Google+ creator: Don't call it a social network

http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/29/tech/social-media/google-plus-not-social-network/index.html

by iProject • 14 years ago

34 38 14 years ago

jpkeisala• 14 years ago

Social Network is Internet

da022• 14 years ago

I agree. I also remember when regular people just called it AOL or "that big, blue E on the desktop". All they care about is that they can talk to their friends and ask their idiot co-workers about the latest meeting.

da022• 14 years ago

I forgot to add some background info. I'm sorry for any confusion: As far back as the 1800s, people began to imagine a global network that would unite people, spread ideas, change the world, etc. The Internet grew out of that similar vein. So it was social right from the start. Think Engelbart's Mother of All Demos. Unfortunately, few people are using it for that. It's just an over-glorified family newsletter to most people.

fear91• 14 years ago

After unsuccessfully shaping it as a Facebook-killer? Google's PR department won't give up :)

deelowe2• 14 years ago

Actually, Vic's message has been fairly consistent on this. He's always held that the goal of G+ is to integrate social features across the entire product line, not create another social network.

ryanhuff• 14 years ago

Whether its a top-down or bottom-up approach, the end goal is the same, right? Corral everybody into a Google universe, where Google (and its customers) can more effectively target you with tailored information (ads, etc) by tracking your interactions with friends, web sites, etc. Isn't that also what Facebook promises to its customers?

mkr-hn2• 14 years ago

They never positioned it as a Facebook-killer. That's an artifact of the tech press. Like deelowe said, Google has been very consistent about this.

taligent2• 14 years ago

Cool. So at some point they will be integrating Facebook then.

You know because they aren't competitors or anything silly like that.

objclxt• 14 years ago

Really? Facebook represents a problem for Google: when your primary revenue source is display ads you want people to be looking at your adverts. Google+ is their solution to this problem - let people carry out the sort of things they use Facebook for, but on the Google.com domain (and with Google provided ads).

I think it's pretty clear one of the primary drivers behind Google+ is to reduce the amount of time users spend on Facebook and transfer it back to Google. The new 'Events' features are a good example of this.

The only reason Google aren't going around saying they're going to 'kill Facebook' is that it's only going to result in inevitable embarrassment. What Google PR says and how they develop their product strategies internally are very different things.

jan_g• 14 years ago

Yes, I find it similar to Wolfram Alpha. The creators constantly reiterated that it's not intended as a competitor to Google, while the press hailed alpha as a Google search killer.

DeusExMachina• 14 years ago

"Google+ is just an upgrade to Google," says Gundotra. "People have a hard time understanding that."

Well, if they do, your product sucks. The onus of understanding what your product actually is, is not on the user. You have to make a product so great and easy to understand so that there is no misunderstanding. If you don't manage to do that, you fail. Don't expect people to read your minds and know what actually the product is supposed to be instead of what they understand of it.

If Google+ looks like a copy of Facebook to people, then it's just a copy of Facebook.

wissler7• 14 years ago

You may be too young to remember, but as computers were first becoming popular, may people had a hard time understanding them. And no, computers didn't "suck".

gareim• 14 years ago

Yes they did. The first computers "sucked". They "sucked" in the sense that most people couldn't understand them. Computers got popular and people started understanding them as computers improved in usability.

If Google+ becomes popular one day after numerous improvements, it's ridiculous to say that the first iteration of Google+ was successful just because future ones were.

protomyth3• 14 years ago

The Altair 8800 for anybody but the die-hard hobbyist did "suck". It took other companies and other machines to show users why a computer was useful. Its not the user's fault for the misunderstanding.

vibrunazo• 14 years ago

Normally I would agree with what you're saying. But it's important to notice that Google has always been consistent about this. This confusion originated from sensationalist bloggers looking for a fight with lots of blood that would generate clicks. Google themselves made it loudly clear from day one that they were just adding a social layer to existing products.

And I don't think the average users of this social layer (people who use the new social tools in youtube or gmail, but not the g+ stream), are even confused. It's the loud bloggers and us who read them who are confused.

saraid2163• 14 years ago

> The onus of understanding what your product actually is, is not on the user.

I find this a little odd. In the specific case of Google+, I'm not seeing much need for people understanding what it actually is. I mean, sure, that lack of understanding will curtail a large group of users from using it... except that the deep integration with the rest of Google's products minimize any need for explicit usage.

It really depends on what Google itself wants with the product. Yes, the whole "active users" thing is a serious dodge if the goal is to compare it to Facebook or rate the level of engagement or what not... but that kind of thinking also changes how developers imagine the product and contributes to the way they prioritize features internally. In the long run, I suspect that's more useful than getting good press.

falling• 14 years ago

Well Vic, it is a social network and the integration of identity in all your previous services and it is your response to the Facebook threat, so of course people compare them.

Unfortunately yes, I think the message from Google has not been great it is not well understood.

hu_me• 14 years ago

with google+ events and instant upload before it now i m starting to understand what google meant when they said google+ is not a network its a social layer across google properties.

they are just connecting all the services and features into a single coherent thing

taligent2• 14 years ago

Just like Facebook isn't a social network. It is a social layer across Facebook properties.

saraid2163• 14 years ago

Except that all the non-social properties of Facebook are non-existent.

jdp23• 14 years ago

Still, Gundotra won't rule out the possibility of sponsored stories down the road.

We don't serve ads [on Google+], but that doesn't mean we won't have sponsored stories," he says. "There may be more relevant forms of advertising that we do believe work."

Great. Something to look forward to.

antninja• 14 years ago

The stream, the circles, the IM and the notifications make it a social network modeled after Facebook.

Hangouts are a different service as is YouTube.

esrauch• 14 years ago

I don't think that is really a meaningful comparison. Consider that Gmail's inbox is a effectively a stream of posts. It has contact management, IM, and several different notifications (on the phone, count next to inbox and in title, you can enable popup notifications on your desktop).

No one says that Gmail is modeled after facebook.

saraid2163• 14 years ago

You realize that Google Talk has been around since 2005, right?

sbuk• 14 years ago

"If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands."

savramescu• 14 years ago

I see Google+ as the foundation of Google Glass. Just think about it: Google Glass + Google Now + Google+ makes sense. People complain that there isn't much to do now, but I bet that it'll be a lot different come Glass.

Google+ creator: Don't call it a social network

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