on the side of “wow factor” (or engineer-y, world-unaware, OCD-ish) additions that often don’t gel with overarching, well-thought-out mainstream use cases, while leaving so much of the low hanging fruit to wither on the vine.

One prototypal example already alluded to by Mark Traphagen further up: How hard could it have been to get a “verify account by Credit Card entry” thing going for Google/G+ accounts?! Well understood, completely scalable, never needed to even impinge on people’s privacy rights (vis-a-vis the public), and “real names” never needed to be (wrongly) FORCED, but could have been encouraged.

Instead, the otherwise clearly uber-smart Yonatan Zunger created a “solution” that relied on algorithms to try and do the super-human feat of determining what was and wasn’t a real name, in the process pissing off and even harming a ton of people, and leading to one of the first negative PR fiascos for the G+ launch.

All without need for the Interest Graph success of the product, asf. Google finally fully withdrew that feature this year, relatively quietly, almost ashamedly…

*Meanwhile, most of the world switched to smartphone address book centric messaging services:*

medium.com/@tedlivingston/the-race-to-become-the-wechat-of-the-west-3fe52c8db946

Here is a quick comment I made on Paul Beard’s reshare of this, where he was questioning the motivation for questioning Google/G+’s “finer points” (and he’s not usually one for not questioning…):

“… what motivates it is what some of us feel is MASSIVE wasted potential. I don’t think you were here in mid 2011 yet, when G+ first came out so many of us had SUCH high hopes for it truly being something different/better. Kind of like a continuation of, and improvement on Friendfeed say (development stopped in mid 2009 due to FB aqui-hire of their very much top-notch talent including ex-Google’s Paul Bucheit and ex-Google, future FB CTO Bret Taylor…).

Instead *it [for me all] turned kind of into a resigned sense that Google had fully corporatized,* which is something which I think you understand. Corporatist rationales were guiding the majority of the (largely ill-conceived) early decisions, and all of the political fiefdom/infighting apparently silenced/overrode more intelligent/sensitive internal voices including Chris Messina.”

—

BTW, I realize that a good number on here were very positively inclined toward Vic Gundotra, maybe because his early presence and relative responsiveness (for a Big Corp Senior VP…) tickled people in a “we have the ear of important Googlers” sense. Honestly, once I heard that he was ex-MSFT in the first few weeks, my only reaction was “oh no, here we go”…

Similarly for Bradley Horowitz, of Yahoo provenance incidentally, another Corporate horror show…

Zittrain, Harvard law professor and author of Future of the Internet and How to Stop it, argues that the age of Generative Web, when the urge for flexibility outpowered the need for security, is gone. Maybe that is what complicates the process of capitalization on personal information.

Hah Dustin W. Stout made a good point (that some Engineers may not understand how people behave). I’ve seen plenty of UI’s that are poorly designed. Makes me wonder if all that advanced math erased the part of the brain where common sense existed. LOL

Chris Messina

Thanks to you and Gideon Rosenblatt and all the participants to the discussion, I learnt a lot today 🙂 Just wanted to add a new way to look at things here.

There is a useful analogy/counterpart in political sciences for what is happening in the online sphere. Not a long time ago, as the world had been relatively stable for a relatively long period of time, there was a surge in street sociologies, founded on anarchic grounds, that questioned the role the State as the sole legitimate source of coercieve power could play in the society. Those strands of sociological contemplations thought that since everything was relatively safe and life was going rather smoothly, we could rely on the self-regulating forces of the society. The advent of large-scale terrorist activities, both state-sponsored and stateless ones, discredited those sociological inclinations. In the online sphere, though subversive/malicious activities have been always present, they have never been organized or based on large-scale business models. Now that their threat is well sensed and experienced, we might need to sacrifice some of the flexibility of the generative web. However, the question of who should play the role of the state is open to discussion.

You know, it’s been interesting reading some of the thoughts here from many people whom I admire a lot on G+: Mark Traphagen Dustin W. Stout David Amerland Bernd Rubel  among others.  I see the points y’all are making……..but…….maybe now you’re swinging too far to the other side of the pendulum?

As we approach the end of 2014, which was (for me at least), the Year of Google+ as Marketing Tool, in which I spent a great deal of time AND money learning how to leverage G+ for my business Smiles by Payet Family Dentistry , I have spent some time reflecting on “what it all has meant.” 

Overall?  It’s been incredible.  I’ve learned so much from many of the “gurus” here, and yes, I believe that I can see Google+ benefitting my dental practice.  It’s had a tangible, measurable ROI, although I suspect the intangible ROI has been far greater, but since I can’t measure it, that’s a guess.

The flip side?  I’ve come to not enjoy spending as much time on G+ as I used to do.  It’s become too much work, not as much fun.  

And that’s what I am going to change in 2015.  I plan on letting a lot of the “work” part of G+ go, and just get back to enjoying the unique communities of people I’ve met here, like the “deep thinkers,” the scientists, and the photographers.

All this stuff about innovation?  Google+ missed the mark?  Shoulda/coulda/mighta done something different/better/other?  Want to know my thoughts on that?

QUIT FRIGGING OVERTHINKING IT SO MUCH.

I’m just a regular old user.  Sure, I’m more of a “geek” than your average Joe, which is probably why I fit in here better than any other social media platform.  But so what?  I don’t care about all those other networks.  LinkedIn?  For me as a dentist – completely useless.  Twitter?  Nothing more than a way to get my links out there.  Pinterest?  Nothing more than a way to appeal to the female demographic for my business. Instagram?  Who cares?  Facebook?  As a business marketing tool, it’s dead except for paid ads.  The only thing I get out of FB is connections to my friends and family and colleagues.

