Facebook Loses Users, Satisfaction Higher at Google+

benfrog writes "Facebook has lost what (by the standards of their userbase) is a modest number of users over the last six months, which is perhaps one of the causes of a fall in their stock price. In the meantime, a study shows that Google+ users are more satisfied with the site than Facebook users, who are (understandably) upset about the number of recent UI changes, the amount of advertising, and other elements, according to a statement accompanying the study. Figures also show dramatic growth in Google+ usage."

Comments

It's amazing....

[UltimaBuddy]

.... what actual revenue can do for morale.

Hmmmm, yeah

[Giant Electronic Bra]

Is this like some sort of Google ad? I dunno. I like G+ too, but it is a little hard to use in the ways that you can use FB when people just don't do a lot with it. Maybe they'll hit some sort of critical mass? I'd like that, but...

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[SomePgmr]

I have to agree. I like it fine, but it's not a full-on Facebook replacement, and I'm not much interested in unique visitors as a useful metric when 800 trillion people already have google accounts. Show me big numbers for user engagement. Then I'll gladly accept that people are actually using it as a Facebook replacement.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[stevencbrown]

there is a definite spin to the article - not like slashdot.(!)

I like G+ as well, but just don't see how it ever reaches critical mass, and even if it does, will it supplant facebook, or will it just become as annoying as facebook.

I use 3 social media sites, and feel the all fulfill a certain niche, and not sure that will change for a while.

Facebook, for semi-interesting mix of updates from a variety of friends and acquaintances, just dip in now and again when I'm bored, certainly don't feel I'm missing out on anything if I don't check.

G+ fulfills more of my tech need, as I most of the stuff I follow in there is more tech related, and I tend to check it every day, and usually get some interesting reading out of it. (though had to unfollow NASA, they provide way too many updates if they had been landing somebody on Mars, let alone just updates about the effects of micro gravity on small screws).

Twitter is good for when I'm on the toilet and doing a dump.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

They will hit critical mass because Google is leveraging their other markets. Facebook doesn't have Google maps, YouTube, the Chrome browser, g-mail, etc. Google is going to integrate all of its technology and because the applications are there, people will use it. Google will surround Facebook, and then give an integrated alternative. People will move.

The only thing that doesn't make sense is why Google hasn't yet bought Twitter. Maybe Twitter refuses to sell?

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[Archangel Michael]

I remember when "everyone" was on MySpace, "Everyone" was there and nobody used "Facebook". Until one day ... Nobody used MySpace and everyone was on Facebook.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[bedroll]

I doubt it's an ad or a distortion. It's common for a smaller, more committed user base to be happier with a product. There's a lot of ownership bias. At this point most people have at least a clue what G+ is, and the ones who use it know that they're dealing with a smaller user base. They're happy with it despite its flaws and lack of ubiquity. It shouldn't be surprised.

The slowing of FB adoption is the bigger story. It probably doesn't mark a shift toward G+, but it may be that Facebook is at the upper bounds of users interested in its service. For my part, I didn't close my FB account but I've moved almost all of my social networking activity over to Twitter. I wanted to like G+ but none of my social circles use it.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[MozeeToby]

Android is the only market that matters as far as their leverage goes. Everyone on android has gmail, and everyone on gmail has Google+. My family suddenly realized that everyone had a video chat app installed on their phones, imagine their shock! But how to organize it so the whole family can be on together? Oh wait, Google+ supports events now. And sharing pictures and video is about 2 taps on the screen? Oh, but my friends don't want to see yet another picture of my daughter doing something adorable, luckily it's about 2 more screen presses to only share it with my family then. The Google+ app has a remarkable amount of functionality, Google has been putting a lot of effort into getting it right because they know that mobile is where Facebook stumbles.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[GIL_Dude]

Why try to use it as a Facebook replacement? It isn't designed to directly compete. Facebook has a "two way" model (where two people have to agree to be 'friends'). This fosters a community of people who "post to each other"; sort of a friends keeping in touch type of model. Google+ is a one way thing. You put a person in your circles. Then, if they post to public, you get their content in your feed. (Google+ also has the concept of private posts where you can post just to your circles instead of public). However, just circling someone gets you their public content. So Google+ is a great place to get content from content producers, interesting people, etc. For example circle Mike Elgin, Wil Wheaton, Robert Scoble, etc. and you'll get lots of content (I can't vouch for whether you'll like said content). Circle LifeHacker, ArsTechnica, etc. and you get notified of their posts - and can engage with people on Google+ about them without registering accounts on Gawker, Ars, etc. It really is a different model and a different target. I don't view it as a replacement at all.

