What G+ is really about (pst it's not social)

https://plus.google.com/photos/100238778462210489846/albums/5629087019815403777

by fttechfounder • 15 years ago

197 84 15 years ago

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currywurst2• 15 years ago

Great usage of the G+ photo viewer for slides, but I don't think G+'s main focus is about moving apps/games into the cloud ..

The most convincing argument I have heard is that 'social signals' are (going to be?) a fantastic resource for cutting through the spammy, link-swapping www of today.

paulnelligan• 15 years ago

That's the best argument I've heard so far for Google+

revorad• 15 years ago

Social signals also have a lot of noise. It may be even harder to tell the signal from the noise in social signals.

currywurst2• 15 years ago

Yeah, good point. However, if Google only uses the signals from my circles, I could be insulated from the noise :)

MaxGabriel• 15 years ago

Why can't it be about both? Also, from the perspective of Google, why let Facebook enjoy the 'blue ocean' of social, if the blue/red ocean is such an important concept for new products?

rmc2• 15 years ago

Summary: Google+ is an attempt to move applications/things onto the web, and make sharing and coloborating easier. The goal is not to take on Facebook/Twitter, but to take on MS Office and App Stores

hm2k2• 15 years ago

I guess this is why there's no Google Chrome App to compete with Tweetdeck.

mmavnn• 15 years ago

Tweetdeck has a Chrome App. I have it open in Chrome right now...

hm2k2• 15 years ago

Please re-read my comment.

ulvund• 15 years ago

On Facebook you buy ads for ~$1+ because you can set target demographic to something as specfic as "women; 42-47 years old; looking for relationships with other women; with a degree in biology or computer science; attened Harvard; Works at IBM; who likes horseback riding or skiing"

Imagine if google knew BOTH your search term and your complete personal history. Then the ad price and conversion would increase enormously.

That is what Google is trying to get a piece of.

cdavid• 15 years ago

I am not convinced it is that useful to have explicitly targeted audiences for advertisement. It may be better to understand and interpret an ad campaign, but generally, what works best when doing statistical prediction is not what is the most intuitive.

Also, even though your example is obviously not meant to be taken as is, it shows that targeted demographics quickly don't have a lot of data behind them. Successful stories in AI usually involves lots of averaged data with only little "focused" data to adapt your model quickly (e.g. as done in speech recognition where models are estimated on 1000s of hours from many speakers, and the model is then adapted for the one speaker to be recognized).

I think the value of the so called social graph for advertising is overestimated. IMO, what's interesting about facebook is more the amount and diversity of data than its personalized nature. But then, I have little knowledge about algo for advertisement targetting, maybe the situation is different than the domains I am familiar with.

rachelbythebay• 15 years ago

Who says it's about effectiveness of the ad? It might just be effectiveness of getting money from the advertisers. More data means you can do more hand-waving to say that this ad will be the one that really really reaches people this time.

skarayan2• 15 years ago

"I think the value of the so called social graph for advertising is overestimated."

I disagree, for certain businesses it is more beneficial then Adwords. I have had really good experiences with Facebook Ads.

redxaxder• 15 years ago

> "I am not convinced it is that useful to have explicitly targeted audiences for advertisement. It may be better to understand and interpret an ad campaign, but generally, what works best when doing statistical prediction is not what is the most intuitive."

If you've collected marketing data that tells you your conversion rate among pet owners is 2% when your conversion rate among the general public is 1%, then you know that every ad you show to pet owners is going to have twice the impact on your bottom line.

Ad targeting enables you to collect this kind of data and to exploit it once you have it. If you find the right audience, your advertising dollars can go more than twice as far.

scrollbar• 15 years ago

I am convinced that it is useful. I do it every day :)

Without going into specifics, think of this data as just another signal to use in ad targeting. Maybe users in certain regions are more likely to purchase a product? Maybe men versus women, people who have kids, people in certain income ranges. We ad people use all this info to eek out performance from campaigns.

Google is going for the holy advertising grail with +

nivertech3• 15 years ago

You think like a tech person:

- Google Engineer: If I'll better target demographics and increase conversion - I'll be able to raise my per ad price by 200%

- Ad Campaign Manager: better conversion rate? OK will pay max 15%-30% more per ad.

- Google AdSence Manager: we'll lose 80% of revenue if target narrow demographics - screw it

eru2• 15 years ago

If advertisement is paid per click, and not per impression, Google itself is interested in better targeting of what to display to whom, because it frees up inventory without impacting revenue.

rmc2• 15 years ago

However, Google know what you're looking for, and all your past search terms. Although Facebook might have more demographic information, with google, you can target ads for people who are looking for dog worming tablets, regardless of who they are.

officemonkey• 15 years ago

I just thought of something... With target demographics like that Facebook would be an excellent way to look for prospective mates.

netcan2• 15 years ago

Potentially, Google could get to the point where a single click is worth $100s.

corin_• 15 years ago

As someone who works in digital advertising I would love that to be realistic, but I'm afraid it's not.

nl• 15 years ago

No, it's about social.

