What we can learn from Google Plus (2014)

https://www.intercom.com/blog/what-we-can-learn-from-google-plus/

by vincent_s • 5 years ago

66 62 5 years ago

I’m sure there was a ton of legacy to deal with here, but you have to wonder about what might have been if an identity layer had simply been applied across all these products and they were invested in.

Google kind of did this though, and everyone hated it. Remember on YouTube, the mess they made when they introduced Google+. Maybe the author means "if a single identity had existed from the beginning..."

mooman219• 5 years ago

I want the best of de-coupling and coupling of services, where you only need one identity to manage a variety of services, but each service is isolated from one another. This comes in two forms: identity and repercussions. In terms of identity, I want the ability to present myself differently depending on the service their using. I don't want my real name in say a game lobby where harassment happens more regularly. In terms of repercussions, I don't want a TOS violation on one connected service to influence the other services. I hear a lot horror stories of where malicious intent from a 3rd party on some service causes the closure of all coupled services and you're left dry.

I think Microsoft does a reasonable job at this. If you violate the TOS of Office 365, you may lose access to that, but the rest of your account stays usable.

vxNsr• 5 years ago

Yup, I lost access to bing rewards on my main account but I can still use it for everything else. (Including searching, I just don’t get points for it).

yellow_lead2• 5 years ago

That's a good take. I agree with presentation, and I think Google fixed this on YouTube to some extent. However, they're failing at the repercussions aspect.

zdragnar• 5 years ago

Didn't Yahoo have something vaguely like this? I don't remember the details too well, just some vague memory of Crockford bemoaning how well Yahoo services were segregated from each other compared to Google.

hexa222• 5 years ago

They did a terrible job of it. They broke all existing comment trees and pushed google+ really hard and automated posting. I seem to remember that commenting on YouTube would then make a post on google+ with your real name and likely notified your contacts about it.

toyg• 5 years ago

They clearly didn't want to be left stuck with maintaining multiple authentication systems (legacy ones and G+), so they thought they'd eat shit for a while but results would be worth it. But they executed so forcefully, that the backlash eventually forced them to backtrack on the most visible properties. This said, now every product they create or acquire gets wired to a single authentication system, so I guess they did make some progress, even though it's a "Google account" rather than a "G+ account".

chunkyks2• 5 years ago

I strongly resonate with the part about Circles being an active-maintenance-effort that even 10 years ago, when I actually had time, was more effort than I could be bothered with.

I think an interesting question is, what would it take for google to create a social network that would succeed nowadays?

They have quite the reputation [1]. If Google suddenly came out with an all-other-social-network-killer, and successfully killed all the other social networks, I'd still expect them to shut it down three years later.

... which unfortunately puts them in the position that it'll be incredibly hard for them to put out a true market-segment killer for anything, nowadays. Can't take over a market segment if no-one trusts you can be relied on, and therefore doesn't move to your product.

I say this even though I met my wife on Orkut, one of Google's previous social networks that, sure enough, got shut down.

[1] https://killedbygoogle.com/

function_seven2• 5 years ago

Same reason I don’t start watching any new series on Netflix anymore. They’re building a similar reputation for themselves, cancelling shows before the story can be completed.

If it’s a miniseries (e.g. Queen’s Gambit), then I’ll try it out. Otherwise I won’t watch something if the rug’s going to be yanked out.

Which of course adds to the likelihood of that happening, if others take the same wait-and-see approach.

OnlineGladiator• 5 years ago

What are the series on Netflix that you feel were cancelled too soon? The only show I was disappointed to hear was 'cancelled' was Mindhunter, and I just discovered it's actually going to be coming back!

https://gizmostory.com/mindhunter-season-3-release-date-rumo...

EDIT: In response to the comment below me, I am sad to learn Glow isn't coming back.

zucker42• 5 years ago

Shows being cancelled earlier than fans would like is hardly a phenomenon exclusive to Netflix.

habibur• 5 years ago

Even before Netflix, I watched only first season of any popular TV show. Lost interest after that.

wodenokoto• 5 years ago

While this is off topic I blame the writers/producers.

They get money to produce 1 season. If they end that season with a cliffhanger there is a larger chance that viewership demands a season 2, than if it ends cleanly.

I feel like the writers are taking the viewers hostage, so to speak.

I guess you could say that Netflix should demand season 1 to stand on its own. Or at least be clear if a given season ends cleanly.

ipsum22• 5 years ago

YouTube is already Google's killer social network. Over a billion users a month.

sircastor• 5 years ago

This I think is the observation that many people miss. YouTube, while not identical to Facebook in its approach, is a massive social network, and massively successful, with a lot more goodwill than Facebook gets.

mkj• 5 years ago

Is Youtube actually a social network or a broadcast medium with a very narrow feedback medium? All the big channels I know about (only briefly) have forums etc external to youtube.

slightwinder3• 5 years ago

Youtube is more a para-social than a social network. Social networks are all about interaction on equal terms, but on youtube the focus is strongly shifted to creating videos and let them concumed by their peers. Proper interaction hardly happens there. And didn't they even remove the means for private communcation some years ago? So it's all just public now.

The only somewhat social interaction happens between the content creators, not between any user of the site. And those creators seem to care more about beefs and making money.

Galxeagle• 5 years ago

RE: the circle maintenance effort, I’m finding that people are using group chats (in messenger, WhatsApp, etc) as a solution to the pain points Circles set out to solve.

For example, I’ve now been added to a chat with all my extended family, one for my local community group (and subgroups), and a couple friend ones from college. And now when I have something to share I pick the relevant scope just like Circles, and finding my contacts are more open to sharing casual thoughts vs standard posting.

