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Google+ Loses 60% of Active Users
First time accepted submitter tech4 writes "Despite users' curiosity around Google+, it seems like most Google+ users just wanted to see the platform before returning to Facebook. 'Google has lost over 60 per cent of its active users on its social network Google+, according to a report by Chitika Insights, raising questions about how well it is doing against its rival, Facebook. Despite the clear interest in an alternative to Facebook, it does not appear that the people joining are staying around and actively using the web site. Google's problem is not getting users in the first place, it seems, but rather keeping them after they have arrived. For now it appears that a lot of users are merely curious about Google+, but return to the tried and tested format of Facebook when the lustre fades. The problem is that Facebook is not going to rest on its laurels while Google attempts to get the advantage. Already it has added features inspired by Google+, particularly in terms of improving the transparency of its privacy options.'"
The remaining 40% are people who talk to themselves.
Well whenever there is something new people try it out and realize it isn't like what they are use to and go back to the old way. Confident that they are not a close minded individual.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It's that simple. The value of a social network lies in having all your friends on it too, and that's true for Facebook but it isn't true for G+. Also, Facebook has the games people want to play, while G+ doesn't, so there just isn't much to attract anybody to G+ other than curiosity.
The biggest problem is that those of us who want to move to Google+ can't convince enough of our less techy friends to move over. People go where people are. It isn't the best tech that wins but the largest market share. Had Google launched Plus before "everyone and their grandmother" were on Facebook, they would have had a shot, but it's sort of too late.
Google+ is "primarily an identity service."
--Eric Schmidt
I have no need for an identity service in my life. That's why I left.
Gee, why wouldn't draconian policies, a confusingly half-baked interface and long load times be the path to a successful website?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
How many active users does Facebook have? 12%? They have 800'000'000 accounts, congratulations... While actual user count is below 200'000'000.
Social networks tend to accumulate momentum, and fairly slowly. Facebook has a ton of it right now, and Google+ has very little. It's not just in number of users, but in the habits of those users. People are used to Facebook. It'll probably take a year or so for Google+ to start taking off. And you don't really "lose" users, once signed up people always have the option of returning, especially with most of those people already having Gmail accounts.
Also, many people were probably scared off by all the FUD surrounding the pseudonym issue. Once people calm down over that, usage will most likely rise. In any case, we won't know if G+ will succeed or not for at least a year, I would say. Anyone who thought Facebook would be abandoned overnight really needs to learn how the Internet works. It is fickle, yes, but it also has huge inertia, because of the number of people involved.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
As part of their 'loyalty' program. Little do they know, I now have an account at each place.
Sausagefest.
Gmail was very successful with it's invitation system: it was elitist, and everyone ached to get in. But putting an invitation system into G+ was devastating. If the objective of a Social Network is to get in touch with everyone at any time, it's a very idiot move to restrict the creation of new accounts for no reason. They basically released a product that was useless, because they made sure there would be nobody to communicate with.
This could be understandable if it was their first shot at social networking; but Wave had the same problem and they did not learn from it.
In soviet russia the government regulates the companies.
Still no Google+ for Apps users either... they should have just kept their mouths shut and waited until that was fixed because people who migrated to Google Apps are commonly influential people when it comes to this sort of thing. Business, schools and "tech-geek cousins" are out in the cold so far, and with that group of people not getting behind this effort I don't see Google+ working out... it's just like Wave basically.
I've been eager to try it out, but have been shut out since the start - and now my first hyped-up reaction to it all has just faded.
As it has for so many others...
The fact remains that world + dog is still using Facebook. God knows why, but they seem to be willing to accept whatever Zuckerberg throws at them.
I honestly like G+, especially the mobile app, but practicality says that I also stay on Facebook.
Three Squirrels
They really need at least to implement groups and subscribable tags to posts if they want to compete.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
But in the end, I quit just like I did with Facebook a year ago. Social Networking is fucking boring when the people being the most social are retards.
Many of the early adopters out there are Google Apps users, and yet we still can't use our Google Apps accounts with Google+. I've heard many good things about Google+ but am still waiting for Google to allow me to use it.
And I'm not interested in managing yet another account just to try out Google+.
Is this another "study" that doesn't include any clicks to the service from the black Google bar, or from within the service itself, or from mobile devices, or based on counting only public posts? Meh. Next.
Reply to That ||
..But maybe I'm mistaken in thinking it actually allows me to control some amount of how the information I send to them gets used. Facebook has bothered me enough with their, "hey, guys! You can now turn off your own privacy protections in this shiny new way! It's so awesome, we will do it for you by default! All you have to do, if you don't like this, is reactivate your privacy protections after we've turned them off for you. It's that easy!" ..I could never trust them with the sorts of things I would only trust to closer friends.
Google+..... and i still understand shit. i am still using facebook but its privacy, setting options are nowhere near and understandable as google. and im a programmer that programs interfaces myself. go figure what the mom in idaho can do with those privacy options..
Read radical news here
I think the biggest problem is Google expecting they can release a social network that has 60% of the features of facebook and expect people to stay. I think it is very promising, but my non tech friends continue to stick with facebook.
I just think its going to be super hard for google to win this battle without a blazing fast innovation. However they seem to have done this with Chrome. So maybe they can do this with Google+ ITs going to take focus and vision on their part to do this. Not a see what sticks approach.
Why does it have to be an "either or" situation here? Wouldn't there be a point in the two providing interoperability, so people can use whatever they choose?
I mean, in the early days of telephony there were separate networks that didn't interoperate, and you had to have two or more phones on your wall to reach everyone who had a phone. Then they wisened up and figured out that they lost more on competing the hard way than they did on cooperating and competing at the same time.
Anyhow, Google+ wasn't even an option for me. I have gotten rid of my cell phone, so no TXT messages, and I'm too deaf to use a regular phone. So I can't even sign up. Fsck them.
Facebook, I tried twice, for a few weeks each time. Not my cup of tea. Friends of friends are people I don't give a fsck about; the perfect length for a chain in a network is one, not two.
The main complaints I see from people about Google+ has nothing to do with the site itself. It is that there aren't enough of their contacts on it.
Facebook is long past the early adopter stage. It has managed to capture the market of the vast majority, who are not like the early adopters, aren't looking for the next best thing, and are resistant to change. They are an anchor that keep many people on Facebook who would prefer to go to Google+ and take everyone with them.
