Google’s Management Doesn’t Use Google+

http://theunderstatement.com/post/11018308302/googles-management-doesnt-use-google

by thisisblurry • 15 years ago

214 80 15 years ago

Kylekramer• 15 years ago

This thought: Further, I think it’s reasonable to assume a correlation between private use & public use kills the whole article. No, it isn't a reasonable assumption. If you look at my Facebook without being a friend of mine, you get a picture of me. Five years of use and that is the only public thing I have published. And I am just another dude no one cares about. I am sure billionaire CEOs and board members who have actual reporters, normal everyday gossiphounds and even crazies caring about their personal lives have even more incentive to be private. Google+'s promise isn't that is a combination of Facebook and Twitter, it is a social network where it does what you want it to. And if Google management wants their sharing to be private, that is good. I suspect a large number of their users have a similar outlook.

joebadmo• 15 years ago

Yes, exactly right, especially considering the broad range that 'private' sharing can take on G+. I.e., I use a circle called "Following" to use G+ more like twitter, which includes a lot of people. So when I share with all my circles, it's technically 'private', but not really private.

vessenes• 15 years ago

In fact, this was one of the main use-cases G+ hammered on when it launched.

That said, I believe G+ has public-facing benefit. It would be nice to see honchos above Vic Gundotra using it publicly.

blantonl• 15 years ago

Marissa Mayer actively uses G+, publicly.

wallywax• 15 years ago

Vic reports to the CEO, so Larry is the only "honcho" above Vic.

hetman• 15 years ago

Agreed. Thought I think the fact so much of the management doesn't even have a Google+ account is a much more telling/troubling indicator.

degusta7• 15 years ago

Disclosure: author :)

I don't think what a "normal" person has done on Facebook over the past 5 years is a fair comparison. Facebook didn't even have a public "subscribe/follow" concept til last week, whereas Google+ launched with one. Also, these aren't normal people, they're the leaders/overseers of the company using (or not) a landmark initiative whose leader (Vic Gundotra) clearly thinks that ideally it'd be used for both your private and public interactions. At the very least, it'd look a lot better if they had accounts, tried making a public post (even just to congratulate the team publicly), and looked engaged.

vaughan8• 15 years ago

I disagree - he makes a reasonable assumption. G+ allows you to share things that are public and share things that are private.

If someone was sharing things that are private (our assumption), wouldn't it follow that they are sharing things that they have indicated (via some other means) are public?

For example, David Drummond's post on the Google Blog regarding Android patents (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/when-patents-attack-a...). He has authored this post, indicated this is public but failed to share it publicly using G+. Is this not the purpose of G+?

These execs attend press events often where they openly voice their opinion in the public domain. It's a public company too and these people are actually accountable to the public.

However, it seems that although they share publicly when asked to by reporters and their open-ended questions they do not see G+ as a means to publicly share. They do not understand the value of information sharing and user generated content, the cornerstone of web 2.0. They are still stuck in a pull-based world driven by journalists asking questions. Facebook and Twitter understood the value of this change well by living through it (http://vaughan.io/post/10476571077/live-the-problem).

What we can draw from this is that its not going to be Google who jumps on the next big trend in social, if they can't even understand how to use their current product to its intended effect. They only built G+ because the concept was proven by Facebook and now they are just replicating it. Facebook will continue to lead the market here until the top executives like Larry, Sergey, Alan Eustace, etc. can understand their own product, its weaknesses and its strengths.

cbs• 15 years ago

He has authored this post, indicated this is public but failed to share it publicly using G+. Is this not the purpose of G+?

I write blog posts for my employer, on the employer's blog frequently. I never share them on my private accounts on social networks. Why should I? Thats not "cbs, person" thats "cbs, talking on behalf of Corp X". Even if I was in senior management I wouldn't want to dilute myself as a person by posting things on social networks that are not me.

You're basically arguing that google execs don't understand G+ because, they haven't mixed their personal and professional lives to a sufficient extent. That is a rather bold conclusion to draw. Maybe they're just private people.

It is impossible for me to use the product I work on day-to-day. It would literally kill me if I tried. Does that mean I'm unable to understand it?

