Google+ Thread

[VillaEire]

I'm in. aidok80 at gmail dot com

[leviramsey]

I have to say that Google+ is really starting to come into its own, especially with Sparks. Very easy to find and follow people posting about things that you're interested in.

[mjmooney]

Facebook are doing their best to self-destruct (and recruit for Google Plus) with their current **** about with the format. Seriously annoying.

[Stevo985]

It's mildy irritating, but it's necessary.

It's adding stuff that G+ is trying to do. Which means no-one will have any need for G+

[darrenm]

Such an irony. Facebook is much better now they're adding the best features of Google+, but they're pissing the regular users off and even driving some over to Google+

I see G+ as more of an upgrade on Twitter. It's good for casual and directed sharing with no silly character limits. Facebook really is more of a close social tool that won't be displaced for a long time.

[Stevo985]

At the end of the day, unless they can offer something much different, the winner will be the site with the most users.

If all my friends suddenly started using G+, I'd move over.

But as it stands I know hardly anyone on it, so I don't have any need for it.

[mjmooney]

It's mildy irritating, but it's necessary.

It's adding stuff that G+ is trying to do. Which means no-one will have any need for G+

Such an irony. Facebook is much better now they're adding the best features of Google+, but they're pissing the regular users off and even driving some over to Google+

I see G+ as more of an upgrade on Twitter. It's good for casual and directed sharing with no silly character limits. Facebook really is more of a close social tool that won't be displaced for a long time.

That explains everything.

I have zero interest in Twitter, I don't want or need those features in Facebook, which I (used to) like.

[Stevo985]

It's mildy irritating, but it's necessary.

It's adding stuff that G+ is trying to do. Which means no-one will have any need for G+

Such an irony. Facebook is much better now they're adding the best features of Google+, but they're pissing the regular users off and even driving some over to Google+

I see G+ as more of an upgrade on Twitter. It's good for casual and directed sharing with no silly character limits. Facebook really is more of a close social tool that won't be displaced for a long time.

That explains everything.

I have zero interest in Twitter, I don't want or need those features in Facebook, which I (used to) like.

No you don't. But plenty of other people do or will.

If Facebook accomodate them, then people can't say "Let's go to Google + because they have this feature" because Facebook will have it anyway.

And actually, the new facebook layout is pretty good. BUt as usual, people are mistaking unfamiliarity with poor quality. Once people get used to it it'll be the same old facebook, just a bit better.

[mjmooney]

Bah, humbug.

[cheltenham_villa]

It's mildy irritating, but it's necessary.

It's adding stuff that G+ is trying to do. Which means no-one will have any need for G+

Such an irony. Facebook is much better now they're adding the best features of Google+, but they're pissing the regular users off and even driving some over to Google+

I see G+ as more of an upgrade on Twitter. It's good for casual and directed sharing with no silly character limits. Facebook really is more of a close social tool that won't be displaced for a long time.

That explains everything.

I have zero interest in Twitter, I don't want or need those features in Facebook, which I (used to) like.

i don't see it as anything like twitter, i don't follow any of my friends on twitter, its an information store. a great source for random discussion of topics. watch a tv program, discuss it on twitter. interact with football and film stars, monitor favourite companies.

[leviramsey]

Google+ is and is not a social network

Over the past couple of weeks, the Internet’s frothy enthusiasm over Google+ has dried into proclamations of its imminent death.

Social media experts and bloggers who were one month ago hailing the fledgling service as the second coming of Christ are now calling it a graveyard and a ghost town.

But from where Google executive Bradley Horowitz sits, in an office on the Google campus in Mountain View, the vista isn’t nearly so dire.

“I don’t blame the pundits,” he says, “they’re not privy to our long-term strategies.”

The comment may seem snide or passive-aggressive; it’s also true to some extent. To understand Google’s plans for Plus, Horowitz says, you need to listen less and watch more.

“Six months from now, it will become increasingly apparent what we’re doing with Google+,” he says with a measure of opacity. “It will be revealed less in what we say and more in the product launches we reveal week by week.”

Over the past couple of weeks, we have, in fact, been seeing Google+’s social features creep into other Google web products, including Reader and Blogger.

We were clued into the real scope of Google’s plans by Louis Gray, a relatively new employee of the company who is a product marketing manager for Google+. A few weeks ago, Gray gave us a glimpse at the long view: Plus isn’t a social network; it’s Google’s new way of getting you to use all its web products.