For me, bar none, Google+ is the best social media network out there.  Could it be better?  Duh, of course it could!  But does that detract from what it IS?  Nope, not one single little bit.

My 2 cents, for whatever it’s worth.

Bernd Rubel but disappointment is an emotion of choice.  I choose to enjoy what it is, rather than worry about what it isn’t.  Especially since I have no control over either.  🙂  And what it is…..is awesome to me.

Well, I guess it’s politics, religion and now critiques of Google+ that are sure to stir interest and controversy. 

Clearly, breaching this topic can come off as overly geeky, obsessive, detached from most people’s real concerns, and even ungrateful, know-it-all-ish, or arrogant (I heard that implied in shares of this post and this article more broadly). I’ve even seen people attacking Chris personally for this – many with no clue about his key role in building this place in the first place. It’s a shame, really.  

For my part, I share this kind of stuff occasionally in the hopes that it provides constructive feedback to Google. I have no idea whether anyone’s actually listening these days. But I really do believe, and on a deep, deep level, that this topic does matter. The way we build and operate our social and information networks shapes our economy and our society. 

This isn’t about building SEO advantage. This is about ensuring that our society has a viable, competitive alternative to Facebook and that we have networks that really meet the needs of people. Right now, in my view, Google+ is still our best bet for achieving that. 

That’s why I care so much. And I think it’s healthy to have some people continuing to ask questions about how things work here. 

So, have some patience with me and others who ask tough questions of Google – especially when our investments demonstrate that we’re obviously deeply committed to its success. 🙂

He is so right on in so many ways – it is unfortunate that Google will listen to him as a former employee far more than they will ever listen to us.   A few of the many good points here – that Besbris interview that got widely shared and praised here said nothing – absolutely nothing, and I thought I was the only one who thought so. 

The second was his estimate that they have 3,000 employees working on Google+  – seriously – what the hell are they doing?   There hasn’t been anything remotely resembling innovation in years here.    Can you imagine the burn rate – consider how much Google employees get paid and their benefits.  This for a system that doesn’t really make any money for Google – I wouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t starting to look like a rat hole to the executives there.

If there is a vision here, I sure don’t know what it is. I 

I intentionally stepped back from this conversation for the past couple of days as I knew how absorbing it could get for me, and I wanted to be truly present with my family for the holiday.

Interesting to read how it’s developed now on a Monday morning. A few thoughts of my own from the weekend of mulling over Chris Messina’s posts and the early comments here and elsewhere:

1) There has been a strong backlash at Chris’s post and at some of us who (largely) agree with it, mostly based in “we like it; it’s good enough; you’re overthinking it.”

I want to make clear that I’m sure that most of us who are saying Chris has some valid points like it here too. In fact, we love it as much as you do, if not more! But I don’t see where we checked a box promising to never critique the thing we love.

2) As with Chris in his essay, we do expect more from Google. This is the moon shot company. These are the people who truly revolutionized search, making almost all of the worlds’ information instantly accessible to almost anyone. These are the people who are inventing driverless cars and trying to bring Internet to the remotest regions of the earth. Should we just expect another “me too” social network from them? Did the world need another “me too” social network?

3) On a larger scale, perhaps our disappointment isn’t just with Google, but with the Internet in general. Yes, the world wide web has been revolutionary and disruptive. Yes, it’s changed the way we do everything…but not as much as some of us would have expected. With some notable and hopeful exceptions, most of the Internet has settled into just being a faster and cheaper way of doing the same things we always did.

4) So, we think that Google has the capacity–in terms of resources, intellectual power, and inventive spirit–to do something with a social network that no one had seen before. 

So that’s why, though we love this places and what we’ve found here, and will continue to love it and use it, we can at the same time be sad for what might have been.

“Let’s face it. Facebook grabbed the social graph that matters – the one that connects us to our existing friends and family. That was a lost battle day-one for Google. “

Absolutely. Google+, for better or worse, has that “elitism” patina that is really hard to shake off. It is like G+ has the attitude that it is only for “smart” people and all the riffraff can just go over to Facebook and leave it alone.  

Sorry if I’m being harsh, but this is my impression. G+ needs to figure out how to tone this down if it is to attract more users.

Plus is a failure. Google Plus, Hangouts.  these thing are buggy. how to excel if the program/app are buggy.

I haven’t seen or heard from the last community managers I knew about since July

The community managers have a culture of non-transparency like everyone at Google.   On another thread Mesina mentions that Google uses “Darwinism” for its projects.   I wrote a long letter to several Google employees asking if the fate of the large communities was supposed to be Darwinism also – because I had heard comments to that effect – that we would eventually get picked apart by the smaller communities and everything would be fine. 

Google’s version of Darwinism is different than ours however –  if their project gets cancelled they may even get a bonus and keep their astronomical salaries.   If they cancel or neglect something we have used for building here, we just lose

Yes, Denis Labelle, this part of that post is particularly interesting: 

Today’s list isn’t yet personalized. At first personalization will be “lite” – users in different regions and languages will get different recommendations. But per above, we intend to allow people to deeply personalize and connect with like-minded people that create great content around almost any topic they care about. Just as Google Search helps connect you to web pages about almost anything, Google+ should help connect you to people who deliver content you’ll find interesting – on any subject. Stay tuned!

There did seem to be a short period of time when there was something like an SUL-light, some of which may have been automated (I’m still not sure though). I know a number of people who had significant gains in their followership as a result of this, but then it seems to have stopped. I just haven’t followed it all that closely. 

I think the bigger opportunity, and it’s what I’m getting at w/ regard to the shared interest graph is that that kind of investment really should be a core feature set here. Building network density in ways that are not heavily centralized is really important to the success, to the resilience and to the overall level of engagement that an average user is going to have here. 