The other stuff is already happening, and Google is winning.

nwmcsween• 15 years ago

G+ is a move into social media, what's a better way to have live data on your user base than the data generated by a service you control, and maybe why profiles must be public.

JonnieCache• 15 years ago

Why can't it be many or all of these things?

I find it highly implausible that google has as strong a desire to form simple, narrow narratives around its strategy and ambitions as bloggers and the media do.

arkitaip2• 15 years ago

It's times like this that I wish HN was curated. It seems that everyday we get posts like this where some random person - "I'm a first time tech founder; I'm also a first time programmer." - conjures up a bunch of ideas supported only by their imagination.

nivertech3• 15 years ago

But we need this new blood. Let the best survive!

JanezStupar5• 15 years ago

I think his usage of G+ album to create a presentation was awesome and inspiring.

Also I believe he has a point. And found his message to be more lucid, clear and entertaining than 90% of three paragraph ramblings about this and that around here.

And just as a conclusion. Bill Gates was once a radnom person, as was Larry Page, Steve Jobs, Paul Graham, etc...

Maybe you should focus more on originality and evaluate merit of these ideas instead of only craving for more stuff to be fed down your throat by current status Quo holders.

And I believe that this is what HN is about. HN is curated, by HN community - and it's obvious that HN community believes this contribution's place is at the top of the front page.

arkitaip2• 15 years ago

What was his point? Where's the data to back it up. That's right, there's nothing of substance, only speculation. If your high profile names wrote some speculative piece I would consider it equally worthless. Either your argumentation has merits or it doesn't.

I don't think you understand the meaning of curation. Curation doesn't imply censorship or that a certain group of people filter content based on a certain set of value, rather it means that they would ensure a high signal to noise by removing posts that don't really contribute to a discussion.

david_a_r_kemp• 15 years ago

From where I stand, G+ is about advertising - the more information Google have about you, the better they can target ads at you, and therefore the more likely you are to click on their ads, thereby making them money.

mirkules• 15 years ago

FYI, it's really hard to see the blue ocean / red ocean slides on my mobile device, and enlarging them only makes it blurry (samsung galaxy s). It's funny because I got to the punchline and couldn't read it. I still don't know what it says other than guessing that it's all about the apps.

fttechfounder4• 15 years ago

Thanks for the tip, do you know if anyone else has had problem reading it on a mobile device?

msg2• 15 years ago

It was ok on my HTC Desire.

fabjan• 15 years ago

I really don't see Google allowing people to share apps they bought.

radarsat1• 15 years ago

> "do you know how often people still email documents / photos / spreadsheets?"

Great, so G+ is yet another attempt to get people to stop using common communications standards like email and instead break the internet up into a set of distinct one-provider-oriented services that can't talk to each other?

s00pcan2• 15 years ago

No, the goal is to make it not matter what service you're using.

a3_nm• 15 years ago

In which way? Could you elaborate?

podperson• 15 years ago

Right now, G+ is populated by a bunch of early adopters and it's pretty nice, mostly because 90% of the folks you know and only keep in touch with out of a sense of duty haven't gotten in, and G+ doesn't support superpoke and Zynga yet.

Even so, with a smallish population of users and the spammers still figuring out how to operate, G+ has some serious usability problems (like you can only see 2-3 items in your stream at a time on a high resolution display) and it's already getting kind of spammy. In to succeed, Google needs to maintain laser-like focus of usability and continue to innovate on a small number of features -- it can't just glom random stuff onto it or integrate random GoogleLabs projects.

For those whom Google Docs is a suitable replacement for Sharepoint, I doubt integrating G+ will make a huge difference. For those for whom Google Docs is inadequate, G+ won't tip the balance. If G+ takes the proposed approach it will actually alienate many potential users. It's better to embrace the outside world than replace it. (And, in fact, it contradicts the "blue ocean" strategy.)

Frankly, from a big picture strategic viewpoint, it's great to see Google annihilating Facebook, but it's fiddling while China burns. It's losing search, and no-one in China aspires to own an Android phone -- they're saving up to buy iPhones and using non-Google Android phones while they wait.

jamesteow• 15 years ago

"Even so, with a smallish population of users and the spammers still figuring out how to operate, G+ has some serious usability problems (like you can only see 2-3 items in your stream at a time on a high resolution display) and it's already getting kind of spammy."