They have to either appeal to the masses, or they have to convince the early adopters that there is value in using both for long enough that the more resistant users begin to slowly trickle in.
My friends and I joined G+ rather quickly upon its inception. We started having fun on it. It was great.
Then some of our accounts started getting suspended because of violations of a questionable "names policy". The policy said to use the name that people know you by, and those are the names we all used. Apparently that wasn't good enough for Google, though; they suspended accounts anyway, even some with "real looking" Western style names. Once enough people got suspended, the remaining batch of folks that didn't got pissed off that their friends were kicked off the service, and they left voluntarily.
Their name policy was unclear, and people would even get their names approved only to get suspended again later on by a different overzealous admin. It was chaos.
I think the lesson to be learned here is don't alienate your users, ESPECIALLY early adopters. We can make or break a social network.
Facebook may require real names, but at least they were absolutely clear about this from the start. They were not wishy-washy, and didn't mass-suspend new accounts like G+ did.
I was annoyed when they took away the +Hoyt option from my gmail.com interface and moved it to google.com.
And how to use some of the features is not obvious, at least to me.
A friend has commented that it appears to him that G+ is populated by Linux users and photography enthusiasts. Perhaps G+ is better targeted to specialty communities than grandmothers and the unwashed masses.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Don't use either Facebook or Google+, and wait just a wee bit longer for Diaspora to exit beta.
The biggest problem Google+ has right now is how they have been dragging the ball on commercial accounts, meanwhile enforcing the real-name policy. It is an incredibly braindead move because you are effectively locking all companies out of participating on Google+, and thus they are unable to bring any users over with them.
A follow a lot of brands on twitter and simply can not do the same on G+. If everyone I followed on Twitter existed on G+ I probably would not use Twitter anymore, but sadly Google is ACTIVELY PREVENTING that from being the case due to this braindead policy enforcement.
I'd stick to Google+ instead of Facebook if I could read and respond to Facebook from Google+.
As it stands, nobody is active on Google+, so you go to Facebook to read everything and if you want to be active on Google+ you are essentially doing twice the work, three times the work if you are active on Twitter, which seems to have some kind of cross-posting feature for Facebook.
...they should have called Google Wave.
Maybe I'm a luddite, but I simply couldn't figure out what problems Google+ solves. The main area is labeled "Stream" and invites me to "Share what's new...", and that's about it. I gather it's similar to the mailing lists of old where people can sign up and receive common messages, but what's the subject? Myself? What I had for lunch? Maybe it's aimed at Facebook people who know what these things are for. But for me, a few use cases would go a long way.
In the meantime, I'll go on ignoring it.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
And as someone with an Apps account I *still* can't use the fucking thing. Frankly by the time Google bother to provide support for it, the service will be dead.
How sinister can they et before they're as bad as people try and make them out to be?
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/10/03/1825234/facebook-files-for-a-patent-to-track-its-users-on-other-sites
What methodology is this company using to measure activity on Google+? If it's public posts, they may have a serious systemic problem: people who use G+ specifically because it's so easy to not post publicly. My guess is the majority of G+ users are posting only to their circles, in which case there'd be a plethora of stuff that Chitika Insights simply won't see.
I've suspected this for a while and I'm now comfortable saying that tech4 is another Microsoft shill doing mostly negative marketing, similar to ge7, but he learned to post a better balance of personal stuff to throw off suspicion.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
...or Windows vs. OS/2 or Betamax vs. VHS. To roll up a saturated market it's not enough to be /slightly/ better. You need something revolutionary.
Computer simulation made easy -- LibGeoDecomp
Stay away from Facebook (frankly stay away from all social webs), if you can't do that at least give careful consideration to whom you friend and what you post or link to.
I look at people's post and I think "wow that's going to be harder to live down than a bad tattoo"
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Lack of obvious working text chat integration kills it for me, that has become the primary reason I use fb since MSN Messenger became increasingly unreliable in alternate clients like Pidgin (I've refused to use the abomination that is the official client for that IM network since they successfully blocked the tool that let me take all the junk off the interface). Yes there is a chat box there but no display of who is online right now and when a couple of us tried while we were definitely online it didn't seem to want to connect us that way. We don't care for web-cam and voice chat, face-to-face is what pubs are for, just working text chat. Yes there are plenty of other options, but as far as my non-techie contacts (i.e. most of my family, who are the main reason I'm willing to touch fb with a bargepole) fb is the "other option" of choice no matter how much they moan each time something changes.
I post moblog pics to pixelpipe which reposts them to several other sites.I also use it to post status updates to several sites. They have no Google+ integration. They claim Google hasn't published the API to allow that yet. In short, that's a deal killer.
Business users who use Google as a platform cannot use Google+. I mean if you have a gmail for business account, you cannot use Google+. It isn't surprising that it hasn't kicked off.
Remember too, ladies and gents, that there IS NO WAY to communicate with your friends online unless you use one of these privacy violating services like FB or G+. Seriously, there is no other way to do it - the internet just doesn't provide any forms of communication that are under your control, so without those companies, you cannot interact with your friends online.
I'd do it... Bottom line, I am highly resistant to allowing companies to use me for market research and analysis. I don't want to be fed ads, even if they're well targeted. After 15 years of being on the internet, I'm shocked at how sloppy I've been with my personal information, and it sickens me how unregulated information gathering is in the US.
I have already wiped personal info off of Facebook, and the only way I'd even consider joining Google+ is with a pseudonym.
Because it is bloody boring. Nobody joins, everybody is too ingrained into facebook, while i prefer google+ if none of my friends show any interest why should I? - an avid google user.
-Noc
> The problem is that Facebook is not going to rest on its laurels while Google attempts to get the advantage.
This is not a problem. This is why competition exists.
At least for me anyways. I have no interest in going on about my life on the internet in a way that's easily traceable to my real life identity. So i signed my "real" name account up for G+ when it became available and ended up using it for nothing other than playing games.
When they made G+ open to everyone i signed up the gmail account i use in association with my LJ and am currently using it to cross-post stuff from there so my friends who use G+ but don't read LJ anymore can stay in touch more easily. When and if Google's automated hunter bots crack down on me for having a "fake" name then i'll try to argue that the long history of my LJ and my use of the name on other sites make it a "real" identity. I've heard that's worked for a few people, but definitely not for everyone who tries it. If Google refuses to agree then i'll just close down G+ part of that profile and go back to posting stuff only on LJ and using G+ only for games.