In a world where you bring your own friends to the network, you don’t need to worry about making connections between people. But that opportunity is gone. Facebook got it and two of those kinds of networks just fragments, so it detracts value. But in a world where you are making new connections, based on shared interests, well suddenly, that ability to connect people isn’t just a nicety – it’s an absolute necessity, a core feature. 

This isn’t about a top-down, hand-picked SUL, and it’s not about a system that picks a few thousand people. I’m talking about a system that connects everyone in the network with people like them, not just the rock stars. Hard to do? You bet! But that…that is where there is immense value – and, from Google’s perspective – quite possibly sustainable competitive advantage in the field of social networks.  

That’s my sense any way. 

Oh, that useless crap. I actually used Feedback today to report their suggestion of Britney Spears as utterly incompetent use of algorithms today.

Gideon Rosenblatt Chris Messina Mark Traphagen Eli Fennell +(many others): I hopped on to G+ in July of 2013, so I was definitely a late arrival to the platform.  So I am only 16 to 17 months in, makes me a newbie of sorts (compared to some of you).

There are some fantastic things on this platform – I still maintain that it’s the best long form discussion platform out there.

It’s principal problem, in my opinion, is that it fails the differentation test – those are my words to what others of you have said here. There is nothing different enough here to attract average users.  Hence, true scale never happens.

Yes, supposedly, there are many hundreds of millions of users here, but on THIS platform, “that don’t mean jack” (sorry for the slang) if they are not actively interacting.  That’s what this platform design is all about.  Active interaction.  Bunches of people running around wacking plus one buttons once in a while does not really make it what we’d all like it to be.  We are here for in-depth conversations like this one.

So as for me, like Mark Traphagen, I am not leaving G+, but my primary focus is going to be split between LinkedIn and Twitter.

Ping Lee Smallwood you will probably be interested in this convo.

Great discussion guys. Too late to give my 2 cents. Maybe tomorrow. Be assured that some of your concerns and feedback will be addressed in the near future.

Moritz Tolxdorff That’s great to hear. I’d love to be part of providing feedback to that (beta test, or whatever), if you’d be open to it. Others here in this thread certainly would be be as well!

Yes, Moritz Tolxdorff, thanks for your note. That’s encouraging to hear, actually. Very. I know it’s hard to incorporate feedback when you’re dealing with this kind of scale, but you have here a pretty good collection of people who are willing to give straightforward, candid feedback, and out of a place of real concern for the future of this network. 

Bernd Rubel With 3000 people working on G+? Every platform could do this with that kind of workforce.

Do realize that’s 125 per time zone although the reality is that the US and Western Europe are overrepresented by a vast margin.

The reality is that this thread so far went without response for days by any moderator. I appreciate Moritz Tolxdorff stepping in, but if that’s considered exemplary response you have never been on a good old forum.

For all we know though, Max Huijgen, there may be a number of staff reading this, but just not feeling comfortable weighing in with public opinions. I totally get that. It’s tricky knowing how best to deal with feedback like this. 

I’m very impressed with the focused engagement here on Google+. Reminds me of the old days. That said, if Google+ excels at one thing, it’s giving people a platform to talk about Google+. * ducks *

Seriously though, nested comments would be SOOO useful at this point. I’m so lost in this thread I just can’t keep up! Let’s start a Wave.

Chris Messina I’ve got a giant beach ball. ;D

Paolo Amoroso The community moderation tools are almost worthless, and that is fine that you expect moderators to be at your beck and call, but it can be a thankless job with no real benefit that accrues to the moderator or “owner” of the community. 

James Salsman The communities API is apparently some kind of placeholder they put there in case they ever want to build a real 

API – it has no functionality that anyone could use.   Our community data is on complete lock down by Google.  I have tried everything I can think of to draw attention to this issue to no avail.

Gideon Rosenblatt

It’s like there were two sets of architects building this network. The original set seem to have had some real vision for something that was different, but then as they ramped up the hiring to build things out, that vision was quickly diluted by a next wave of people who probably just found it much easier to simply copy an existing strategy.

Every single product Google has feels like that. Take the Android system for instance: One day it’s open source all the way, working with the community, rapid developments, then the next day it’s a closed off system designed like Apple OS.

Google+ starts out as a big way of merging online identities and opening up content based on interest, now it’s Facebook with less polish. Feedback on Apple at least gets you an automated email, occasionally even a response, while on any Google program from Chrome to G+ it’s simply a seeming waste of time.

Seems the architects and engineers are getting overruled by the MBA paper pushers. Again.

Keith Bloemendaal The power of personalization in Google+ (i.e. it’s impact on SEO) is quite real. That still matters to us.  However, we probably have a lot of that going for us already (keeping in mind we are a B2B business).

Also, other social networks have a great deal of value too, just not SEO value.

So neither of us is leaving G+, we will still be quite active here.  So think of it as rebalancing the effort load, not abandonment by any means. I still think  this is the place for actual conversation, and yes, the personalization-SEO benefits of G+ are still important.

Padraig Ó Raghaill um…that’s the stream you just commented in 😉

Keith Bloemendaal, Eric Enge expressed it well. Neither of us is abandoning Google+ (far from it!) but we’ve been aware for sometime that we need to balance our social efforts, and also pay more attention to where our B2B brand is going to reach the right people (which seems to be LinkedIn and Twitter for us).

But yes, the Google+ effect on personalized search is still real and powerful, but the trick is you have to build an engaged following for it to be most effective.