Oh, and Google Instant (where photos you take automatically upload to a private area) is the killer feature there - just that alone can be so helpful even if you don't circle anyone or use the other features.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[flitty]

FB's failing is due to it's users, mostly. About 3-6 months ago, everyone decided that pictures with text on them is all they were going to post. Or food pictures, or Spotify playlists.

Facebook was never awesome, but it did have a lot of my friends and family posting interesting discussions and information. Then everyone ran out of things to say, so now they just post funny pictures.

A lot of this isn't just users fault though, many issues arise out of the lack of Grouping, which is something G+ fixes and is awesome at. I don't want my pictures of partying being shown to employers, or my neices and nephews which causes issues with my conservative siblings. Sorting what information I want to send to select groups easily is the main reason I wish people were using G+.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[SomePgmr]

You're right, it is different, and I kinda like that. I didn't mean to suggest otherwise.

I'm just not going to draw a line from a few lost Facebook users to some kind of Google+ migration... almost precisely for the reasons you mention. I got the feeling that's where the article submission was headed.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[Daetrin]

There's also the fact that a number of people (including me) only use Facebook because they feel "forced" to do so. Friends or family members they want to keep in touch with only use Facebook, or events they want to be notified of are only announced on Facebook, or some game or website or something forces people to use Facebook to participate.

That "forcing" is part of what keeps Facebook's numbers so high, but it also leads to discontent. No one likes being forced into something, and it tends to aggravate any negative feelings they already have. On the other hand no one (except possibly Google employees =) feels forced to use G+. If you're there, it's because you want to be there.

I have noticed some swings in G+ activity, at least amongst the people i follow. Sometimes it slows down to four or five dedicated people/groups posting on a somewhat regular basis, sometimes it swings up. Currently it seems to be in a bit of an upswing with about a dozen "regular" posters, but that's a _very_ small and biased bit of anecdotal data.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[mcmonkey]

I'm skeptical. I've tried to use Google + a couple times, but quite frankly, I can't figure out what it does or how I use it.

Most of the problem is I can't tell which communications are from real people and which are spam from Google. Someone wants to connect with me...is that the G+ equivalent of an fb friend request? Or is it just because I have someone with a gmail address in my address book? And if I (attempt) connect with someone, is it someone who is using G+? Or just someone with a gmail account?

I tried to connect with a few people (real friends I know in meat space) and there was no one on the other end. It seems like Google just created G+ accounts for everyone with a gmail address and then spammed me with messages to connect with everyone in my address with a gmail address.

Maybe it isn't a ghost town, but it's a ghost metropolis built around a very small settlement.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[mcmonkey]

Google+ is a one way thing. You put a person in your circles. Then, if they post to public, you get their content in your feed. (Google+ also has the concept of private posts where you can post just to your circles instead of public). However, just circling someone gets you their public content. So Google+ is a great place to get content from content producers, interesting people, etc.

As opposed to following someone's blog, watching their twitter feed, subscribing to their podcast, etc.

Ya know what? I have my own life. There are only so many hours in the day I can spend on what other people are doing.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[Algae_94]

Let me start by saying I have a Facebook account, but would not call myself a Facebook user. I don't post anything on there.

Now that that is out of the way, I have heard anecdotal evidence that Facebook does have some way to do grouping. Even if this is true, it points out an issue Facebook will have a hard time getting over. If it didn't have it when it started up, and they add a feature later, a lot of people will never know about it. Others will be upset with changes.

I like the way G+ has been set up from the beginning. It seems like more of a useful tool to me than a way to annoy people with ads and requests to do meaningless things. Of course I don't really use G+ much more than Facebook.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[Literaphile]

I remember when "everyone" was on MySpace, "Everyone" was there and nobody used "Facebook". Until one day ... Nobody used MySpace and everyone was on Facebook.

But "everyone" was not on MySpace. Facebook has 10x more users than MySpace had at the height of its popularity. It won't be as easy for Facebook just to disappear.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[Bigby]

Google+ functions as a Facebook and a Twitter. The whole idea of Circles allow this. Someone can add you to their Circle to see your public posts (Twitter) or you can add someone to your Circle to see your public/private posts (Facebook).

