Slashdot Mirror
Google+ Already At 10 Million Users
An anonymous reader writes "I project that Google will easily pass 10 million users tomorrow and could reach 20 million user by this coming weekend if they keep the Invite Button available. As one G+ user put it, it is easy to underestimate the power of exponential growth." I bet if people post in the discussion that they need invites, we can scratch each other's backs here. I've been using Google+ for a few days now (Yes I will put you in a circle ;) and have a lot to love, but unless I can gate twitter and Facebook, the best interface in the world won't help me until I can convince my kids' grandparents to move.
But I value my privacy.
Don't use your slashdot journal? Philistine!
Also, not getting your kid's grandparents to use it at this time can be considered a feature. Let the early adopters work out the kinks first, otherwise when they try to move from failbook they'll just move right back.
It's like going from hotmail to gmail back when it launched.
It's sleek, doesn't get in the way, lets you do things easily. You manage your "friends" easily.
Hell, it's one service I wouldn't have any issue adding my boss and co-workers to, unlike facebook.
As a bonus, I don't get people posting asinine idiocies on my wall. Sure they can get me to eyeball their crap by mentionning me in their posts, but at least it won't bother everyone else who reads the things I write.
A negative side, not for me but for others, would be the lack of games, but we'll see...
One shall speak only if what one has to say is more beautiful than silence
Easy way to get grandparents to switch is to only post pictures of the grandchildren on Google+. They will switch over.
Also, WTH does "gate twitter and Facebook" mean?
honestly
I hate how everything is locked down...
I wish there was a nice way that people could syndicate between things i.e. an open network with a privacy model
I simply have not seen a nice way to do this any suggestions ?
(no Diaspora does not even look useful)
something with OpenID would actually be useful !
regards
John Jones
I believe they already got their invites...
https://plus.google.com/104560124403688998123/posts
https://plus.google.com/112063946124358686266/posts
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
It seems that the invite-only PicasaWeb albums (where only specific google accounts have access) would no longer be invite-only. That alone is reason enough to not join G+. When signing up for G+, they gave the following notice:
Linking Google+ with Picasa Web Albums
When you join Google+:
* [...]
* Your albums' visibility settings aren’t changed, but people they’re shared with can now share them with others.
* [...]
If they could fix this issue, I would sign up. Otherwise, forget it.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
"the best interface in the world "
Uggg, I hope you don't do UI design in your job. Google+'s UI is horrid.
It took me three tries before I figured out how to post my profile picture. One would naturally go to Profile... Photos... but that's actually not the way you do it. Even after figuring it out, it still tells me I have no photos of myself. I now have the same photo three times in three different "books" and still can't figure out how three were created.
I still have no idea how to post on someone else's wall.
And when I post on my own, I have to choose circles to share it with. Fine. But once it's posted, it doesn't tell me which ones. So if I think I did something wrong and change the sharing, a second post appears.
That's the first three of dozens of problems.
It's terrible.
I did the strict "don't mix business with pleasure" on Facebook too. I'd lightened up and added some, but then I got into arguments on Facebook with managers over topics like the mosque project near the Twin Towers (they were actually pretty racist, which I had previously been unaware of), and had to remove them.
With Google+, I feel the same way. I can finally have a public profile again! My Facebook had eventually been completely private, locked down, and I really didn't even enjoy HAVING to respond if someone messaged me.
I'm addicted now. I feel with Google+ like I did when I first joined Twitter. I ran to Twitter to just be myself, and damn the consequences. The only problem there, of course, was eventually locking down that account too.
With both services, it was never really easy to say I want THIS public, I want THIS private, and I want THIS to be a mix. Google+ is both granular and simple. I have no plans to lock anything down again. Circles is what I've been waiting for this whole time.
I don't give a damn if Google+ is bigger than Facebook or not. It's my new home, and if people want to stay at Facebook, so be it. I've got another circle for people who ignore my invites who I occasionally will say hi to and have Google email them my update.
I8-D
I wish there was a nice way that people could syndicate between things i.e. an open network with a privacy model
It's called a website with RSS and security. You could do it with Drupal right now, or probably with Wordpress or what have you. There's an aggregator module that pulls in content from other sites; there's various permissions control systems.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You might want to check out G+ hangout. Think "multi-user video chat done right". You create a hangout and invite either individuals or a circle (you'll get the whole "circles thing" after just a few moments) and others come and go as they please.
That alone will kill facebook for grandma and grandpa. No typing, no chat, just say hi to the kids and see them say hi to you, talk with their cousins, etc.
And it will be a killer for kids as well. Video Party Line!
Even business will latch onto it for teleconferences.
G+ will pass facebook within 2 years, and possibly within 1.
Congratulations. You just subscribed to shitloads of spam ;-)
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Before Google Plus is ready for prime time, Google has a few things they really need to fix with the service
- Make +1 make sense. Currently pages you or others "+1" do not even appear in the stream. They're on a totally different page. This makes the +1 button useless.
- Either get rid of Buzz, or integrate it. it's currently nonsensical that Google is running both, yet Buzz updates don't go into your G+ stream.
- Integration with Google Reader. It sure would be nice if things from my Google Reader showed up in my G+ stream, because then you wouldn't have to leave, and it would facilitate simple sharing. This was a big oversight.
- "Sparks" (AKA Google News) needs to be in your stream. The current implementation is not useful.
- Gate for twitter. Google already has this with Buzz, why on earth did they release G+ without it, I have no clue. It makes me use G+ less because I now have to update two things.
Basically - Google needs to get as much into that stream as possible, and allow the user to filter by subsections if they want - NOT force the data into it's own little islands.
I have been saying for years that facebook is just a fad, just like myspace was, and ICQ, and geocities, and who knows how many others, all of whom were seen as the place to be in their heyday. And yet facebook seemed to entrench itself well enough in the public mindset that I was starting to second guess my judgment.
Now google+ seems to be generating quite a bit of buzz of it's own, and amazingly enough, not just among the tech crowd. My girlfriend (a nurse) was commenting yesterday that all her co-workers were talking about it at work the other night, so maybe Google can really pull this off?
The part that makes this whole launch seems strange though is that what makes a social networking site work properly is the ability to find everyone you know on it, the idea of limiting who can apply seems rather counterproductive. And yet somehow it's working for Google.
Either way, I'm eager to get in and see how it works. I've been periodically checking to see when they open the floodgates, and I suppose I really wouldn't mind an invite either, after all, I do use google for pretty much everything else, (I have my radio callsign (VE6RAH) as my existing account on gmail if anyone is so inclined)
The big question though is one that nobody can answer yet with any certainty... will google+ manage to draw enough people away from facebook... will people who already use facebook for everything see a reason to switch... I guess only time will tell.
miles.mawyer (at) gmail.com