Now, Horowitz confirms that conception. As I explain to him the vision that Gray explained earlier to me, he says, “Directionally, the world you’re describing is the world we aspire to. And it will be much better than the current state for our users.”

What is Google+?

Too many pundits and tech bloggers have made the mistake of thinking of Google+ as a Facebook competitor, but it’s absolutely not — at least not as far as Google is concerned.

Of course, Google is still in the business of competing with Facebook for ad dollars. That boils down to compiling the best, most actionable data about consumers to sell to advertisers.

And if Plus catches on, Google stands a much better chance of accomplishing that goal, not by orchestrating a Great Migration of users from one social network to another, but by subtly linking all your Google-powered online activity and profiles so advertisers can see a more complete picture of you than Facebook could ever offer.

But that’s just the follow-the-money part of the story of how Google is banking on staying in the black. As far as what you, the average end user, are expected to do to use Google+, there’s a lot less effort involved than you might think.

After all, Google is a company renowned for the massive collective brainpower of its workforce, and no one in that workforce really expected a billion people, give or take, to switch their online lives and relationships to a new destination.

Rather, Google+ is simply a new way of accessing Google’s web search. And Gmail. And Google Maps.

In other words, Google+ is (or soon will be) part of all of those products, rather than a standalone social network of its own.

“We think of Google+ as a mode of usage of Google,” says Horowitz, “a way of lighting up your Google experience as opposed to a new product. It’s something that takes time to appreciate, even internally. It’s easy to think of Google+ as something other than just Google, and I think it’ll take more launches before the world catches up with this understanding.”

Until the world does catch up, however, Google has to find its own metrics for success. Users are complaining they don’t see enough activity in their circles, that too few people are coming to Plus to hang out and interact.

Then again, if you buy into the idea that Plus isn’t, pardon the pun, a hangout or destination per se, you can accept the idea that Google+ could still be a success without massive amounts of public sharing and user activity.

Google gets holistic

One part of Google+ that Horowitz says is essential at this point in Google’s lifecycle is the unification of account management and data.

Simply put, right now you have separate profiles and logins for Blogger, Reader, YouTube and Gmail. That will soon end, to be replaced with a single account and a single login.

The multiple logins are complicated and can be confusing, and the only real reason for the disparity is because Google has evolved over the past 10 years as a many-limbed beast without a head.

Since its inception, Horowitz says, the company has placed a premium on autonomy and innovation, which, as a younger company, gives it a distinct competitive advantage.

“We have browsers, phones, self-driving cars, TVs,” he says, by way of illustrating how Google has invented better mousetraps in a variety of industries. “In many ways, these products have grown up very autonomously and have veered off in different directions, and it’s clear that we can now rationalize them and make them coherent and accretive to each other.”

While he praises the company’s culture and the diversity of its product suite, Horowitz concludes, “Now, for the user’s sake, we need to make improvements across all these products. … We were making a lot of bets in a lot of places, now we’re harvesting the bets that have paid off and weeding out the others. There’s an art to that which is greater than the sum of its parts. It’s a natural oscillation that is very user-focused.”

In the coming versions of the Internet as Google sees it, the company’s products are not disparate but holistic, and you, the average Joe or Jane, can comfortably and conveniently be a Google user with one account over multiple identities and multiple products.

“Right now, Google requires users to invest a lot of duplicative effort in all our products,” says Horowitz. For example, he tells me he’s getting married soon and will have to change his marital status across around nine different profiles for a lineup of products.

Instead, Google wants to let your profile and social graph move fluidly with you across your YouTube account, your blog, your email and wherever else you need that identity.

By contrast, Horowitz calls the current Google experience disconnected and haphazard.

“We think in providing this base level of infrastructure, it’s much less work,” says Horowitz. “Managing all these facets vanishes. The interfaces get very appealing and unified. You now have one coherent frame, and we can use these metaconcepts like circles to apply to how you share content across all that Google does.”

The freedom to be invisible

But what about those of us who lurk, who don’t want to be social, who prefer a web of information rather than interpersonal connection?

I count myself in that number. When I search, I don’t want to see links my friends liked. When I look at a map, I don’t really care where others have gone.

I ask Horowitz whether Google+ as part of all Google products means that I would be forced to be “social” whenever I use any of Google web services.

“Certainly, some products like Google search will support ‘incognito’ mode,” he tells me, outlining the three ways I could use any web product: unidentified, identified or pseudonymous.