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[Archladon]

Google+ really hits the convenience factor. That's their advantage.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

really? you don't understand what a "circle" of friends is? what it means to run in the same "circles" as someone else. it's not some new term google came up with.

verbing it as you have is kind of silly, but i don't think anyone proposes to do that. personally, i just tell people to add me on google.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[ubrgeek]

Sounds like a setup for a rim-job joke.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[UnknownSoldier]

That's why some of my friends call it "FazeBook" (or worse .. F**Book). I have no opinion, I don't use it.

Just like LiveJournal before MySpace, the social medium is fad-based. Same with clothes / fashion.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever my relatives get in my face and are all, "Why don't you have a facebook account?!" I'm like, "Why don't you go f*ck yourselves." Then there is a beautiful moment of realization and, meanwhile, I can get back to eating my mashed potatoes.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[nospam007]

As I see it, get Facebook and you get an unwanted email address.
Get a Google email address and you get an unwanted social network with it.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[geekoid]

You know what? SO what. It's not for you. I know, your massive entitlement complex brought on by getting far too much attention as a child makes you think everything is for you and for you're approval.
It is not.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[tkprit]

Like Facebook and Twitter, without the people.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[master5o1]

'Keep me in the loop'

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[macshit]

... and that sounds like it is exactly as it should be.

The problem with facebook is not really facebook per-se—some people like it, it serves their needs, good for them.

The problem is when facebook becomes so overwhelmingly dominant that they are essentially the only viable choice for most people, meaning that people who don't like it (and they are legion) are basically goaded into using it anyway.

Ideally, there would be a range of services that are all popular, maybe even with content-transfer between them (I know, FB would royally freak, but ... from a user's point of view, this is ideal ... and the user's content does belong to the user, doesn't it ...?), allowing people to use the one they like best, and avoiding any one service from becoming too powerful.

Diversity is a good thing!

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[shutdown -p now]

Also the "cloud photos" thing - every time you snap a pic, it goes to your albums... on G+.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[humanrev]

here's also the fact that a number of people (including me) only use Facebook because they feel "forced" to do so.

Facebook has now become something of a liability for me. It's gotten to the point where even though I'd probably like> to close the account, I won't simply because others would notice. They probably wouldn't appreciate me telling them that their narcissism and attention-seeking posts reveal a side of them that I didn't want to see, and that I'd be much happier not knowing. Something about Facebook brings out narcissist traits in people, I'm not sure why, and it's awfully off-putting.

If I wanted to be nice I'd give them another reason, like I'm concerned with the behavior of Facebook's management and the privacy issues related to the site, but they would consider me a tinfoil-wearing paranoid fool for such things, probably. Or at the very least they wouldn't accept it as serious enough to leave.

So, I keep the account but don't do much with it. It serves as an indicator that I exist, but not much else.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[lennier]

FB's failing is due to it's users, mostly. About 3-6 months ago, everyone decided that pictures with text on them is all they were going to post.

I can't speak for everyone, but I think for me, this is because of security concerns. I'm on Facebook because I want to hear what's going on with my friends, not necessarily to reveal too much personal information about me. Posts about my actual life events - I'm very careful about doing those. Random funny pictures that have zero connection to my life and probably won't get me in trouble, on the other hand, I'm quite happy to forward those on.

I can see a problem arising where as more people get security-literate on Facebook, the amount of useful posts will diminish and be replaced by the trivia. It's possible that for many people this point has already been reached. Then what, I wonder?

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[recharged95]

Same thing for Friendster, Linked-in, and foursquare.

Twitter appears to be the only social media outlet that has stabilized--thing about it.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[loneDreamer]

My brother had an interesting story. He refused to have Facebook only to find out that some friends created him one themselves! The would post photos, etc. At some point he had to take control of his internet identity and privacy. I have an account for that reason, plus I lie on my personal information since noise and inconsistency is the only kind of privacy left.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[Nemyst]

The way the GP describes it, G+ can act as an aggregator for all of this. Instead of individually visiting their blog, watching their Twitter feeds and subscribing to their podcast, you follow them on G+ where they'll link to all the stuff you've listed, and perhaps some more.