Tichy• 15 years ago

Maybe they have actual work to do and can not procrastinate on Twitter or G+ like the rest of us.

gamble• 15 years ago

Nothing embarrasing here. I'm sure it's just that Google's management are very private people who wouldn't like their personal information exposed and spread about to third parties.

guyzero• 15 years ago

I'm really hoping David Drummond will use G+ to tell us all about the lawsuits his staff is in the process of deposing. That's sure to happen.

vaughan8• 15 years ago

David Drummond has blogged publicly on the Google Blog (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/when-patents-attack-a...) a few times. Surely it would make sense for him to publish this on his public G+ feed.

shareme• 15 years ago

The author is wrong..there is a Google+ sandbox and I am told that Google management is in fact using Google+ through that from Google insiders..

pasbesoin• 15 years ago

Well, that would be a bit ironic.

mmahemoff• 15 years ago

That's never the same thing though (even assuming this rumor stands up). You can dogfood products like Wave internally all you like; the lesson that Google has actually learned here, for the most part, is you also need to spend time field testing in the real world.

djacobs• 15 years ago

The internal Google+ network is huge and bustling. My Google friends who use it say that comparatively, the public version is very dead.

lojack• 15 years ago

> Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg really does use Facebook all day. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo tweeted at least 30 times just yesterday.

And, likewise, I'm sure Google's management uses Google Search on a regular basis.

barista2• 15 years ago

But not Google+... and thats exactly the point.

AaronI• 15 years ago

A point which is based on a flawed assumption. Public posts don't necessarily correlate with private posts.

j_baker2• 15 years ago

I'm not sure this is fair. Google is a large company with a lot of products. You simply can't expect top management to be an active user of all of them. I'm sure Apple doesn't require its top execs to own an iPhone, iPod, iPod nano, iPod touch, iMac, MacBook Air.... you get the idea. The comparison with Twitter is even worse. Twitter really only has one product.

The way this data is organized, I don't see any top executives not using Google+ that "should" be using it.

gallamine• 15 years ago

However, the author of the article mentioned that Google is saying Google+ is THE future of the company. In that case, everyone should be using it. It's not "just another" product.

j_baker2• 15 years ago

However, the author of the article mentioned that Google is saying Google+ is THE future of the company.

Just because the author mentioned that doesn't make it true.

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2011/06/googles...

The author cites this article, which (ignoring the fact that it is an interview with Google ex-CEO) doesn't even mention Google Plus by name. Personally, I'd say that the author's post demonstrates that Google doesn't think Google Plus is central to the company's future.

thematt• 15 years ago

It's completely fair. It's one thing to simply not use a product (Google+), it's entirely different to actively use a competitors product (Blackberry). I bet there would be hell to pay if Apple execs were walking around using Blackberries and Win Phone 7's.

darengb• 15 years ago

But Steve Jobs definitely uses an iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air, etc., and I would be shocked if that wasn't also the case for other top Apple execs.

wavephorm• 15 years ago

Apparently they took one look at how Google would be using their information and said "fuck that".

nr0mx• 15 years ago

The correct title should have been: "Google's Management Doesn't Use Google+ For Public Posts". But not so good for pageviews, is it?

"Management caring deeply about their company’s products and using them every day is almost always a prerequisite of making great products."

From my time on Google+, the Google+ team seems to be highly visible and doing a terrific job interacting on the site. It seems like a useful update is announced by the team - not management - almost weekly.

"Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg really does use Facebook all day."

Of course, quite obvious from the sheer volume of daily public posts Zuckerberg makes on Facebook.

It seems pointless to continue to dissect this post any further.

emil0r• 15 years ago

There just is no pleasing everyone is there. Next there will be angry calls to +God for not posting public.

Lewisham• 15 years ago

Remember that Larry re-org'd Google into product groups, and the SVP of Social is Vic Gundorota. My understanding is that these groups are supposed to work in a more autonomous fashion, with Larry more of a Jobsian gatekeeper and guiding hand.

If you are to make some sort of conclusion based on whether the boss is using it or not, you need to actually choose the boss. Vic is the boss of Google+, and he's made 150+ posts. Seems pretty good to me.

barista2• 15 years ago

I think the point is that even senior googlers don't think its valuable/useful enough.

kd0amg• 15 years ago

Useful to them specifically or useful in general?

Dogfooding is nice and all, but some people are not part of their products' target audiences.

ditojim• 15 years ago

i'd be willing to bet google execs use hangouts quite a bit, which is technically google+..

tlogan• 15 years ago

This is really a big news because apparently 25 percent of employee bonuses are tied to the success of Google+.

The news is that Larry didn't convince his management team and the board that G+ is very important for the future of Google.

larsberg• 15 years ago

Maybe they all have their accounts in Google Apps and G+ is just not available to them yet :-)

hosh2• 15 years ago

This article is flawed. It is making an assumption that public posts correlates with private posts.

"Further, I think it’s reasonable to assume a correlation between private use & public use: if you were constantly posting things on a service and each time you were given the option to make it public or private, surely sometimes you’d make it public, especially as a somewhat public figure wanting to help your own company’s new service get going."