Padraig Ó Raghaill Lol! Aye, that it does! 😉

I need to come back to this thread later when I have time to discuss this matter. Personally I still believe that Google+ is the best social platform available by a wide margin and that it hasn’t seen it’s peak by any stretch. I’ve read several of the comments here and it appears that I am in the minority. 

So many good posts here. But eventually my ADHD-like brain had to stop.

My contribution is this (excuse me for my not so advanced English):

I gave Facebook a year, but from the beginning knew it wasn’t right. I didn’t go social to meet old friends and family. But I felt forced into “friend’ing”. Soon after comes Google+ and does the right thing from the beginning. Circles just worked for me. And still does. I have some permanent ones and some volatile ones. I pick new ones up, take out the people that I like and put them into permanent circles, then throw them away again. That’s brilliant! I didn’t find it hard at all. Then came communities. Great. I follow 20+ communities and they fill my stream with great stuff.

Some may find changes needed here. I’m not one of them. But I may be just the right kind of dude for G+, as I take lots of photos and like technology news.

Really I’m just average Joe seeing great posts and intelligent conversations without all the junk of other sites. The big SEO stars might be dissapointed if they expected miracles. For me G+ just hit the right spot. And continues to do, even without major changes.

You’re right. I’m not trying to start a fight. It should have been there.

Mads Thomsen One thing we know is that Google is cautious and sometimes painfully slow with updates… I’m reminded though by the old adage: Good things come to those who wait. =)

Amazingly long conversation! Data point: G+ is, by far, the slowest loading app on my Android phone. It is as slow as a dialup Modem. I stare at its slowness in amazement.

I have tried plenty of the features here. Events? Nobody responds to them. HOA? Had a couple dozen listeners. Community? a couple dozen signed up. In contrast, on Facebook I can do ten times as well.

Not much of anybody responds to my posts whether they are about my “business” (in quotes because it is so arcane it will never succeed anywhere ever) or my sharing stuff that interests me. I keep my hand in mostly because of two or three people here that interest me.

Hashim Warren that’s a very interesting observation. I’d say that most people don’t want to be in video hangouts with complete strangers, but WOULD want to be in them with pre-vetted groups of collaborators, etc. I have used hangouts repeatedly in such a manner to decent effect, even though I am overall very text-centric in my thinking.

The problem is that gplus never had very good tools available for “work group” type posts/process, at least until the arrival of (private) communities, which was really too late to get that use case decisively off the ground.

A private (pre-communities) post was only ever accessible through Notifications to non-owners, or personal bookmarking, and that was simply too indirect/rigged to work reliably.

Don’t mind me. I’m just here to read the comments. 🙂

h/t Stephan Hovnanian

Thank you for all the fascinating analysis in this discussion and thanks to all the Googlers and Xooglers for hopefully never giving up on chasing ideas that others consider impossible.

Personally I wish Google+ was a wee bit more “googlely” than it is now. Even though there is a lot of googlelyness already when it comes to autoawesome and stuff like that, there is room for more…

Let me explain: When I first discovered Google Now, it did not seem to do much for me but over time it has been learning a couple of nifty tricks that keep impressing me. It is far from complete, but most people love it. The system is rewarding you for using it!

Is Google+ surprising and rewarding me the longer I use it? Some times it seems so, some times it does not. I am interested in almost everything except premier league soccer. I come here for knowledge, interesting trends, for meaningful discussions, hopefully for a little wisdom and for the occasional update and photo album from a friend. I also follow YouTube channels more often on Google+ than on YouTube.

Google+ for me is a library where talking is not only allowed, but hightly encouraged. What if Google+ would become “the amazing endless knowledge discovery engine”? It would always gives you more about the topics you read, about related topics and related people? If Google is truly organizing the worlds information it should be visible on Google+.

This would be the kind of Googlelyness I am looking for and it would be the real plus for a company who wants to make information and knowledge universally accessable. It would help people to learn, to think and to meet people who help them to do so. If at the end all my friends are here too, it might as well replace Facebook, but that is the end not the start of the story.

Very good to find this conversation. 

So many ‘coulds’, so much expectation, such desire/need for something truly innovative.

There was a time when I was thrilled  by G+. The potential, the possibility of making those unexpected and unlikely connections, the sharing and accessibility of knowledge, all you fascinating individuals, all this collective intelligence, right here, in conversation, at last. 

Communities changed that sense of wonder, freedom and chance for me at a stroke. You had to know that you wanted to know something or someone before you could be exposed to it or them. G+ felt like the breaking down of barriers, I suddenly felt excluded.

Circles – I’d rather put up with a vapid mediocre stream/stick needles in my eyes than go organise my circles. Really? A core feature that I can’t bring myself to use?? 

As a result my stream feels like some committee has calculated/guessed what I want to be shown. Please don’t, it’ll never be right, it’s usually wrong. 

I still come to G+ daily, I narrate the notable, I try stuff out, I plug my wares, I get outstanding, intelligent and thoughtful feedback, I have funny, interesting and important relationships. I’ve hungout with kids in schools in Hawaii and Argentina. I use hangouts to work with my publisher in Brooklyn. I love blogger. I have an incredible visual diary of the last few years. I’ve learnt so much…

Pretty amazing to have that but it’s so good to hear everyone’s hopes for something even better.

I’m really surprised that so many of you “old timers” are complaining that the platform needs to serve the dummies.

I’m actually thrilled that the dummies are dumbing it down on Facebook. Stay there!

Is it really that complicated to figure out Google+? No it’s not. Just like in real life – relationships take work, and “normal” people don’t want to work for anything. They want a fake world (FB) in 140 character (Twitter) and as superficial as a resume can be (linkedIn).

What Google has done here, is bring like minded people together and let us geek out till the cows come home about things that interest us (hence this post and the hundreds of comments on it).

