HN user
On the other side of the coin, I see it as a cynical marketing move specifically designed to appeal to nostalgia create the very impression you had, that they "maintain a sense of fun and a corporate attitude that allows fun hacks to make it to the world." Google is often successful at appealing to geek humor and ideals in order to gain fans, even as they do things that violate those ideals.
People who think they're making some kind of statement by refusing to state their gender.
Buzz also gained millions of users in a short period of time.
Buzz also had millions of users.
Sorry, but nobody cares what the people in your room think.
You're comparing becoming a citizen in a foreign country to signing up with a social network? There are a hell of a lot more barriers to becoming a foreign citizen, such as physical location, than signing up for a social network and giving it all your personal data.
Google is a much bigger data-collecting, privacy-breaching behemoth than Facebook, so signing up with them should be an action that warrants thought.
The transition is made in the first sentence of the third paragraph: "The problem with this rationale, however rosy it may seem, is that you’re simply moving from one internet juggernaut to another." He first explained the pros of Google+ and then moved onto the cons.
Yes, but since sites like Hacker News have been dutifully advertising Google+ non-stop since it came out, Google can release non-news and have it covered like it's news.
Hacker News has become an unpaid arm of Google's marketing department. Mainstream users don't care about Google+, if they've even heard of it.
Believe it or not, it is possible for Facebook to be lean and agile yet produce a less than compelling response to circles. Google's internal process has also been criticized before by other former employees, such as the infamous color survey. Your eagerness to dismiss an account from someone on the inside is a little weird and doesn't refute the points he made.
I think Google+ will be a social network for techie hipsters and other early adopters seeking a Facebook alternative, but the novelty will wear off, and the mainstream will barely notice. Just my initial impression. There isn't a compelling enough reason for Facebook's 750 million users to switch.
As this article (http://tinyurl.com/64fhwdq) pointed out:
[T]wo days after Buzz went live, Google posted a blog entry bragging that "tens of millions" of people had checked it out, and created more than 9 million posts and comments.
At some point, interest died.
So far Google+ is filled with Googlers, reporters, and tech enthusiasts. They're posting a lot, enjoying the Hangouts feature, and driving traffic to tech news sites.
But it's still way too early to know whether Google+ will get any traction with mainstream users -- the 750 million people who are on Facebook today.
Google Buzz also had "tens of millions" of people: http://tinyurl.com/64fhwdq
What you overheard in the park today is hardly evidence of some kind of trend. Google+ isn't even open to signups yet and is on an invite-only basis, used mostly by celebrity bloggers and other tech personalities who think every new social networking site is the greatest thing ever. Even the name "Google+" and the use of "+1" is too techie and mathematical for a lot of people.
Google+'s goal is to index user data for advertisers, the same as the goal of every other Google product, from the search engine to Gmail.
Twitter? Hell, look at Hacker News' constant stream of Google+ submissions. It's just like when Wave came out. You heard about it constantly.
Not necessarily. iOS already surpasses Android in mobile OS market share, and Android isn't making any inroads into tablets and other mobile computing devices, which will probably be the bigger market than smartphones.
Granted, it's a figure from Apple, but at WWDC, they touted iOS as having 44% mobile OS market compared to Android's 28%.
Isn't it odd how the media always compares an entire operating system platform to one phone? When iPads and iPod touches are counted, iOS far surpasses Android. It's weird for them not to count mobile operating systems as a whole and instead focus on a single type of device they run on.
"A lot more social" is pretty vague.
What a terrible headline. It's indicative of the poor state of science reporting.
Only trendy bloggers even know or care about Google+ right now.
You and I know that, but the purpose of the poll isn't to be accurate--it's to advertise Google+ on social news sites like HN.
Whew! For a second, I thought we'd have a day without another endless series of Google+ advertisements--er, links.
Definitely needed yet another Google+ link on the front page.
Half the HN front page, as of this writing, is Google links.
Hey, Zed, can you tell us all how much we're losers because we don't get as many blog post hits as you? The irony was a big hit last time.
I’m saddened by the number of grown men I meet who worship guys like the persona found in this rant. Too frequently men (especially younger men) will by default listen to whoever “talks tough” rather than the people who make the most reasoned arguments. They will listen to blow hards and pundits all day and blindly follow their “leadership” on fad after fad, never really questioning whether these people are worth listening to in the first place.
-- Zed Shaw, backpedaling when his angry schtick gets called out by the community
I don't get it. Isn't anyone else as creeped-out by the idea of a Google social network as I am?
For the most part, only social networking techies are praising this thing. The last thing I want to do is give Google even more of my information, my friend's information, and so on.
Just not interested in Google+. It was enough of a struggle to coax me onto Twitter and Facebook. I don't hear non-techies talking about Google+--it's all dedicated bloggers and people in the "Twittersphere" (ugh).
Not to mention that I heard all sorts of revolutionary praise for Wave when it was released.