My feed has interesting/funny comments and links... because I just put interesting and funny people in my circles. And I don't consider the fact that I can only see 2-3 items on a high-res display bad if the quality of the content is higher than other sites I visit. There are some blogs whose index page have the same issue and I'm fine with it because I know that every single piece of content posted is well worth the surface area.

fttechfounder4• 15 years ago

Give them some time, Facebook has been around for a few years now. G+ is just getting started.

siphr• 15 years ago

Nicely done and easier to follow. Although I think just like any good business Facebook cannot let it's guard down no matter what this presentation says.

leot• 15 years ago

G+ is also about giving Google a much richer social relationships graph than anyone has ever had. I can only wonder at the long-term effects of the information asymmetries that are developing. At least with twitter (and fb, for that matter) most of the relationships were public.

contextfree• 15 years ago

So ... social networking isn't "blue ocean", but office suites and app stores are? Huh?

gcb• 15 years ago

it's not mobile either... completely impossible to read that on android

icebraining2• 15 years ago

It's bad for those of us who don't like to use the mouse too. I wonder how is the rest of G+ with regard to keyboard support?

code_duck• 15 years ago

I'm not quite used to seeing a photo of myself in the top bar across Google sites, but I can certainly see where they're taking this is more than the 'facebook killer!!' the media would make it out to be. Google has a lot more to offer as a company than Facebook - YouTube, Docs, two OSs, a vast ad network, search and news - in addition to their features which overlap with FB, such as Blogger or Picasa. Google+ is unifying all of that into a very impressive product, which is rather unprecedented. I'd be looking at what Apple thinks, too. And Amazon... it's definitely not just about Facebook.

quinndupont• 15 years ago

I can think of better ways of displaying that information. Ugh.

drdaeman2• 15 years ago

G+ is about moving everything into the Google "cloud". In a same way Facebook (and VKontakte, and whatever else) is about moving everything into their "cloud".

Cloud is a buzzword, it doesn't really mean anything here.

G+ is just a Buzz (thus, GMail) + GTalk + Picasa + Latitude + Google Profiles, covered under one convenient interface. You can't peer with it, you have to actually use it itself (i.e., have and maintain an account there). Yes, there are some APIs to control that account (FB has some, too), and you could have a backup copy of your own data, but doesn't really matter.

It's still almost exactly the same as Facebook.

sc68cal• 15 years ago

YES! I stopped reading when I hit that slide. It's a bunch of bullshit and handwaving that people do when they don't know what the hell they're talking about.

JanezStupar5• 15 years ago

You can't do that YET.

As far as Cloud hype & buzzwords goes. I was of same opinion until I started doing my startup. Now basically all infrastructure I have (besides my personal computers) is of SAAS nature somewhere in yes Cloud.

We could say Internet, but that would be confusing - since Internet is such a broad term.

For what its worth as a reformed nonbeliever I'm telling you. Cloud is awesome and its here to stay. So you better get used to it.

drdaeman2• 15 years ago

Cloud is a good thing, but it is pointless buzzword in that context. "Cloud" is when you distribute your stuff over some cluster of physical machines. This increases reliability, allows to scale performance, simplifies deployment and so on. Does it matter to end-user how Google infrastructure's organised inside?

Sure, some cloud providers have compatible APIs (as this is the case with Amazon S3 API), so the data could be moved between "clouds" easily. Compatibility is not a general property of a "cloud", and moreover - this is not a case with G+.

And SAAS is not a "cloud", it's just that nowadays most SAAS are marketed as "cloud" because they internally rely on some distributed storage or processing system. It's just that "cloud" quickly became a buzzword, replacing cumbersome "SAAS" abbreviation.

We've had SAAS in 90's (and, probably, earlier). Remember hosted forums, webchats and guestbooks? This was certainly SAAS, and probably not a "cloud".

Ryan_IRL• 15 years ago

I just like how G+ helps me share internet jokes with my friends, and at the same time, still be within my anti-social comfort zone.

jwingy• 15 years ago

I remember reading somewhere that Google's overarching policy is really a "scorched earth" policy where due to the "fuck you" money afforded them by their search business, they are able to offer services and products from which their competitors (probably anybody in tech) derive their core business from for almost nothing. Effectively this creates a moat around the Google castle with the surrounding land razed, allowing no one else to subsist or grow large enough to ever challenge them.

Sometimes I believe this...sometimes I don't. Any thoughts?

divtxt• 15 years ago

Here is the "scorched earth" post: http://abovethecrowd.com/2011/03/24/freight-train-that-is-an...

I agree with it regarding Android & Chrome OS, but I'm not sure that it applies to web apps like G+, gmail since those have per user costs.

What G+ is really about (pst it's not social)

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