No longer do we need to be restricted to the people in our town.. no longer do we need to travel to conferences just to be able to feed our passions face to face.

Google+ has removed geographical boundaries and allowed us the comfort of going through the engagement ladder (+1, comment, share, chat, face to face video chat, HOA), and build long lasting, meaningful relationship that will last us a life time.

And that’s what it’s about!

By the end of the day, Gideon Rosenblatt, the time I spent with you in chat and in hangouts is the impact you made in the world.

How did I “find” you?

How did I find David Amerland and invite him to his first hangout..?

What made my stay at Mia Voss’s place a month ago feel so natural and intimate?

Where the heck does that ever happen online?!?

When would have the “average” person, that you guys love bringing up here, ever get to sit down with Obama and talk to him face to face? Or with Matthew Mcconaughey? Or with Richard Branson and Alon Musk?!?

I don’t need Google to spoon feed me. I’m a grown woman and I can make my own decisions on which relationship I have with which person and how to classify that (Circles). Seriously.

And just as David says – big data takes time, and Google isn’t collecting it only from G+ but from ALL Google’s services: Gmail, YouTube (notice the latest integration between the 2 larges search engines in the world?), Maps, Mobile (GPS anyone?), Wallet, Play, Chat, Hangouts…

I’ve been saying it for 4 years now and I know you – the first generation of G+ – know better than to continue comparing G+ to a social network.

It’s not. It’s not Facebook. It’s not Twitter. It’s not LinkedIn. It’s not Pinterest. It’s not.

You can interact and post to G+ from ANY Google service. You have to log into FB to post there (oh, and pay up if you want your post to be seen. Geez.)

So no Mark Traphagen. I don’t want G+ to be so simple that these type of conversations never happen because every idiot and his grandma are sharing their lunch pictures here. 

I have build a lucrative business, as have you Mark, from a relationship you cultivated here, not on LinkedIn.

I have a wider family now all over the world thanks to Google+, and I have the opportunity to connect and impact millions of lives and make a real difference.

That’s the vision of Google+ and we are living it.

LOL It’s funny to see so many people in here say what I’ve been saying for years now.

I’ve been one of the biggest critics here of Google on some of their decisions for this platform. Everything from UI decisions to what they report to us and what they don’t.

I still remember when a lot of people said Google+ would BURY Facebook, Farcebook, Fakebook, etc, etc. within a year of its introduction.

Yeah. That never happened. Then it was within the next year. And then in its third. Well… still hasn’t happened.

Facebook isn’t dying out. No one’s leaving in droves. It’s still gaining people.

G+ was designed to be a Facebook competitor. I don’t care what Yifat Cohen says. What is its primary function? Connect people. Hey Yifat, I can connect with people I don’t know in real life on Facebook also. I can follow celebrities. I can subscribe to people’s public feed if they choose to turn that feature on. What kills me is that I get a lot of quality interaction on Facebook all the while people over here say it’s useless and G+ should be everyone’s destination. This grass is definitely not greener. I do get interaction here also and I do enjoy my time here also.

Do you honestly think FB has NO value and only the stupid and dumb exist over there? Have you taken the time to build and organize your following on that platform too or have you just blown off FB because hating on it was the cool G+ thing to do? Out of all your followers on G+ are you truly happy with the percentage of interaction you get on your posts? With over 70,000 followers you’re telling me that you’re perfectly fine getting 10-30 +1s on your content? A couple shares? A dozen comments?

Those are the numbers I’m seeing. So Google+’s advantage is that you can engage with it on any of Google’s other services? How is that an advantage when you’re getting next to no engagement?

You bill yourself as “Answering the questions that Google won’t.” Can you tell us what their total accounts are now? The number of daily logins? The amount of time people spend in their stream? Plans for the platform in the long run? Because Google clammed up a while ago about those things and the silence is deafening.

I’d love to be part of a Hangout with a bunch of you, where we can discuss the finer points of this place. There’s one thing you all haven’t touched one, that I’ve seen happen on EVERY message board, social media site, and even video game. It happens like clockwork and I’m starting to see it happen here too. (Well, I’ve seen it happening for about a year now here)

I’ll remain silent on what that is and bring it up as a Hangout topic if that ever happens. 🙂

Oh, and also,

How did I “find” you?

How did I find +David Amerland and invite him to his first hangout..?

What made my stay at +Mia Voss’s place a month ago feel so natural and intimate?

Where the heck does that ever happen online?!?

Umm… it happens ALL THE TIME ON THE INTERNET.

I made friendships with people that were forged online on webcomic message boards, Live Journal, and Yahoo games, and tons of other video games that were made LONG before Google+ even reared its digital head. And a lot of those online friendships turned into real life friendships over time.

Face to face meetings. Work collaborations. Places to crash while on vacation. 

So, yes, it was and IS possible to do all that without the “magic” of Google+.

Psst… Yifat Cohen, that’s called… FACEBOOK.

For everyone? Yes.

Topic based? Nope.

Different people find each other based on passions. Yup.

Interest lists? Groups? Pages? 🙂

Because everyone likes a good kvetch (complaining festival) Muamer Mujevic.

My complaint is the way the algorithm chooses what to show me (or hide). I miss things that I would like to see.

And the suggestions are fouled up too. They are made based on my connections’ interests or activities rather than my own (as far as I can tell). I get suggestions for F1 racing, YouTube communities, and random politicians rather than something based on posts I comment on, posts I plus, or my (admittedly small) notify circle. I tried looking at the circles of people I have circled…but going through them is tedious and quite a few accounts were inactive. 