This is fallacy, and it is not even persuasive fallacy.

I make significantly more private posts than I do public posts. I've made exactly two public posts since using it in the early field testing days, and have many more private posts. The friends in my circle tends to share privately, not publicly. You don't have to make public posts to use Google+.

We can say for certain that Google management do not make public posts. We cannot say for certain that Google management do not use Google+ at all.

degusta7• 15 years ago

(I'm the author). Your last point is very true, and the chart tries to make it very clear it's only talking about public posts. Obviously entirely true that they could be using it purely privately, but I still think is an observation worth making that they're not using it publicly.

As far the correlation in general, as I mention in the thread above, these aren't normal people, they're the leaders/overseers of the company using (or not) a landmark initiative whose leader (Vic Gundotra) clearly thinks that ideally it'd be used for both private and public interactions. At the very least, it'd look a lot better if they had accounts, tried making a public post (even just to congratulate the team publicly), and looked a bit more publicly engaged.

hosh2• 15 years ago

@degusta Whether these leaders publicly eat their own dogfood or not is a matter of rhetorics and strategy. If that were your thesis and narrative, we would be having a much more interesting conversation.

However, you didn't entitle your article, "Google Management Doesn't Care About Google+" You said, "Google Management Doesn't Use Google+". The former expresses your perception of Google strategy backed by the data you've collected. The latter is merely link bait.

I do congratulate you. The link bait worked.

natasham25• 15 years ago

This is an opportunity for the Google leadership to be leaders not only in their company but outside of it by contributing their knowledge and lessons learned to the public. Unfortunately, they are not taking this leadership opportunity, since most of the posts from Larry Page and Sergey Brin are from their amazing adventures and travels, which shows that they themselves don't understand the real power of social media and how they can use it to actually contribute to the world.

degusta7• 15 years ago

(I'm the author) That's a really good observation re the content of the founders' posts, especially Mr. Brin's.

darksaga• 15 years ago

Google+ was supposed to compete with Facebook and having people's salaries tied to something this big, you would expect EVERYBODY to be on board.

I'd be pretty pissed if my salary was tied up in this and articles like this come out basically saying, "Your own execs don't think this is a good enough product to use themselves."

Regardless of how private they want to be, they should be using the product or at the very least have some assistant or intern posting for them. I'm pretty certain most celebs and top tech execs don't do all of their updates. You don't have to post private stuff, just make an effort to show you're using the product.

decklin• 15 years ago

What an utterly awful use of a pie chart.

squidsoup• 15 years ago

According to Edward Tufte, there's no such thing as a good use of a pie chart.

dendory• 15 years ago

I like Google Plus, I post many things every day. But I'm among those worried about its future. Out of over 700 people I follow, only around 30 post daily, most posted at one point (I don't follow people who never posted) but don't anymore. I think people have a use for Twitter, Facebook, but G+ is inbetween and doesn't have enough of an obvious use yet.

jonmc12• 15 years ago

"Management caring deeply about their company’s products and using them every day is almost always a prerequisite of making great products"

..when management is also happens to be in the target market of the product. Quite a broad and incorrect generalization to kick off an analysis like this.

degusta7• 15 years ago

I'm the author and you're right. I hadn't thought of that, I was just thinking in the narrow space of consumer-y services/devices that have a broad target market. Something like "and being intimately familiar with them" would have been much better.

kragen3• 15 years ago

Larry and Sergey are probably just posting under pen names. ;)

vaughan8• 15 years ago

Google+ explicitly doesn't allow the use of pseudonyms.

Luyt• 15 years ago

That rule is for 'ordinary' people/users. Certain 'special' people are exempted from this, and are allowed fictitious names.

kragen3• 15 years ago

I use a pseudonym on Google+. It's explicitly allowed (although mine breaks the rules), even though they keep locking and deleting people's accounts for using them.

gojomo2• 15 years ago

Why, next you'll tell me Zynga execs don't play Farmville, and TV execs don't watch reality shows!

degusta7• 15 years ago

(I'm the author) Actually, I would tend to think that TV execs do watch their reality TV programs & even suspect Zynga execs have at least played a bit of Farmville, and certainly should if it's their company's biggest initiative of the year. But I do think the eat-your-own-dogfood applies more in some businesses than others, as jonmc12 pointed out below. Though Google+ is one where it certainly could apply - not exactly steel beams or something.

gojomo2• 15 years ago

I'd bet Google management doesn't click on Google ads very often, either.

rbanffy• 15 years ago

If they did, Google should be banned from AdSense according to its own policy.

dasil003• 15 years ago

Yes there might be a good correlation between dogfooding in senior management and great products, but it's not worth shoving a square peg into a round hole to meet this superficial criteria.