“All three modes have different values to the user and different product implications,” says Horowitz. “Not every product will support all three modes. Something like Google Checkout is the highest bar, where financial processes are involved. And there’s a spectrum in between. Some products make sense to support in multiple modes, and it’s sort of a product-by-product decision.”

Ultimately, Horowitz says, the company’s goal is to give you the freedom to be who you want or need to be in any given moment.

“Blogging, for instance … is an important service on the Internet. That’s one that warrants having pseudonymity and having support for those use cases,” he says.

The issue of handles or pseudonyms is at the crux of Google’s approach to profiles and identity. In Google+’s infancy, your “common name,” that is, the name your mama gave you, was the only identifier you were allowed to use for the product. Your “StonerGuy420″ username from YouTube wasn’t going to cut it; the company was insisting on real names for “real” identities.

However, Google has shifted its stance on pseudonymity and will be allowing users to flow between anonymous, pseudonymous, and identified use of its products.

And as far as sharing is concerned, Google is deliberately making sharing a little more difficult than it is on other services. “We think in contrast to existing solutions, we want to give you clarity, transparency and choice,” Horowitz says.

“We’ve introduced friction into sharing quite deliberately. We want people to see, who gets this? Is this the right decision? We want to bring that cognitive load to the foreground … We want users to be thoughtful and deliberate about these things, and we’ve made that trade-off.”

Google responds to critics

In the face of rampant criticism over waning usage of his product, Horowitz says, “I never thought I’d be sitting here after Halloween with the usage we have. It’s delightful; it’s an amazing situation.”

Is he reading the same Internet we’re reading?

A September study showed a 40 percent drop in public posting on Google+, while a widely circulated study from last month said that visits to the service peaked quickly then dropped by 60 percent.

Then there’s the anecdotal evidence: Users taking to Facebook and Twitter to throw stones at Plus.

But again, Horowitz et al. are not looking at the trees, a.k.a., public posts and hangout activity. They’re looking at the forest, and so far, they like what they see.

“When we look at engagement, we look at how often those users are coming back to Google, and they’re coming back all the time — for search, to look at maps, to read email,” Horowitz says.

“Our engagement is extremely high, and this isn’t rhetoric. This is going to manifest in the products themselves.”

The Google+ team isn’t too concerned with emotionally weighted keening from tech pundits. “It’s relatively easy to filter out the diatribes and rants,” says Horowitz. “What’s much more seductive are the accolades and the praise.”

In the service’s early days, after all, “We were lauded as the saviors of the open web,” Horowitz reminds us.

But now, he and the rest of the team choose to absorb words of praise and understand the relevant criticism. Horowitz here paraphrases a dictum from Google co-founder Sergei Brin: It’s not that you shouldn’t listen to what people say, you should also watch what they do.

“A lot of our decisions are based on the clickstream in addition to sentiment analysis,” Horowitz reveals. “You’ve got to have a little window for stuff to come in. You’ll miss a lot of great feedback if you slam the window shut.”

For example, Google originally required gender to be visible on users’ profiles for Google+, a decision Horowitz says was “a deliberate and pro-user choice” to make sure users had the best possible understanding of who was in a given space.

“What we heard back was that the right of users to decide for themselves trumped that need,” Horowitz says. “That came from a lot of user feedback, people said they didn’t want to share their gender with everyone. So we flopped and we reacted and we changed the product. If we had been tone-deaf, we wouldn’t have made that call.”

And as for the rest of the critics, Horowitz concludes our talk on an arch note: “Nothing I say is going to impact the immense curiosity about our products and the rampant speculation about our imminent success or failure. And that’s ok. We have a clear inner compass and long view.”

The youtube button that was just added to the right-hand side is **** awesome.

[leviramsey]

The PM implementation on G+ is simply ingenious: it's just a post with visibility restricted, so replies etc. show up in your stream.

[limpid]

Fascinating page

[leviramsey]

Was going to ask when VT was getting a page...

[limpid]

It did take a few hours after they launched pages. I think it's one of the first in existence :rgreen:

[leviramsey]

Google Music launches

Last May at Google I/O, we launched Music Beta by Google with a clear ambition: to help people access their music collections easily from any device. Music Beta enabled you to upload your personal music collection (up to 20,000 songs) for free to the cloud so you could stream it anywhere, any time. Today, the beta service evolves into a broader platform: Google Music. Google Music is about discovering, purchasing, sharing and enjoying digital music in new, innovative and personalized ways.