Sure there are only a couple people who give a damn about what i've been doing, but i can't help but wonder if there's a cumulative effect. Google may have to decide at some point between having a niche product that acts as an "identity service" and having a more mainstream product where people can be who they want to be. Facebook already seems to have a lock on being the place to go when you want to find someone using their real name so Google may need to differentiate themselves.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Umm... there was nothing there so I left. Everyone I know is on facebook but I don't think that's the problem. I think the problem is google+ is nothing special. I have a gmail account. I drooled over one before I got my first... why? because it was free and the amount of room was gigantic, unheard of. If google+ wants to compete with facebook they need a draw like that, something so unheard of in social networking that people drool over having an account. I stick with gmail now because I don't think google is going anywhere and the service works well for me so far. That's why I'd stick with google+ but not until they give me a reason that it's better than facebook.
Google+ had its numbers go up by 1200% upon opening to the public. Of those new users, 40% stuck around, for a net increase of 480%. Slashdot's headline? "Google+ user base down 60%! It must be dying!" I've seen powerdrills with less spin.
I have used a shortened version of my real name in the past, including on Facebook, but generally use pseudonyms for random sites. I simply refuse to be forced to use my full name, especially when it comes to personally identifiable information.
The reasoning is very simple. If I have a FB or G+ account under a pseudonym, a potential employer or a business partner will never find the potentially questionable material associated with my profile. However my friends will know it really is me, and the social networking continues unhindered.
It's not even a matter of being careful what you upload. Somebody, somewhere will have a picture or a video of you behaving like a jackass, they will post it, tag you in it, and the rest is history.
Another huge issue I had with the real name requirement is the banning of pseudonym accounts which leads to losing ALL access to google services associated with them. Getting banned from G+ is fine with me, but losing the gmail account will cause real issues.
Is the Facebook one of those social people thingies? Nope, not using it.
I like having fewer people on +; right now its the geeks and my friends. As every fucking associate I have in the universe.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Here in /. we know that there are lots of dumb people (trolls, agitators, provocateurs, xenophobes, misogynists, racists, etc) hiding behind pseudonyms or anonimity (which /. manages elegantly by means of the moderation system).
The compensation, and why this website survives against all the odds, is that people with real insight in all manner of topics can come here, talk to their heart's content safe in the relative security of a nickname that will protect them from the nastiest aspects of the net, and the rest of us will be able to participate and reply to them.
But Google (I would say Schmidt, he is the guy that does not get the Internet after all) decided that they can bully users into open themselves to abuse and intrusion only to please the formerly "do no evil" juggernaut.
Well, guess what, that many early adopters, most of whom would not be ever caught close to their real names on the net for obvious reasons (most of them non malicious) decided that Google could keep their intrusive toy (ahem) all to themselves.
So in one quick stroke, Google scared away some of the most networked people in the planet and annoyed a good deal of them, who have been begging for a privacy respecting option to Facebook.
I am over googled, and now am starting a thorough de-googlefication program: they warned me my G+ account would be suspended, I decided to close it instead.
It is very easy to verify many people are annoyed by this, it is one of those blunders of Microsoftian proportions, the kind that earns you lots of bad will and people that vow to fight your influence at every step you take.
G+ created a problem Google didn't have: Google haters. I hope they enjoy it.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I tried to put a login for google+ onto my smartphone, but it seems you can't do that without checking a box that says I allow them to use my location data. I don't necessarily want my location data shared, even with my friends. So, no google+ on my smartphone.
Implement a system where people can share photos and HD video securely and privately with their friends and family members that they know in real life will win (without letting a company sell users private info).
Oh wait, I've heard this so often I actually did it, I made a site exactly like that.
truefriender
This is what happened for many people:
Google+ had a restricted/limited test phase, but the public thought they might get to be part of it. The public is already on facebook.
-The public tried to get in, only to be told "you're not invited yet.. go dig around for a while in your friends to see if one of them can invite you"
-The public then either tried really hard to find someone to invite them, only to discover nobody else is on G+ because of the limited entry... or they never got into the 'club' and said "Meh, this isn't worth my effort, I'm already of facebook and all my friends are there anyway".
One should note that the shift from myspace to facebook was largely due to how myspace mismanaged its changes/upgrades and became a horrid, error-prone, piece of crap full of spam, fake accounts, and outright trashy implementation. And while facebook is beginning to make those same mistakes, it is not nearly as bad and the difference between facebook and G+ is minimal.
I'm on G+, and I would use it if I had friends on there. Nobody uses it because it was hard to get into, and so I don't use it but maybe once a month, only to find that hardly anything has been posted there. And the friends I do have on G+, just like me, are waiting for the big exodus from FB to occur, while keeping their primary foot still on FB territory.
FB will have to make a bigtime mistake to drive people away, or G+ will have to make a bigtime promotional drive to get people in (and not make the mistake of acting like its a secret club and blocking entry... if your servers can't handle everyone, then don't hope everyone comes or upgrade your server dedication)
How many "Google+" users are just Gmail users who were migrated?
Remember Yahoo 360? Me either.
Google does really well at search and search ads. Everything else they try, not so much.
This is what I and my friends have found (most techies). We'd love to move to Google+ but Events it the one feature we really need to use. Google really needs to integrate an events portion into Google+ and connect it with Google Calendar. They're so close already as circles can already integrate people without Google+ accounts by email. They could do the same thing so that an events feature wouldn't even need an account, just email.
You know I just don't want my real name associated with my porn searches.
... anyone with numbers about which percentage of Facebook accounts can be considered as active? My guess would be that it's the same as with G+. People try it out. Some stay. Others depart. Nothing new.
Is this a plug on slashdot to gather criticism about Google+ for the benefit of Google? Come on, there are better ways to get direct feedback than to shroud your research in the form of a controversial article pitting Facebook versus Google+ to solicit criticism.
oh good, so they have my search queries, my email, and my friends list... I wont be signing up for g+ thnx.
I check it out and it's like an app that isn't sure what it wants to be. I don't do Facebook, I don't do blogs, I do lurk around twitter. Google+ for me was too much like a blog. It's okay for following a big name person like Linus, but for the occasional post and what happening I'll stick to my tweets.