I have a hunch that it works because the moderation/curation becomes a group effort instead of just a maintenance activity asked of me alone, but it was an interesting realization when I realized what was happening

Jenk2• 5 years ago

Not only was it individual effort, it just felt so pointless. In group messages (Facebook/WhatsApp) you're effectively/literally inviting someone into a group conversation like a private forum amongst the invitees.. In g+ circles, all you were doing was labelling your friends and even naming the labels could be tricky ("friends" circle .. if you aren't in it, what does that say?)

ggm4• 5 years ago

Why didn't they implement basic boolean operators over circles and people?

Post (@friends !bob) "let's surprise Bob for his birthday" is about as normal as it gets

HWR_145• 5 years ago

Why didn't they implement basic boolean operators over circles and people?
Post (@friends !bob) "let's surprise Bob for his birthday" is about as normal as it gets

Because while I would love that UI, there would be 1% of the population on their site.

Look at how much they had to simplify search syntax to appeal to the wider market.

ggm4• 5 years ago

Syntactic sugar it into natural language, I just wanted grouping, braces to coerce precedence with "and", "or" & "not".

I even said so at the time! (Back when we naively believed Google wanted feedback)

laurent92• 5 years ago

You can always represent this with a widget and a little form.

But from my experience, people who quit and say “I don’t understand” in front of the login screen of Windows, have no problems setting up an OnlyFans account with 3 levels of verification and linked with a bank account.

charles_f2• 5 years ago

Build around people problems, not company problems

This is so hard to fight for. I worked on a feature for our product where we leverage a UI component initially built to show ML recommendations, but to surface hard coded recommendations made by our partner's software, not coming from AI but hard coded. These recommendations are contextually sound because the devs _know_ what is possible given the context, which for all intents and purposes makes them much, much more relevant than anything that would come from an ML model. But for the life of them the other team will not let us use this UI because they're afraid that it might tarnish the opinion people have of their AI. So we're in this situation where the user would greatly benefit from a consistent UI, the partners as well, but because that team is afraid it will dilute their baby, we can't do it.

Had similar examples where 3 months in designinga feature it becomes clear that it doesn't fit with users, that a simpler solution would be better, but designers and PMs will take a hard stance that it's how we planned it and now is too late to change it even if dev hasn't even started.

Between sunk cost and babies, it's hard to forget our own interest in favor of our users.

the_gipsy• 5 years ago

sunk cost and babies

It’s not that they (middle managers) are stupid. It’s political. KPIs and objectives and individual careers are misaligned or work against what is good for the user and ultimately, good for the company. Blame the CxOs.

charles_f2• 5 years ago

Yeah that's absolutely true, things get done not because it's the right thing but because it will reflect or benefit people. If you create wrong incentives you'll get the wrong behaviors in return.

specialist• 5 years ago

Conway's Law in action. You have my sympathy and condolences. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law

FWIW, Tesla seems to be more willing to shake the ant farm. The tear downs and comparisons with other EVs are instructive. Tesla's octovalve, heat pumps, gigacasting, and I'm sure a dozen other things, just wouldn't happen (didn't happen) elsewhere. One blocker was functional silos.

Maybe it takes a tyrant like Elon Musk to dare the things Deming, Drucker, Goldratt, and others were proscribing.

Or external, existential threat. Like Churchill said about America: They always do the right thing, after first trying everything else.

In my experience, the only times I've successfully busted silos, the circumstances were dire and everyone else had given up. Other times were much less successful.

taneq• 5 years ago

And to put the elephant in the room to bed, Google didn’t need real names, they simply needed one common way to refer to individual people.

I don't think this is sufficient treatment of what was, at the time, the biggest objection to Google+ that I heard. The hamhanded forced real name thing killed Google+ for virtually everyone I knew on there, less for the actual concern about using your real name than for the attitude it displayed towards users' privacy.

I know I was well on the way to moving completely over to Google+ at the time they announced that change, and dropped it entirely almost immediately thereafter.

jaimex22• 5 years ago

I learnt that you shouldnt bother investing any time into any new Google service after 2010.

hexa222• 5 years ago

Google drive and google photos are after that time and they both seem to work really well and be core products.

zinekeller2• 5 years ago

Google Drive is mainly a response to Apple's iCloud, Microsoft's then-SkyDrive, and Dropbox. It was initially an integration into Gmail, and became a fully-fledged separate product later.

Photos is the spiritual successor to Picasa, integrated into the web. It was a response and a one-up to (again) iCloud and SkyDrive which both have phot syncronisation, which is something that is missing in Android. It was initially integrated into Google Drive, and became a fully-fledged separate product just now, when the integration has been cut.

So Google's next successful product would be

1) When Apple and Microsoft has bothered to be the first, and

2) whatever is connected to Google Photos.

(btw, since Stadia has became a meme, it partially fits 1 (xCloud) but sure it isn't connected to Photos in any way)

cryptica• 5 years ago

Facebook's success was all about network effects. It's no coincidence that it started out at Harvard. That was the root of the network where the most influential people of the next generation would come from.

tsjq• 5 years ago

what is Vic Gundotra doing these days? I loved his Google I/O presentations .

dredmorbius3• 5 years ago

Seems he's taken a hard turn to the alt-right:

https://nitter.eu/GundotraVic

MichaelMoser123• 5 years ago

Maybe the failure with google plus did them a favor: so instead of owning another social network they focused on analysing all the private data they already vacuumed up and pushed machine learning into it every corner of the system, maybe this preceived lack of private data forced them to be more thorough at analysing what they already had and forced them to focus on android as source of data.

What we can learn from Google Plus (2014)

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