Google Music helps you spend more time listening to your collection and less time managing it. We automatically sync your entire music library—both purchases and uploads—across all your devices so you don't have to worry about cables, file transfers or running out of storage space. We’ll keep your playlists in tact, too, so your “Chill” playlist is always your “Chill” playlist, whether you’re on your laptop, tablet or phone. You can even select the specific artists, albums and playlists you want to listen to when you're offline.

We also want to make it easy and seamless for you to grow your music collection. Today, we added a new music store in Android Market, fully integrated with Google Music.

The store offers more than 13 million tracks from artists on Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, and the global independent rights agency Merlin as well as over 1,000 prominent independent labels including Merge Records, Warp Records, Matador Records, XL Recordings and Naxos. We’ve also partnered with the world's largest digital distributors of independent music including IODA, INgrooves, The Orchard and Believe Digital.

You can purchase individual songs or entire albums right from your computer or your Android device and they’ll be added instantly to your Google Music library, and accessible anywhere.

Good music makes you want to turn up the volume, but great music makes you want to roll down the windows and blast it for everyone. We captured this sentiment by giving you the ability to share a free full play of a purchased song with your friends on Google+.

We’re celebrating our launch with a variety of music that you won’t find anywhere else, much of it free. There’s something for everyone, with a variety of free tracks to choose from:

* The Rolling Stones are offering an exclusive, never-before-released live concert album, Brussels Affair (Live, 1973), including a free single, “Dancing with Mr. D.” This is the first of six in an unreleased concert series that will be made available exclusively through Google Music over the coming months.

* Coldplay fans will find some original music that’s not available anywhere else: a free, live recording of “Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall”, a five-track live EP from their recent concert in Madrid and a remix of “Paradise” by Tiësto.

* Busta Rhymes’s first single from his upcoming album, Why Stop Now (feat. Chris Brown), is available for free.

* Shakira’s live EP from her recent concert in Paris and her new studio single, “Je L’Aime à Mourir” are both being offered up free.

* Pearl Jam are releasing a live album from their 9/11/11 concert in Toronto, free to Google Music users.

* Dave Matthews Band are offering up free albums from two live concerts, including new material from Live On Lakeside.

* Tiësto is offering up a new mix, “What Can We Do?” (feat. Anastacia), exclusively to Google Music users.

Whether you’re on a label or the do-it-yourself variety, artists are at the heart of Google Music. With the Google Music artist hub, any artist who has all the necessary rights can distribute his or her own music on our platform, and use the artist hub interface to build an artist page, upload original tracks, set prices and sell content directly to fans—essentially becoming the manager of their own far-reaching music store. This goes for new artists as well as established independent artists, like Tiesto, who debuts a new single on Google Music today.

Starting today, Google Music is open in the U.S. at market.android.com, and over the next few days, we will roll out the music store to Android Market on devices running Android 2.2 and above. You can also pick up the new music app from Android Market and start listening to your music on your phone or tablet today. And don’t forget to turn your speakers up to eleven.

It's a matter of time before this comes to the UK, but turning Google+ into a sort of mixtape-sharing network may well be a killer app.

[b23avfc]

http://www.gplus.to/DamianBrownPhotography

Still not convinced this will go anywhere near the levels that facebook has. I like it though.

I have the google music too, from the beta stage. Came in handy when my iphone wiped at one point and I didn't have chance to sync it.

[leviramsey]

The firehose - a selection of posts visible to you in basically realtime.

[Stevo985]

I still know literally no-one who is on Google +

Or rather, I know a few people who are signed up, but no-one who is registered but actually uses it, ever.

[ender4]

The killer part is obviously the Circles feature, where you share different things with different groups of people. Like you wouldn't post a dodgy joke on Twitter in case your boss followed you, but now just share dodgy jokes with your inner circle of friends, more mainstream official stuff with your circles, or post anything you want publicly.

Circles are awesome:

Step 1) Randomly divide everyone you know into two separate circles.

Step 2) Post to circle 1 that you just got an awesome new job.

Step 3) Post to circle 2 that you just contracted some disease.

Step 4) Post to your extended circles that "Tomorrow is my last day".

Step 5) Watch resulting comment battle between the two groups.

You've been able to do with this Facebook for years using "lists", which Google has copied and called circles.

I have lists for work, friends, gaming mates, etc.. and each list can only see stuff that i allow that list to see.

It used to be called something else a couple of years ago (can't remember what), but that was exactly the same as lists/circles now is.