It's incredible to read how some people are already writing off g+ because of the real-name fiasco, or that because g+ pissed off the "early adopters", it's bound to fail. It's been around for a few months, they still don't have anything to set up events, and no real options for businesses...yet they *still* have over 40 million users.. The reason it might look "boring" to some, is because not everyone posts things publicly..90% of the things I post are to my circles, not to the public..So to look at my page, it may seem as there's no activity. As a poster name Brandon said, "Please read the report again; it skyrocketed by 1,200% before falling 60%, meaning it has still grown 480% since it was invitation-only. Your claim that it has fallen back to pre-open-enrollment is unsubstantiated. Thank you. Brandon" -hugh nicks-
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt says if you don't like the Google+ policies regarding privacy and real names then don't use Google+.
So I took his advice.
No one is using Google+ because no one is using Google+.
The headline should read:
Felicia Day and Will Wheaton's blog loses 60% of active readers.
http://www.recommendedusers.com/
They need a gimmick. Personally, if I was running things, I'd hand out a free android phone every hour as a door prize till things get rolling.
I eat spaghetti code out of a bit-bucket while sitting at a hash table, and I pay for the meal with cache!
...as I've said before: Google+ is the OS/2 of social networking.
... was that all the invites I sent out to friends had the text in the body of the invite message fixed by Google+ and immutable. Because of the nature of the wording in that invite, my friends who read the invite message thought my PC was infected by malware and sending out spam, and they promptly deleted the message.
Every social network has a bit of a culture around it. I've found that on Google+ folks tend to act like civilized human beings, while on Facebook *everyone* acts like a spoiled, whiny, drama-queen teenager. Everyone. Something about Facebook just brings out the worst in people. I didn't like high school the first time around, why would I want to be immersed in that kind of drama again?
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
It's called Metcalf's Law.
I am aware of one case where someone actively was using G+ for their business (he is a writer), had over 100 business followers, then had Google basically reset his account and have him start from scratch.
Who the heck wants to deal with that type of uncertainty from a product? Why would anyone want to risk resources on something as unstable as that? Businesses want stability, particularly from a marketing platform - something that G+ does not have, and will probably only achieve 3 months before they discontinue support for it..... like Google Wave
There will be a mass migration soon. That's what happened with Orkut (that only had succes here). The mass market (read the lower classes), with their new PCs bought thanks to the lower taxes, started to hang around Orkut, forcing the cool kids to move to Facebook. Now the mass is going to FB, so soon, the cool kids around here will jump in the + wagon.
I generally like Google, but G+.. there is really nothing to do there. NOTHING INTERESTING. The circles thing is nice, but there it stops.
I'm there and nobody says anything. And I don't feel like it either. What should I say? There is no context at all.
As an example of how it's done right from my experiences: GIVE PEOPLE SOMETHING INTERESTING TO DISCUSS ABOUT
The only social network that got me engaged for some time was one that dealt with Animes. They have anime descriptions, an episode tracker, profile, walls, messages and clubs. I could go to a series I liked and have an incentive to start engagement (like discussing an episode or writing a review).
And I started to befriend people all over the world who I shared interests with.
There is no way to do that on G+!
When I'm on G+, there is the wall. Totally naked. Then the video thing I don't use. Then integrated picasa, which is not that new and I actually don't want to publish pictures of me or my friends. The games thing that wants to share all my personal contacts and the color of my underpants isn't very attractive either.
It's just very, very boring! Like watching paint dry.
Now guess why people don't stick there?
My main objective for Google+ was establishing a simple way of online communication with my teenage daughters (who for obvious reasons refuse to add their parents as "friends") when they are abroad.
So I got a Google+ account, persuaded my kids to get a googlemail account, sent them an invitation - and learned that Google+ did not accept them as members because they were underage.
It may take a while until I give Google+ another try.
If Facebook lost 60% of its most active users, that would only improve it.
As it is now, everyone I know who writes things worth reading are on G+. Facebook is for showing baby pictures to grandparents.
"Already [Facebook] has added features inspired by Google+, particularly in terms of improving the transparency of its privacy options."
...that's not exactly what Facebook has been doing. This is how I picture it:
"Yes, we're perfectly aware that this lovely neighbourhood is in fact nuclear wasteland. Let no one say that we are a responsible company, however - we are giving all of you radiation suits, free of charge."
"That's, er, very kind of you. But what are you going to do to decontaminate the area?"
"What do you mean?"
"It's still incredibly risky to live there, isn't it? Sure, the radiation suits probably help you to survive there, but..."
"Well, hm, er, it's better if you don't ask difficult questions like that..."
Google foolishly tried to ramp up demand for G+ the same way they did with Gmail. The problem is gmail is standalone and communicates with any email user in the universe. Gmail had/has featureset that goes above and beyond any comparable solution out there, thus the demand was pushed by the limited initial availability (same technique Apple uses to push demand, just look at iPhone 4s and the limited initial production that allows them to flout "sold out in 48hrs" type of headlines) and continued to be pushed after public introduction because it was a superior product.
G+ has no such interoperability and the demand bubble burst before it even went public. Anyone who got an "invite" logged on, saw the interface, and there was nothing to do that you couldn't do as well or better on existing services.
I read a statistic that 80% of the users on Google+ are male. Compare that with most of the active users on Facebook being women. Until they start getting women switching over instead of just geeky guys like us, I doubt if it will ever reach critical mass.
I'm surprised no seems to mention this but they key word is not just friends switching over but:
WOMEN.
Like in bars, nightclubs and whatnot. Women are a main attraction of social sites. They see no reason to change for innovation to an "socially empty" site because it offers nothing new to them (And I'm not talking about geek women.
It lacks that extra something to force the switch of the female factor that would ultimately push everything else.
I might be oversimplifying a lot of factors but I think it's a vital core component.
Facebook is not a technical wonder. It's a social wonder because "everyone" uses it.
It is in the business in online advertising and on top of that it has a Facebook referral program...
http://chitika.com/about/history-milestones/2007
Hmm...
True G+ doesn't have much going for it now, but Google has a card up it's sleeve that no one else does - the search engine. I predict that they start to integrate G+ into search in creative ways that give people some benefits that they can't get on Facebook. They essentially have data on what every internet user is looking at any moment.. they will use this to make a more compelling social experience, and find ways to suck people into using G+.
I left because of the craziness with my friends getting kicked off for not using their real names.
Facebook has a similar policy, but it's not really in force.
G+ went a little overboard with it, and I was offended.
That, and even with the 60%... there really wasn't anyone there.
I think the whole experience burned me out on social networking more complicated than twitter.