Gideon Rosenblatt if we put all of our faith in algorithms to bring stuff to us, eventually commercial interests will find ways to exploit those algorithms to push stuff to us that looks like the things we like to the algorithm, but in fact are other things entirely.

If instead we require more human action/participation/attention to help hone the number of things that are shown to us, then you end up with an order (or several) of magnitude(s) fewer because most people just expect technology to “work”, without their help.

This is the very real [growth] problem that Twitter is seeking to address by moving to an algorithmic approach to their feed, as well as the one Google+ needed to address in the empty cold-start experience most users had when they got started in Google+. While you and me and many other lead users may be willing to find and add our friends or people of interest one-at-a-time and do the slow growth thing, most people come expecting a TV experience where they’ll just sign up and be entertained with relevant content from the first moment. That this is unrealistic doesn’t register. And so the solutions that are used to address that broad audience ends up eroding the purity of the experience for the rest of us.

That is why I wish the expression of interests here was overt rather than Google thinking it knows what we want – they don’t.   Google is still stuck on the “social graph” – and yes, this design is a copy of Facebook.

Right after Vic left Larry Page did an interview that Google wants to better understand who we know – but why? – this really won’t improve the user experience all that much as he says.   Plus they are absolutely horrible at recommending who I might what to know here – they think that if they are followed by people I follow that is really important – but it isn’t.

People like to say say that people on Google+ come together on ‘interests’ – and we do – but the the technology is horrible at it.  Same with “Google+ is good for meeting new people” – again, that is what we the users are doing – the technology is actually inefficient and time consuming.

Tiago Silveira That is refreshing coming from a Google employee, and there was far too much in that comment that I disagreed with to comment myself, but to be honest even the “power users’ don’t always know how to use Google+

One example, if I want to post something about “Crowdfunding” for instance, which of a dozen or so communities should I post it on?  – and should I also post on my own profile?   I could post on all of them –  but that is a ton of work and the community owners hate it – plus it would probably be flagged as spam anyway.

Google+ is just jam packed with things that are illogical like that, but no one talks about them any more – we adjust to Google, Google doesn’t change for us.

New users my not be able to articulate these things, but they sense it  – people sometimes say there is no wrong way to use Google= – but there is no right way either.

Eli Fennell Again, we were taking about the design of Google+ and new users, and your comment reflects the prevalent attitude that whatever Google does is right and good and no matter what we should adjust to them, and if you don’t agree them something must be wrong with you. 

I would think a new user would assume that if they wanted to make a post about crowdfunding – or any topic, they would just have to make it once – not have to join and learn the culture of a half dozen different communities, and then keep track of the comments on different streams for what should have been a simple transaction.

I wrote about how Byzantine this has become a while back http://goo.gl/v6ETZp   and mentioned a friend of mine who has a huge number of Twitter followers who observed that Google always uses a “divide and conquer’ strategy

Tiago Silveira – Yifat Cohen’s “spoon-feed maxim” (yes, I’m calling it a maxim) intrigued me too. It sparkled. I actually thought that was a brilliant moment and, effectively, it captures the feeling of empowerment that Google gives us. We can choose which relationships we want to strive to cultivate through the engagement ladder. 

Re: I think G+ has failed to help regular users become power users… – My question is this:

Why do we need to count it as a failure that we don’t have the biggest platform as long as we have the best? 

Not everyone can rank #1 for Google, and maybe not everyone needs to be here in Google Plus. Conversationalists and leaders emerge.

I have no problem at all with saying there are issues, as Rob Gordon points out in many places… I just don’t know why all the talk about doing it for “normal,” “average,” or “regular” users is necessary. Aside from being terribly uninspiring ways to describe other people… I say screw them!

Let’s make it better for us!

And as we get future opportunities to welcome new people into the fold of Google Plus, we’ll  #LendOneHand , teach them what we know, and have those moments to make the greatest connections of our lives.    

Let’s do this thing!      

Yes, Kristin Drysdale, that is where I want to go too. I fear we can’t really make g+ better for us, someone from the inside has to do it, though.

I never wanted the #1 social network. I want software to do things for me. The less I think about the software, the better. I don’t really feel much empowered by G+. After so long, we still don’t even have rudiomentary support for drafts. So I never write anything big here, and I’m really careful with the Escape key. And that makes me feel like a beginner.

When you say “let’s make it better”, I also feel powerless to do that. What can I do about the poor UX? Write my drafts on notepad? Google Docs? Google Keep? If they have so many writing platforms, why not use any of them here?

Kristin Drysdale G+ just hasn’t gotten all that much better (unless you’re heavily into photos and photo editing) than what we had with Friendfeed circa 2009. And really it had some advantages even as far back as then, which is somewhat shocking if you ask me (for example I could see my “DM”-ish private message style posts all in one place…).

So NO, I will never agree that G+ for functional and text usage is “good” or even “good enough”. It’s just NOT for those of us who knew anything Interest Graph related since before G+.

Rob Gordon I don’t know if I got this from something I read before, or if it is just my observation… It seems like there are two types of people in Google Plus: those who came here as social media professionals, and those who are now and in-training to be social media professionals. (Lol)

~Let us know when you’ve got P2P Social CRM up and running. By all the time and research you put into things you write about, I bet it will be really cool. Thanks for posting the article anyway. I will try a couple of your hacks. =)  

Tiago Silveira – What can I do about the poor UX? Write my drafts on notepad?… If they have so many writing platforms, why not use any of them here?

How simple would it be to add an “import from” button for our documents? That’s a really great idea!

And yes. Yes, you should do whatever it takes to communicate your message if it’s important enough.

I suppose my perspective is skewed by my past, and so the fact that I have a computer today and I have the ability to actually reach someone and have a conversation at all feels miraculous to me. I have a lot to be grateful for because two years ago I was homeless and had nothing. So people like me might sound a little too forgiving or naive to people like you.