This obviously assumes that whoever is the "their" is using G+ to direct their followers to all of their other content, though. This may not be a correct assumption all the time, but if it reaches a certain critical mass, it could be fairly good.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Facebook not only at the upper bounds of people, but they are now forced to "monetize new revenue streams". People may not quite get that FB going public means they need to grow revenue models and get more money per user, but they do get when new advertising shows up on their FB page. I don't think this is the beginning of the end of FB - hell even MySpace has a use for band promotion. But it may dent the "everyone has to be there" model.

And people talk about Google+, but what about all the other services for contacting people? Hell, people even ask me for my Kik, a service i never heard of 3 months ago. My wife splits between email, iMessage, Facetime, Skype, and Line to talk to her mom and sister. There are alternatives.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[elashish14]

Pardon me for being idealistic here, but I don't see how any good friend would force you to use a social networking service, especially if you have a legitimate problem with it.

I kicked Facebook permanantly over a year ago. In that time, I've found that the friends I communicate most with send me updates from Facebook anyways, or link me to pictures on Facebook (which I need a proxy to view since I've blocked as much FB as I can in my hosts) - quite a few of my friends do this in fact. This was what I figured would happen when I chose to delete my account; if they're good enough friends, we'll find other ways to keep up anyways, and that's certainly turned out to be true.

Maybe everyone who's finding this dissatisfaction should just try it. Disable the account for a few months and see what happens. Maybe you too will find that Facebook is not the only medium of communicating with other people. Personally, I feel thoroughly liberated since I deleted (not disabled) mine.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[tibman]

I still have and use my LJ. Not because i like vintage pants or social media.. but because i still like it : )

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[Daetrin]

Personally i don't keep my Facebook account because of friends. I keep it because of the food trucks that i like that put their detailed posts on facebook, and the groups/organizations i'm interested in that send out updates about what is going on when via facebook.

In short i need to use it to keep track of groups that have no particular interest in me as an individual and aren't going to go out of their way to keep me updated if i choose to exclude myself from their usual channel of communication.

Maybe what you suggest will work for people more concerned about friends than events, but it's also possible that you either have better friends or are more charismatic than others. My friends all know that i don't actually read my facebook feed, and yet when most of them jumped ship from LJ to facebook about half of them stopped talking to me instead of keeping me updated via some other means. I'm apparently a boring kind of guy, and if i don't make the effort to keep in contact with them where they choose to be then a lot of them just tend to forget about me. If i wanted to renew/maintain those friendships i'd have to seek them out on facebook. And to be fair, do i have any more of a right to insist that they keep checking LJ than they do to insist that i start checking facebook? (And on the plus side, with a small number of them we've managed to reconnect on G+ =)

I regret the loss of so much socialization, but i'm just not willing to deal with staying glued to facebook on a daily basis to get it. I doubt everyone else in the same situation feels that way however.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[humanrev]

plus I lie on my personal information since noise and inconsistency is the only kind of privacy left.

Be careful doing that though.

If you make an account with your name but has false information, other people looking you up (friends, future or current employers, etc) might think that this profile is really you and hence the info presented in is is a correct and accurate record of you. Since you're trying to fake it so that you can hold onto your privacy, it probably contains a lot of crap which you know Facebook can't use to truly identify you, but as we know, privacy settings change all the time in Facebook so even if you set your profile as private in the past, some stuff might later revert to a public setting. People read the bits that are public, interpret it as something you believe it (since you wrote it yourself), and likely you'll suffer repercussions and have to defend yourself.

You might think, "well if I put in a sufficient amount of false crap about myself, no-one could possibly think that profile was about me". Well... you'd be surprised.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[datavirtue]

Transition is easy. You can have accounts on both sites and use both sites at once, and because of this and G+'s lack of ads a switch can happen in a flash. FB is going to be consumed by investors clamoring for them to close this gap. If Google can create more demand on several fronts it will only speed things up. In my opinion, Google is not very good at marketing.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[datavirtue]

I didn't get much attention as a child and I have an entitlement complex. Explain that.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[datavirtue]

Never mind, I developed clinical-level narcissism to handle the lack of attention which carries with it a sense of entitlement.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[loneDreamer]

Well, I'm not THAT involved, but thanks. I mainly put the wrong marital status, birthdate, location, etc. I don't spend time creating an alter ego :-) But it's an example of how worrying about your online profile has become sort of mandatory.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[datavirtue]

Twitter is good for when I'm on the toilet and doing a dump.