I don't think I want to go back to Facebook, either.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
I'm not so sure your argument stands up. A lot of the Betamax vs VHS (and their ilk) wins were often down to better marketing - and often not because you had a better product. This is why marketing is such a shitty job - you're paid to lie to people.
kein wunder da sie kein "like" button oder irgendein share-tool haben ... alles was sie haben ist +1 ...
Add to the list: the fear that Google will find G+ not very useful in the near future (because nobody joined) and will pull it out just like it did with other projects that people liked. So why bother?
I have both accounts. Right now Google+ looks mainly like a Facebook clone. There's little reason to shift to it other than because it's not Facebook (which still isn't a good enough reason).
The only advantage Google+ could possibly have over Facebook is integration with the rest of the Google application infrastructure. But that's been slow to non-existent in coming. It would really be nice in Google Reader, for example, to push a button, fill out a brief message and have it posted to your stream. Same with making a notification for new blog entries in Google Sites, new items on Google Calendar, or pushing an external link to a Google Docs item. But you can't do any of that. Instead, you need to leave your current context and dick about with copying links, cutting/pasting text, etc.
Google+ could have been the main point of coordination for the rest of the Googleverse, but it blew it by hewing to the current internal product silos. If it's just a Facebook clone, who needs it?
That is all.
was to cross post.
There is a tool to do so, but it's clunky. Plus facebook is harvesting google+ idea and incorporating them; still, Google is superior, as well as far more protctivie of your privacy.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Google is starting to play the stupid game of reinventing the wheel. Microsoft was cool at the beginning, with that Windows 3.1 with amazing Word 6.0 and minesweeper game. Then it began to create its own version of everything: an internet browser, its own Java, Javascript and DOM specifications, and a long etcetera. Now Google has created yet another browser, another social network, another web script language... I love many of Google's inventions but we should remember that success does not long forever. Maybe is Google beginning to feel its huge weight on its legs? Who knows!
We're on an agreement on this: in all my examples the (from a technological point of view) better product did lose the market. The worse product won, either because it entered the market earlier or had the better marketing, or both.
Computer simulation made easy -- LibGeoDecomp
I trust google more than facebook, but I have several aspects of my professional life tied up in google products. If facebook suddenly decides one day that I've violated their TOS and boots me, nothing of value will be lost. If google suddenly decides one day that I've violated their TOS (as they seem to have been doing to people around the 'identity' issue) and boots me, losing me access to gmail, documents, scholar, and other things I rely upon, then it'll be a right PITA. Yes, I back all that stuff up against just such an eventuality, so I won't have *lost* emails and documents etc, but moving it all over to replacement systems will suck.
Just give it time. Let's not give up. See how it fares a few years from now.
Google Plus frankly scared the crap out of me. All that talk about getting your entire Google account (including mail) wiped if you didn't play by the rules. Uh... no thank you Google. I can't afford to risk pissing you off.
I don't think people just wanted to check out G+. The palpable excitement during the beta leads me to think they were craving an alternative to Facebook. Unfortunately, G+ failed to deliver.
G+ is barely out of the gate, and already they're doing the same kinds of things everyone hates about Facebook: changing things for no reason, removing features people like, and wasting time on features nobody wants instead of listening to complaints. For example, when G+ launched, posts in your feed were in chronological order by post time, as any sensible person would expect them to be. Then they "experimented" with other sort orders, declaring that it was for our own good, and finally settled on ordering chronologically by last comment, with no option to change it. This alone has rendered G+ nearly useless to anyone who follows popular users. Because they constantly receive comments, their posts constantly dominate the feed. Another example: when someone adds you to their circles, you're told how many other users you have in common -- but not who those users are!
Overall, G+ has the feel of an unfinished product delivered by a group of incompetent developers who don't pay attention to feedback. Facebook has all that, plus an established user base. Why would anyone switch?
... those of us who use google apps (and we tend to be early adopters and push new technology and/or high tech business entities) still don't have access to google+.
Essentially, as long as you don't pay google, you'll get google+. If you fork over money to google, you won't. It's really quite bizarre.
When asked, all we hear is "Soon.. no really, SOON!". They also provide this "helpful" hint:
If you already signed up for Google+ with your Google Apps email address, you've created a conflicting account -- essentially a personal Google Account that uses the same email address as your Google Apps account. In the future, you'll be prompted to rename this conflicting account to an email address that is not already associated with an existing Google Account, for example a new Gmail address.
Sigh. So, as much as I would love to join this discussion about the merits or demerits of google+, I can't.
-- MrMud
As I see it, one of the most critical failings of the whole G+ kaboodle, is the lack of a decent API.
Sure they have an API. But what good is it if you don't have an up and a down stream.
I read somewhere that about 80% of the regulars on social networking sites interact with each other via apps installed on their phones and other portable devices. As a matter of fact, even when on a desktop, a lot of people prefer to use apps to post and view updates. I've been on the move for most of the last four months, and I've racked up over 5500 tweets. If my twitter client (I use Gravity which is basically a Twitter client, but supports Facebook, Foursquare, StatusNet, SinaWeibo and Google Reader) had G+ too, I'd be redirecting more traffic in that direction. I'm pretty sure most of us who ping multiple social networks today would have no qualms about embracing G+.
I have not been following G+ updates for a while now, but I'm guessing their API is still unchanged since it was first released. Don't get me wrong though, I quite like G+. It's just that it is too inconvenient for me to go out of my way to be active on.
Geekism is your _only_ God!
I still like to keep my email and social networking separate, buzz and google+ blurred that line way too much. I want to log in to google for one thing and facebook for another, I don't want to log into facebook every time i want my mail, make sense?
On that note I asked for a google+ invite on facebook, and nobody responded meaning nobody I know went over there seriously. When I tried it, it was ok at best, the people are really what make social networking worth anything, and nobody was there. Enough said.
I think google missed the concept of social networking (again!).
They are still richer than me :(
I joined Google Plus with an invite in the beginning stages, and right off the start, I began to realize that no one I knew was on it. There were a couple of high profile people on it, and then there were a bunch of people making names for themselves to up and coming profile people. To this day, I can't find hardly a friend or two on the whole site. Everyone else on the site is unknown or some big time celebrity I don't really care to read their narcisstic posts. I was checking the recommended friends list almost every day and to be honest, I heard of none of them, so finally I just realized that Google Plus might become big one day, but it would probably be without me.