One of my best friends is an SEO in Nigeria. He’s very forgiving too. He has a generator that he has to crank in order to keep it going and use the Internet. The suggested download time for video is three to four minutes, and so I help screen the SEO-related HOAs for him because it’s a tedious process to get to watch anything of full-length. We joke all the time about #FirstWorldProblems  and #ThirdWorldProblems  because the thing is that we all have them. We do what we must and try to make things better along the way.

That’s probably just “survivorship bias.”              

But of course, Eli Fennell! Well-phrased as always… There are many “types” of people here. (I detest “typing” people, however, so is the nature of SEO and marketing, right?)

Okay, I wandered into this thread late, and ironically somewhat backward….. Bookmarked Chris Messina’s post shortly after it first appeared, got around to reading it today, saw his link to Gideon Rosenblatt’s post here, and then of course got sucked right into it, in that way that only Google+ can do for me these days 🙂 

A super-engaging and interesting conversation, but exactly what I’ve come to expect form hanging around here, and the only reason I still do from time to time, despite the disillusionment I share with Mark Traphagen and others here. I too had high hopes for Google+ in the early days, and now feel somewhat disenfranchised and generally lose interest in coming here as regularly as I used to…. I’ll glance at it occasionally, but unless I find something that engages me, I usually close my browser tab and move on to other things, and sadly the number of “engaging” posts has generally gone down over the past several months…..  About the only ones I can count on any more on a regular basis are Eli Fennell’s …. Perhaps I should create a circle with just him in it 🙂 

Seriously, though, I came to G+ more as a social person (not a “social networking professional”), as I wanted to find like-minded people and get engaged in interesting conversations and dialogs about interesting topics. I’m not here to try and promote myself (even though I somehow inexplicably ended up with an oddly large following, probably thanks to some weird Google SUL algorithm), nor to build any kind of a brand or engage in dropping links. I do run a G+ Page for the site I work for, largely because it seemed like the thing to do, but even that’s more to provide a channel for our readers to access content through whatever their preferred method is than to promote the site itself.

However, as those who have encountered me before might already know from previous discussions, I’ve been around on the “social Internet” for a very long time. Before most people knew there was an “Internet” in fact…. In those days, the “social network” went by names like Usenet, and FidoNet, and I was on those networks back in those days for the same reasons that I’m on G+ …. to meet new and interesting people. In that sense, I’d call G+ a huge success, as it’s provided ways to do that which few other platforms have. Certainly few other “mainstream” platforms, anyway — there are still niche forums that are great for this purpose, but usually revolve around very narrow topics, rather than providing the “one-stop shopping” platform for discussions that is Google+.

That said, however, I sometimes worry that G+ is suffering from a diminishing critical mass for this sort of thing. If people are getting less excited to hang out here, they’re going to hang out here less, and ergo it will become less social. A party full of intelligent people is interesting, no matter where it’s being held, however an empty room, or a room where people are just milling about drinking and not talking to each other, is far less interesting.

I can also sort of understand the feelings out there espoused by some that G+ is a nice, “safe” harbour for the intelligent folks and “geeks” of the world, but that’s a somewhat myopic and elitist view in my opinion. I think there are many intelligent people out there in a great many less technical areas  that would have a lot to offer G+, but the current structure seems to discourage them from coming here. The fear that “the masses” coming to G+ would serve to diminish the community is irrational, particularly on a social network where you have filters and controls….. If you want to look around enough on Google+ you’ll already find tons of people sharing inane cat photos, YouTube music videos, pictures of their families, and preachy and oft-recycled “motivational memes”…. They haven’t brought down the community yet because they’re easily ignored. Adding more people won’t make that worse, but not encouraging new and interesting folks to join will limit the scope of the community and the potential benefit to gain from it. You can always filter out what already here, but you can’t create what’s not.

Good suggestions, Kristin Drysdale , but you might want to fix the 1st link . . . 

Standing ovation, Jesse Hollington , so many trusims in your comment.

Yifat Cohen had a great conversation with Chris Messina and others (I jumped in for the last 30 minutes or so). Really good insights sprinkled throughout this: 

http://www.yifatcohennetwork.com/google-rebuttal-chris-messinas-perspective/

Shucks. Thanks Yifat Cohen. I learned a lot from that Hangout. 

We should have a way to vote down those people Denis Labelle​. How about a -1 like the thumbs down on YouTube…

See also https://plus.google.com/u/2/112352920206354603958/posts/R4LUG5xsgxV on SUL as a propaganda tool.

I’m muting this – there are occasionally little corners of Google+ where you can express what you really think is gong on but the extreme fanboys have pretty much eradicated those.    

As many know, if you make even mild criticisms of Google+ here you better have an iron clad case  – but even if you do you are likely to get pretty viciously attacked – but you can throw out any kind of slop about how great Google is and it will be massively reshared – even if it is false information.    If there is a Google employee within a hundred miles of a post forget it – these people will be slobbering all over each other to suck up.

I thought Google got rid of that SUL crap – that is as corrupt as the day is long – virtually indistinguishable from the Payola scandals of the last century.   They have pretty much chased off the people who see things differently and are turning this place into a Google infomercial.  The primary “use case” for Google+ is now to discuss – or actually praise Google+ and Google, and I don’t want to have to think about it every damn day.

Max Huijgen , you know me better: I am 100% for constructive opinion/feedback and counter argument. Also, look at my profile: I want to help new users, businesses and entrepreneurs to get the most out of Google. That’s it, that’s all. P.S.: I was on the SUL for a short period of time… however, sharing the “wealth” by promoting other (helpful) users every. single. day.