OMG! That is like a new meme.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[PiSkyHi]

STOP THE PRESS!!! Someone agreed with someone else on Slashdot. It's almost as if common sense prevailed.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[hairyfish]

At some point he had to take control of his internet identity and privacy. I have an account for that reason,

Wouldn't it be easier just to tell anyone that asks that it isn't your page and that someone faked it?? There are so many fakes out there these days on FB , Twitter etc I'm surprised the info on them carries any weight any more. The signal noise ratio is drowning itself by the sheer volume of utter useless inaccurate rubbish already on there.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[hairyfish]

Facebook was never awesome, but it did have a lot of my friends and family posting interesting discussions and information. Then everyone ran out of things to say, so now they just post funny pictures.

I don't think I've ever seen an interesting discussion on there either. FB has always been just a casual keep-in-touch-with-your-greater-circle-of-acquaintances tool. It was always full of shit, but every once and a while you find out someone is having a party, going away on holiday, or got a new job etc The problem is that the signal to noise was bearable, but since the attempts to monetize the service through all the apps that feel the need to tell me what score my 'friends' got on their games, or what music they're listening too, it really is approaching a critical point of not enough value and too much crap.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[DerekLyons]

Just like LiveJournal before MySpace, the social medium is fad-based.

People keep saying that... so often it's become accepted truth, while ignoring reality. Not to mention that Slashdot, ever disdainful of anything the masses like, had been gleefully predicting Facebook's imminent demise since the day they opened their door to the public.
 
Yes, Livejournal and Myspace had a lot of users - among the early adopters and the young. Neither had anything even remotely approaching the depth and penetration that Facebook has. So, are they fad based? Or did it just take a couple of tries before someone got it right, or close enough to right, to capture and dominate the market? The jury is still out, but the evidence is somewhat in favor of the latter.
 
A new social network, to topple Facebook, has to both replace Facebook functionally *and* capture a huge number of users across a broad range of social strata. (Just capturing the tech elite and next-best-thing adopters won't cut it anymore due to deep and broad penetration of Facebook.) That's a tall order, even for Google.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[interkin3tic]

Why try to use it as a Facebook replacement? It isn't designed to directly compete. Facebook has a "two way" model (where two people have to agree to be 'friends')

Some of us are wishing to replace it maybe? Facebook has annoyed me many times more than google has. Site redesigns that I didn't like, privacy issues. For another, I'm facebook friends with more people than I want to be. Some of my relatives got really upset when they found out I was on facebook, was not friends with them, and had blocked them. People from high school who I didn't bother going to the 10 year reunion to see. Seems like most of my facebook friends are people I don't want any contact with. Meanwhile, most people I know aren't on google plus, and I haven't built up a pile of fake friends in it yet.

Maybe that's just me.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[interkin3tic]

I like G+ as well, but just don't see how it ever reaches critical mass, and even if it does, will it supplant facebook, or will it just become as annoying as facebook.

Maybe, but what annoys me about facebook is 1. the friend requests I have accepted on facebook when I was new to it, not going to make that mistake again, and 2. the design of facebook. Other google services have managed not to annoy me so far.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[LourensV]

Why try to use it as a Facebook replacement? It isn't designed to directly compete.

I'm not on G+ (or on Facebook), but from my perspective as an outside observer it seems to me like Facebook is IM with broadcast and shared history. It's used by teens the way they used to use MSN (and by adults the way teens used to use MSN), and you need an account to see anything. Google+ is Usenet 2.0, content is public, and it even seems mostly pre-Eternal September still. I'll go one step further and say that it's a good thing if Google+ isn't taking too many users from Facebook.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[rioki]

Yea... G+ is kinda like twitter without the size restriction...

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[dpak1170]

Is this like some sort of Google ad? I dunno. I like G+ too, but it is a little hard to use in the ways that you can use FB when people just don't do a lot with it. Maybe they'll hit some sort of critical mass? I'd like that, but...

I find your comment amusing because everyone I know does not leave facebook because their friends are not intelligent enough to move to G+. I think that is what getting facebook going.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[AntEater]

Like Facebook and Twitter, without the people.