Sarbonn's blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/blog
I can't:
I can have G+ open in one tab, and if I want to check out my feeds, iGoogle home page or Reader, if I want to see my email, I have to open either the iGoogle home page or Gmail in another tab. If I want to see Buzz, I have to have Gmail open.
Really, if Google wants Plus to survive it needs to bundle Buzz into it, and add the ability to have the same kind of widgets for Google products that are available on iGoogle. I don't want to have four different Google tabs open. I don't want to have 4 different social network tabs open. They should work hard to get cross-posting and cross-reading FB and Twitter working. They should also find a way to, at the very least, read public posts on Twitter ala Buzz.
I want to be able to create an event post in Plus and have it show on my Calendar. I want to be able to see my Gmail inbox. I want to see my Buzz feed in my Plus feed. I want to be able to receive event notifications through Plus. I want to be able to display my Reader feed in my Plus feed. I want a search box at the top that opens a new tab/window. What I don't want is two or more tabs open for a single website. What I don't want is four tabs open for social networking sites.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
For those of us using Google Apps, there's still no way to use Google+ without registering for a Gmail address. For me, this is a non-starter. Considering many people use Google Apps for email and other Google services on a personal domain, one could assume some of Google's biggest fans use Google Apps. It really doesn't make sense that Google still shuts them out of Google+, considering how hard they're pushing it.
Once they get Google Apps accounts working on Google+, I'll happily try it out (and probably stick with it from what I've heard). But until then, I'm not going to make a Gmail account just for Google+.
Google+ lost me with circles. With facebook, when I posted something it was all about me: "Here's something I find interesting... Here's a picture I took... If you're interested, take a look, if not, move along..." With google+, as soon as I want to share something, I'm asked "Who do you want to share this with?" When faced with the question of whether or not any particular person might be interested in what I was sharing, I generally end up saying "Nah..." and cancel. I can understand the concept of wanting to control who you share with, but in practice -- I don't want the responsibility.
As others have commented, Facebook probably has less than 40% active users. But that's not what keeps me on G+.
I use it as a sort of augmented twitter, Following a bunch of science bloggers I find interesting (Shared Circle). It started out as a small list from Maggie Koerth-Baker, the science blogger at BoingBoing, and slowly accumulated more people through recommendations (network effect!).
Nowadays, Facebook is for the silly friends' stuff, but G+ is slowly turning into a major science news source populated by authors I respect.
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
Fail. The page you link to explains that "network effect" is the general term, while Metcalf's Law is the specific case of a network effect on a telecommunications network. Which facebook is not.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
I remember getting an invite to Wave. We where excited, we watched the video and ideals behind it, amazing stuff.
Then I started to use it, I staked my personal reputation on it, I invited lots of people, engineers, locals, friends and professionals.
BAD MISTAKE, bad bad mistake!
It turned out to be much more ALPHA than beta, I'm not even sure it got to Alpha, but it crashed more than windows ME, and it crashed so badly that the errors usually where unrecoverable, and my friends...especially the professionals, got real tired of losing their drawings & ideas...albeit just for fun, it wasn't fun when you had to act as a project manager for Google (without pay) and constantly start new channels to inform people that the old ones just died due to errors etc.... ...thats why google wave died imho.
G+
I've had it for a while now, not to be a negative ninny, but I somehow get the same vibes I got from Wave, it's not doing it for me. It also have some crucial flaws that Facebook doesn't (or rather - HAD in it's early stages) where you had to filter like mad to avoid endless useless-geek-messages from would-or-wannabee-gurus that you have NO intention of reading the ENDLESS updates from, despite desperate filtering in east & west, it just isn't worth the time.
And the user interface? WTF? It's like an expanded version of Facebook, except...more like google searches, which btw. sucks donkeyballs because it's more like a 1980's dos-box-with-text-boxes-and-pictures, development stages? Sure....it still sucks, and reaks of "we-re-the-programmers-and-designers-doesnt-count" land... that's what happens when you have a hoarde of coders and zero designers.
Where's a wannabee Steve Jobs when you need him? The Google team sure could use some design hints. Hey...I don't even have an Apple, and run on my LINUX box, and even I can see that!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Can we import our data (post, pictures, events, etc.) from Facebook to Google+ or to any other social network?
Hmm I don't think this was really the case. I think what really happened is a lot of people (like Slashdotters) wanted to get in early and did, which drove the initial membership rate way way up (1200% according to someone's earlier post here). Then, those slashdotters had a bunch of invitations left so they posted on FB and Twitter: "Hey, I have some G+ invites, anyone want one?" and got one or two replies asking for it, but that's it. Now you've got a bunch of early adopters with very few friends on there, and they are sitting on a ton of invites nobody wants.
That's how it happened for me, at least.
the 60% decrease was after a 1200% increase. It still grew it's active users by 480%. Read the actual report
Remember Orkut?
..if Google+ allows porn it will get 200% more users than Facebook.
1. I was able to peel out the people that had found me on Facebook, and leave them on Facebook. Google+ is all about the ones I really wanna talk to without some random person interjecting into the conversation. 2. Zynga took over my Facebook, my fault, I know. So now Facebook is for games, and Google+ is for conversation and posting about us. 3. My kids aren't on Google+, and I hope it stays that way!
The fact is that Google+'s traffic is up 5 fold. Basically that 60% drop is comparing the initial surge from when it was first made public to where it is now. Of course traffic is lower. That's like saying that TV viewership dropped off after the Super Bowl. You had a bunch of people that weren't able to access a service that are suddenly able to ALL AT THE SAME TIME. Eventually traffic settled down, but at a much higher value than before. That didn't mean that 60% left, it meant that G+ went through a period with abnormally high usage. The users are still there, they're just using it at different times instead of all at once. See https://plus.google.com/u/0/113117251731252114390/posts/AZh8wwb76vR
But think of the impact it could have on their marketing/psych/manipulation goals, if you can say G+ has x amount of users, and we know their real names, then it would be more valuable than Facebook, unless Facebook does the same thing... I wouldn't know my friends, family and I do not use any social media.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
What the linkbait summary failed to mention is that the drop was down from a spike of 1200%. I follow a few friends and a lot of tech pundits, and I'm never short of interesting conversations.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
I run a blog with 800 readers - foo-wow.blogspot.com
I looked at also joining google+; but I will not use my real (or wallet) name; and will not risk access to my blog (which also uses a google login).
So - no google+ for me.
While 'users' are the product, not the customer; Google+ isnt even gathering the users.