Max Huijgen: where do I criticize Chris Messina ?? I’ve never mentioned/thought about him in my comments. I’ve participated in Yifat Cohen’s (great) hangout with Chris and truly enjoyed (and learned from) it.   

This comment caused my confusion Denis Labelle _Also,  what’s very discouraging is when someone send a message that “G+ doesn’t work” to millions (thanks to the SUL) of people  when other “regular” plussers work really hard to help/build/promote the platform._

If you didn’t refer to Chris, who did you have in mind?

Mark Traphagen  I remember now how frustrated I was with the early marketing of Google+. All the early ads did was promote things that a) people could already do on Facebook and b) weren’t going to do here because their friends were on Facebook and not here.

That’s among the reasons I’ve suggested to the Ello folks that they focus on interests over personal connections.  I’m already seeing a huge drop-off in initial interest (though there are a few quite interesting people there not on G+, so, win).  But my feed’s becoming ever emptier.  I like some of what they’re doing on Notifications (including lessons G+ could learn).  I’ve suggested pre-designated “channels” plus search as high-priority, high-payoff features.

Malthus John  I’m pretty sure it was  designed to work that way. (re: shared interest graph).

And I’m all but positive that that was abandoned.

Somewhere around February / March 2013 I wrote a series of posts to Shimrit (then if not now G+ product manager), copying Vic on a few, highlighting interactions on G+ that I found tremendously useful.

I also pointed out that it was about that time that with both Search and a sufficient backlog of content G+ was becoming usefully minable for content and leads.  More on that below.

Not only did I not have a lot of known contacts on G+ but after my initial experience and awareness of Google’s “identity service” plan I had _no interest in overlapping my personal and online activities.  To a large extent I’ve consciously avoided interacting with people I know in real life.  Yeah, color me paranoid.

But as I started exploring some areas of interest, I found that there were some people (though very few) on G+ with 1) similar interests and 2) not an utter waste of time to talk to.

Social graph size matters, and there’s a certain critical mass that’s needed to get things off the ground.  How big that is specifically depends on the founding class.  Facebook started with a highly selective seed community (Harvard, Ivy League, and selective admissions universities), and grew from tere.  I’ve been digging into Usenet stats, and from what I can tell, the active userbase there was small, but the selection filter, again, selective universities (mostly technical), government, and a small set of tech firms, made for a pretty good filter.  Even then, the system broke down with a flood of new users (warning for those anticipating a Golden Age as we unleash the untapped MindResource of the developing world).  Perhaps a few tens of thousands, to hundreds of thousands.  Not much more than that.

Slashdot’s heyday was when userIDs were being issued in the 4-5 digit range.

Back to G+:  Search and Notifications were great (both are amazing indicators of relevance), but the tools were really broken (and still are).   As broken as they are they’re the most compelling features I see for G+.  Which may be why the Notifications changes rolled out in December were reverted so quickly (I’ve never seen a G+ feature killed that fast, including the Calendars fiasco.)  And yes, there are other cool bits, most particularly Hangouts (though it too needs freedom and love).

One thing I’ve noticed though is that real discussion of topics and keywords of interest is pretty thin.  Once you get out of popular topics, there’s a lot of link-sharing and maybe some brief thoughts, but at least for public posts that I can find, and going unauthenticated to bypass blocks, I find very little discussion that I’m not already looped in on.  The graph is thin.

Gideon Rosenblatt has posted recently on what ails Communities, and like this post it’s an excellent one.  Google simply keeps getting in the way of powerful discussion.  And it’s frustrating as hell.

Like many here, though I’m conflicted, I also agree that despite many and very serious warts G+ remains the most useful online conversation platform (and that’s how I view it) that I’m aware of.  And I’d really like to say otherwise.

reddit has more mass, and far better forums, but poorer mechanics.  Ello and Diaspora are proving some interesting ground but are limping along for now.  If I could find a better spot I’d be there in a minute.

And yeah, I think that at least one of the foundational ideas behind G+ (I suspect it was one of a number of internal constiuencies) is absolutely valid:  it’s hard to establish connections with groups having similar interests with quality information for productive conversations online.

I’ve recently started an experiment by creating a private, non-public, invite-only Community on G+ (despite many gripes over Community mechanics here) as “a place for adult conversation”.  One interesting element is that by focusing intelligence and excluding distractions the conversation really takes off.  It shows me how much the dynamic on G+ (and elsewhere) still is getting in the way of productive conversation.  It’s a small group (less than 20) but already conversation is at a level that’s hard to keep pace with.

I rather like having that problem.

That points to a much larger class of unaddressed problems.  It also suggests that a level of exclusivity is necessary, or at least a fostering of smaller and focused groups.

Edward Morbius don’t get me started on the “What’s Hot” 🙂 It is human moderated so whatever algorithmic input is there gets altered beyond recognition. On the sentiment analysis side Google has not explicitly stated that, but everything they do (along with everything their competitors do) points that way. I wrote about it a way back: http://goo.gl/6xwOvF – the external links at the bottom of that piece point to some very interesting research going on. What is even more interesting is that just twelve months prior everyone was talking about it but not much was being done by way of research and actionables, so it moved quickly in just a year because (I suspect) there is now real focus on it and research dollars. 

Mark Traphagen true, we have very few other guidelines over what is being applied and looked at and what is really happening. Let’s not forget the Knowledge Vault started just as theoretically as everything else. The only way to make sense of the trends is to look at the research, see what the requirements of application are (in this case semantic search) and point to where things should be happening. 🙂 Now, where is that chicken gone? I really do need to read its entrails. 😀 

Yay! This post got resurrected. 😀