The reason Facebook and Twitter executives use their respective services is because that is the core product from the very beginning. Google+ on the other hand is a tertiary product. Just because management realizes they need a foothold in social doesn't mean that they should forcibly try to transmute themselves into the target market. Instead they should have people in charge of the product that care enough to use it naturally, and I think that's what they're doing.

vaughan8• 15 years ago

I would say Google+ is a core product for Google now. The OP submits this article to back this claim up: http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2011/06/googles...

Eric Schmidt admits he "screwed up" by not seeing the importance of social and the threat of Facebook. If Eric Schmidt really lived the problem (http://vaughan.io/post/10476571077/live-the-problem) he would have been actively using Facebook and Twitter too and would have reacted faster.

joshu3• 15 years ago

One of the problems with being somewhat famous and being on these things is that you get barraged with stuff from random people.

I was mentioned in an early Googler's post and I still get barraged with stuff.

vaughan8• 15 years ago

This is even more of a reason that Google execs should use Google+ publicly. They would then understand this problem exists for this type of user and push for solutions. Perhaps some sort of priority inbox feature for Google+?

Zuckerberg would have come across this problem and would have prioritized it. Features like the Social Inbox and the constant revisions of the feed might be examples of this.

joshu3• 15 years ago

Good point. That said, the main folks (Vic, Bradley) in charge do in fact use it.

badclient• 15 years ago

So will people believe me now that google+ is dead?

spullara• 15 years ago

This is perfectly normal. Carol Bartz (and most of the executive team) didn't use Yahoo's products either...

vaughan8• 15 years ago

Strange...Alan Eustace has made 3 public posts on October 5, 2011. Perhaps he's a HN reader.

degusta7• 15 years ago

Indeed. And Susan Wojcicki has also come to life (after only making one public post ever back in August). :)

philipmorg• 15 years ago

I suppose if Google+ was a conventional product--and one could get accurate information about whether or not Google's execs actually used it--this article might have a point.

But Google+ isn't a product. It's more like an API that uses a graphic user interface to transfer personal data from users to Google. Google then uses that data to provide an actual product to its actual customers: advertisers.

http://investor.google.com/corporate/faq.html

vaughan8• 15 years ago

Google+ has made a point to enforce a real names policy - no pseudonyms allowed. Surely high level executives have things they would like to say publicly or comment on posts which they see. Reading articles is one thing, but taking the time to form a cohesive argument or opinion required to make comment on public articles can greatly enhance comprehension of a topic. Responding to criticism is also a part of this.

Are we to believe that people rise the ranks to a position of power where they suddenly need not debate issues in the public sphere and take the criticism that goes along with it?

Surely not. So wouldn't it then make sense to at least allow pseudonyms?

crag• 15 years ago

There aren't exactly doing much for their brand are they? It's not about what they do privately.. I mean, hire some PR lackey to post "public" recipes or list your favoriate bands - whatever.

It's perceptions that matter.

alexwolfe• 15 years ago

Not to worry, I got plenty of free invites. I'll send them a few.

speleding• 15 years ago

Perhaps Google uses Google Apps internally, Google+ is not yet available on Apps

Dolph• 15 years ago

Eric Schmidt was actually registered at Google+, but removed his account within the first week when it was "launched" back in jun/july

Flenser• 15 years ago

In the same way google has their own internal version of gmail with features that aren't publicly they will have in internal version of G+. I expect they all use that internal G+ even if they don't use the public one.

RyanKearney• 15 years ago

Kind of hard to use Google+ when Google Apps doesn't even support it!

/sarcasm

snorkel• 15 years ago

The author is right. Those senior managers need to ask themselves why they used a competing service instead of their own.

ethank• 15 years ago

Probably for the same reason I stopped: it's not fun.

Given I have a finite amount of time to socialize my identity online, the value proposition of a service has to extend into emotion rather than pure pragmatism.

Fun and joy: maximize this for me and my loyalty follows. If you want me to switch, you had best maximize these more than the existing player.

In Googles case, the service just isn't fun. I always feel like I am missing things, it's hard to track comments you have read and the circle interface is klunky. Facebook has the same type of issues as an information service, but makes up for it in being a fun service for identity curation. Twitter is the best for a river-of-discourse type use case.

epc• 15 years ago

Neither Facebook nor Twitter are public companies. Is it possible that Google execs are in a quiet period due to the Motorola Mobility deal?

gjenkin• 15 years ago

The article failed to mention SVP of Commerce and Local: Jeff Huber. He's posted about 40 times. Seems pretty active.

Google’s Management Doesn’t Use Google+

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