Google+ had a restricted/limited test phase
So did Facebook back when only college students were let in. For people like me who had already graduated by the time Facebook started, going back to grad school to qualify for an account was completely not worth it.
The article is from the Inquirer a page that is heavily linked to FB. Quoting an "article" from "Chitika Insights" (also heavily linked to FB on it's homepage) that post a chart showing "Traffic Index" which it fails to document how the data is derived and processed. WTF...
I smell some rotten tuna here.
My impression is that G+ didn't want to replace facebook. I don't use facebook because of its offendingly evil (and annoying) business-strategies... As a new user I do like (without the button) G+ for its simplicity: you've got a few categories to sort feeds and privacy-levels, get updates by poeple you want to actively follow, and are able to post what's on your mind. Google's own way of being "evil" is carefully hidden under the simple surface... Wake me up when Diaspora gets public.
I'm with Groucho Marx I would never join a club that will have me as a member. All this invitation only stuff that Google does drives me away. I even had invitations, heck, just about anyone could get an invitation so why bother.
Google+'s biggest problem is NOT the user base, nor the features... as such. The problem is that they opened it up for beta, got people to waste their time beta testing, then ignored all the feedback we provided. EVERYONE was asking for better circle management. It hasn't changed one bit. They came up with some great ideas, then didn't develop them the way usability (and user requests) demanded. It was Wave, all over again. Sometimes, Google are just LAZY, if not FUCKING STUPID.
I don't believe Google wants to make Google+ into Fffffacebook anymore than they wanted to make gmail into hotmail, or Google into Yahoo. Until the institutions holding the biggest shareblocks get to excercise their lowest common denominator influence, Google is a smart company trying to add value to their main business - targeted advertising.
Fffffacebook still don't have a business, and Google don't intend to compete with them directly - they mainly seem to be chasing the people who rejected Fffffacebook to begin with. In this instance the closed beta was to ensure that the "right" userbase became predominant, not to try and generate a sale day type rush that would cause a lemming-like exodus of tabloid readers from Fffffacebook.
Based on what I've been told by Google staffers - the recent addition of games to Google+ is not to compete with Fffffacebook, but as part of the Chrome ecosystem (more meat for the Chrome developers).
I know a lot of people who are disappointed and disillusioned about the puritan, anal way of how Google+ is regulated and controlled.
No family members under 18 may join, no pseudonyms allowed and even people with unconventional real names getting harrassed and blocked, pictures with nipple slips getting censored by Google and other ways of just being stupidly over-controlling and uncool.
Add this to the fact that Google already knows magnitudes more about you than Facebook does, and that Google has publicly admitted to passing on user data of non US users to US government agencies.
Why would somebody want to switch to Google with all this? I can have the same crap on Facebook but with more people I know already there, including my younger family members.
It was pushed as a social networking service - and looked considerably better than Facebook, particularly in terms of decent visibility controls.
Unfortunately, they then proceeded to be painful with their ineptly-designed and incompetently-implemented "real names" policy. At the same time as they were busy demonstrating they had no concept of what names or identity actually are they were busily telling everyone that it's actually an identity service not a social networking service. Apparently they've never read this:
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/
I killed off my account and haven't gone back.
Unless they figure out a way to get girls in it, it's mostly a geek exclusive social network now.
On the other hand, facebook has impressed me on how quickly it added all the features google+ had, they have done a great job.
I don't know if I can get used to this, kind of sums the whole problem up. Most of the people I know even hate the recent FB changes. If your onto a winner, stick with it unless the rival actually has a killer feature. Circles are great but too tedious for most people to actually bother with.
And I'd probably be using it if it was a social network. But as an identity service? Fuck that noise. I want to use the internet for things I don't want my boss to be able to find when he searches my name. If I wanted my privacy requirements ignored so my information could be sold, I'd just stick with facebook.
It looks to me like Google trying to make a more generally appealing, manageable follow-on to the Google social media offering that preceeded Facebook.
That's really not enough to make G+ a good social network that people will use. What attracted people to Facebook, back in the day, was that it was really two way social media with a symmetric network with lots of user specific customization. But then along came Twitter with its exceptionally asymmetric model. When it got to about 1% the size of Facebook, Zuckerberg said lets do that, and started getting rid of all the Facebook features that we liked: walls, notes, tabs, apps that would customize our walls and interact with our friends.
If G+ wants users, that's where it should head. The space Facebook discarded. Divide circles into incoming, outgoing, and bidirectional. Co-opt the old Facebook app model and allow us to make profile pages and tabs with customized apps/images/badges. Add automatic export of posts, notes and photos to other social networks. Automatic RSS blog import. Devise a G+ API that we can make interesting apps with that aren't games.
Support SETI@home
I saw three concerns from people who wanted to see if Google+ could be better than Facebook.
1 It's new and cool and has a buzz about it. Does that also mean easier to use, faster, and more fun?
2 Is it better at honoring privacy concerns?
3 Is it from a more accountable organization than Facebook?
The answer to all three questions - No, not particularly. Therefore, no compelling reason to abandon the existing enormous user base available on Facebook.
Let's look a little closer at the privacy concerns. G+ "gave" with the introduction of Circles, groups of people who could be shown some updates but not others. G+ "took away" with talk of requiring government documents to authenticate the ID of all users.
Will the company stick with the system? Facebook added and changed features through the years, but they never discarded the underlying platform. Google suddenly had their whole Wave and Buzz things and then just as suddenly abandoned them. Who can be expected to be around for the long haul?
And even if you GET an invite, if you're using google apps for your domain, you can't USE G+
Until they announced the "Real Names" only policy. The single biggest feature I want in a social networking platform is the ability to participate under a pseudonym.
If Google wants to retain G+ users, they should seriously consider not ignoring entire parts of their existing userbase. To this day, Google Apps users cannot log into G+ - they have to maintain a seperate gmail account just to use the service. Imagine how many users would flee Facebook if they were forced to maintain multiple accounts - it's extra work for little return.
People is migrating to Diaspora (https://joindiaspora.com)
I never signed up because I didn't want to risk losing access to my gmail account due to some technicality.
Chitika is even more of a troll than that...
They're an AdSense competitor, so they are a direct competitor with Google's advertising. In addition to their FaceBook association, they are also the company Yahoo pointed users to when they closed down Yahoo Publisher Network Online.
