9 years ago
17
Inside the sad, expensive failure of Google+
Create a social network or risk everything. That was the original pitch for Google's Facebook rival, Google+, a refrain hammered over and over by the social network's chief architect, Vic Gundotra, in meetings with the company's top brass.
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It unfortunate. I think it is a better facebook in terms of look and functionality. I wanted it to succeed when it first launched and I still do. I think it's just a slow death for it now.
Hopefully they can find a niche. I think the interface/functionality is rather good.
They could try targeting it at certain communities. If it takes hold there it might build. But facebook as a strangle hold on that sort of thing at this point.
The interface may be nice, but it came at the wrong time and the name sounds more like a "premium" version of the standard Google services than a social network.
I also think they kept it in invite only mode for far too long. This prevented people from getting on and giving it momentum, which is has desperately needed all this time.
Google+ somehow combines fb and twitter to provide the best professional learning network for my field (teaching)...I will be sorry if it closes. The communities are a great organising structure.
Google+ had its shot a blew it. I can't remember when, but there was a huge upset over a major change with the Facebook feed and privacy policy. A good portion of Facebookers were wanting to leave in protest. Google+ could have been that. Instead, they limited access to people that were invited. So, those that had a Google+ had no friends to share with. After a few weeks of having no one to do anything with, I stopped going.
Now, I use it as a sort of a personal journal that I can access whenever I have Internet.
This is exactly what I remember. I use lots of google products and was excited about google+ when I first read about it but they seemed to want to try to create a buzz of people clamoring to gain access and doled out sign ups by invite only initially. When they finally got around to letting people use the service I and everyone else I knew was already frustrated and had moved on. They had a real shot and blew it.
Before G+ was Buzz. I think the idea of Buzz was spot on: integrate social into Gmail. Unfortunately, it was executed and managed horribly. That was the one shot Google had, the one differentiator (leveraging gmail's popularity) that it failed with, and then had to try to go head to head with a standalone social product with G+.
One of the major mistakes Google made was forcing it upon users. Got an Android device you pretty much had to make a Google+ account. Then there was the whole youtube/google+ fiasco. Then Google wants you to always be logged in to Google Chrome and all it's services, sucking up every detail of you online life. So at the centre of all the Google-iness is G+, and I think a lot of people just don't want a social network attached to every other service they use.
I'm kind of sad. I really liked G+ when it launched. then the service slowly fell into disuse when everybody I knew stopped using it. It makes me remember Google Wave, which was another high profile failure...that I liked so much,
I never saw Google+ as being close to the same as Facebook. Totally different animals. Facebook, yeah, I've got my IRL friends, but on G+, I've got a group of people that I've never met, and have such a vast range of opinions and experiences that it is mesmerizing. Mostly, I love how G+ is so much more customizable than FB. My feed is tuned wonderfully, and I get so much more content that it pertinent to my interests than FB ever could provide.
Just me.
Can't say I'm surprised or that I'll miss Google +. I've been a Facebook user since it was first made public (instead of just for college students), and never had any real desire to switch over to G+. The thing was, more or less, a lifeless version of Facebook that nobody in my circle of friends ever used. Which, really, was its downfall. I remember when Myspace began to fall and people I knew were joining Facebook by the dozen, and the website just never stopped taking off. I don't think anyone I know actually willingly joined Google +, other than being forced to because of YouTube or Gmail.
I think the comparison to nightclubs is pretty apt. Google + never really offered anything Facebook didn't have as far as features went, and couldn't offer you the entire reason to use a social network: the people you know being active. I like Google as a company, so I hope they can put this mistake past them and move on to better things.
Yeah... They were. When I went there at first, the critical feature that was missing was the ability to hide friends from my timeline so I could customize my user experience. I gave it a few days, and when it didn't come, I realized Google+ was not gonna cut it. I'm sure other users had a different feature that they missed from Facebook, but there were quite a few that just failed to seal the deal.
Honestly, my favourite part about G+ has just been the feed through communities, providing an alternate source of content, that also works on mobile better then any other I have used. Plus, the topics I like seem to be heavily populated on the platform. Then again, I was excited about wave, and still lament google code shutting down.
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