They are also the only company the FTC has gone after for having deceptive opt-out for behavioural tracking cookies.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitika for more complaintsand details about this company.
-- Terry
From what I know, lots of people wanted in but didn't get an invite, s they stopped caring. The whole concept of the invite was a mistake in this case, and that was my point. They should have let anyone that cared to join.
I know. They force you to have an @gmail.com account for an "identity" that isn't necessary (other than to more fully track you and sell your life to big business).
Turds.
I'm afraid the article doesn't give enough credit for this failure to Google's insistence on real names. I know roughly a dozen people who've used pseudonyms online for decades who could not get an account in their recognized pseudonym, and others who attempted to use it, found a problem with their alias, and were _locked out_ of their other Google services without warning or a reasonable path to restore those services. If you use Gmail for personal business purposes, this is completely unacceptable and will absolutely deter people from using the new service.
The service may be exciting, but it's not exciting enough to justify that kind of headache and risk when FaceBook is a few clicks away. And even Slashdot allows modest pseudonymity. While the potential for abuse of pseudonyms is very real, the need for them is also very real indeed, and rejecting them by the unpredictable standards in use at Google alienated many socially active people of the online world, exactly the customers they _wanted_.
Google has shown no sign of being willing to change this "you must use your real name" policy. Until they relax that, I will not touch it.
~everything/one comes and goes. This is news?
I think G+ has become a social network for geeks rather than for everyone.
is Google+ being judged by everyone on its ability to immediately and completely replace/obliterate Facebook? Of course it's not going to do that! And of course the moment it got public, a lot of people checked it out, and a lot of those people went back to Facebook for exactly the reasons that so many have pointed out -- mainly, their friends are still on FB and they want to play farmville.
But G+ is not an immediate failure because of that. It's grabbed a nice chunk of users that for some reason are not happy with facebook. It'll grow from that base; it will prove useful for a lot of people even if they don't live their entire 'social life' on it, and so I don't expect it to die anytime soon.
When Facebook started they were exclusive to a single university - Harvard, so they had only a few thousand users. But they were a viable network because all those users knew each other and were interested in communicating each other. When all of your fellow students are on the same network, it doesn't matter if you're the only people in the world using it - because nearly all the people you're interacting with daily are on the same network. Facebook was thus like a club, like a village, where everyone on the network knows everyone else, and they probably made announcements about campus events and such, and everyone logged in to find out what's going on today in campus.
How did Google+ start? They started as a network of random people all across the world, where each had 5-6 friends he might be interested in on the same network.
Facebook was a community right from the start, and is built on the idea of densely connected sub-communities of people who know each other. Google+ is a sparsely connected network of random people who decided to try it out, found 5-6 friends they might want to talk to, posted 1-2 posts, saw nobody's replying, and stopped posting.
Facebook's network was more viable even when they were a few thousand strong that the network of Google+ is right now, because a single community of 1000 people is worth more than 10000 communities of 6 people each.
Should have learned from Livejournal. They used a limited-invite phase for a while to deal with server overload, but it totally hurt adoption during a critical time -- there was a mass exodus from Usenet (and other communities) going on while they spun their wheels, and it pissed off a lot of people who were trying to get in.
Google doing what they have has simply caused many of us to turn a blind eye to Google+. As far as I am concerned, it's 'just another social network' and one that people seem to be ignoring. I don't even give enough of a damn to actually go and sign up, if open sign ups are even being allowed right now. I simply do not care, and this is because most people I know do not use the service either.
As noted above, it's the network effect.
I feel like the reason for its failure is very straightforward - it's mind boggling that Google thinks it has the audacity to roll out a new platform with out any automated integration in and out of the platform. Tumblr has done well as a publishing platform - because your one post there also posts to Twitter and Facebook. As a corollary, whatever will do well and be able to grow up next will be able to publish into Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook. Their slant on owning all content and having it only funnel in instead of funnel out is shortsighted. And the reason why I ever thought I liked Google to begin with was because of their open integration and embrace of open standards.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/113117251731252114390/posts/AZh8wwb76vR
Google's biggest problem was maintaining the age restriction (18+) after the invitation phase. Most tween/teenagers are active facebook users and would be good candidates for Google's "hangout" feature.
I agree that invites were a mistake, but I don't think invites were the outstanding reason for its lackluster uptake.
Yes, indeed they can. This, however, closes the door on them being able to use said social network to ameliorate their situation, or may make it dangerous. Should one encourage a social network that creates such a situation? From where I stand, the answer is a clear no. So I don't.
Please consider: A battered spouse can keep quiet; or they can stand up and speak against an abuser in public, further exposing themselves to risk while the wheels of justice, such as they are, squeak, rattle and slowly begin to turn; or they can do so in a private place, perhaps with some shoulders to lean on. If, however, those shoulders (or the venue itself, which is the potential problem here) expose the battered individual's location and/or identity, this can immediately increase the danger to them.
Likewise, a political dissident can speak against an oppressive regime in safety gleaned from anonymity, or they can speak in a forum where their name and location may be easily obtained by said regime. Or they can simply not speak. Which is better? Why? I would hope the answer is obvious.
This is the basis for my position that ethically speaking, the optimum condition is that a user should be allowed to decide for themselves if they wish to "be themselves" online, or an anonymous/pseudonymous presence. I maintain that forcing someone to ID themselves is not a socially healthy thing to do.
No. The ethical issue is that Google and Facebook both insist on obtaining data that can expose a user, against that user's will, to stalkers, ex-spouses, hostile political entities, and other sources of problems. Given that they so insist, my ethics guide me to the conclusion that I should not use those services, as that would encourage/amplify them in their current form. I would hope anyone who actually suffers from such an issue would also see the problem and avoid trying to establish any kind of presence on these exposure-prone systems, but at least I know I am not contributing to it, and that by speaking out against it, I create a counter-pressure, however minor.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
That you really need to access by a gmail account... while FB only need an email account, doesn't matter wich brand: hotmail, gmail, yahoo, etc... So FB always stays tune with you and friends.
I think that G+ needed to accept any kind of mail account before launch the site, so it will always stay competitive agains FB... I think
The #1 reason I don't use it GMail and do use Facebook is because I receive FB notifications. They draw me back to the site. I don't receive the same thing from G+ because you must use your primary email address to receive notifications, which is a gmail account for me. I don't use gmail and Google won't let you edit your primary email address or use alternate contact methods. As long as G+ is handcuffed in this way, I smell fail.