Sounds perfect.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[Giant Electronic Bra]

Undoubtedly. Critical mass/network effect is nothing to sneeze at. People can use more than one social networking site though, so total lock-in is never really possible. It will be fun to see what happens.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[flabordec]

Ya know what? I have my own life. There are only so many hours in the day I can spend on what other people are doing.

Then, instead of having to go to blog A, twitter feed B and podcast C you only go to one place and save time.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[tehcyder]

Still having trouble with the terminology.

"Friend me" has entered the lexicon, but "Circle me" is kinda late to the punch.

How about "circle jerk me"? I can see that flying, as it were.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[tehcyder]

STOP THE PRESS!!! Someone agreed with someone else on Slashdot. It's almost as if common sense prevailed.

Group hug everyone, c'mon you know you want to really.

I'm choking up, I really am.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[tehcyder]

I didn't get much attention as a child and I have an entitlement complex. Explain that.

You're just a really annoying person generally?

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[tehcyder]

Never mind, I developed clinical-level narcissism to handle the lack of attention which carries with it a sense of entitlement.

Welcome to slashdot, you'll fit in just fine here.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[tehcyder]

Yea... G+ is kinda like twitter without the size restriction...

As the size restriction is the only interesting thing about Twitter, that's not a great recommendatin for G+.

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[PiSkyHi]

Well done... be afraid!

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[coolmadsi]

A new social network, to topple Facebook, has to both replace Facebook functionally *and* capture a huge number of users across a broad range of social strata. (Just capturing the tech elite and next-best-thing adopters won't cut it anymore due to deep and broad penetration of Facebook.) That's a tall order, even for Google.

Have a look in the "Explore" section of Google+ (I think it used to be called "What's Hot"). The things that are popular is not all tech elite stuff. I would say one of the larger groups of people who use Google+ are people interested in photography, there is a lot about that on there.

Years back when I first joined Facebook, the first thing someone posted on my wall was something on the lines of "This is lame, not as good as MySpace".

Re:Hmmmm, yeah

[DerekLyons]

Have a look in the "Explore" section of Google+ (I think it used to be called "What's Hot"). The things that are popular is not all tech elite stuff. I would say one of the larger groups of people who use Google+ are people interested in photography, there is a lot about that on there.

I know this is hard to believe, but stay with me, technically inclined people have all kinds of interests. (Myself, I'm into woodworking and photography as well.) It is indeed modestly popular with photographers, but from the buzz on the various boards, that's because of the size of the previews not because they can reach any significant audience. (And looking currently at Explore, only a small fraction is pictures.)
 

Years back when I first joined Facebook, the first thing someone posted on my wall was something on the lines of "This is lame, not as good as MySpace".

And to a large part, whoever posted that's correct - as Facebook didn't allow the level of customization and widgets that MySpace does. But Facebook was a heck of a lot simpler to use and eventually offered much more interactivity and activities. G+ offers little to nothing that Facebook doesn't.

Not just UI changes - stop changing SETTINGS!

[Mitreya]

Facebook screws with actual settings all the time, which goes well beyond UI changes
There was a recent email replacement issue. And logging in today I realized that my facebook chat now shows my online status, even though I explicitly disabled it a couple of months ago.
Keeping your settings on Facebook where you want them (if that is even feasible) is a full time job.

Re:Not just UI changes - stop changing SETTINGS!

[SomePgmr]

The comment versioning with diff was another fun one that appeared out of nowhere.

Now my: "I have to disagree with this, and here's why..." indicates that I had previously said, "God damn, you're a fucking dunce."

Just let me pretend to respect all of my 8 billion "friends", Facebook!

Re:Not just UI changes - stop changing SETTINGS!

[medv4380]

I keep hearing about that kind of things happening. Is it because FB is incompetent? I could see them forcibly doing some setting changes from time to time, but this seems oddly frequent. Or could it be a byproduct of using their NoSQL system?

Re:Not just UI changes - stop changing SETTINGS!

[Algae_94]

I swear in the past they had a setting to stop people from tagging me in photos that others post on Facebook. Just recently, I got a notification that I had been tagged in a photo. Big surprise that when I logged in to look, the setting hadn't been changed, it was gone. I found no way to stop this tagging of photos now. I guess I just can't let tagging types take pictures of me now.

Re:Not just UI changes - stop changing SETTINGS!

[furbearntrout]

There's an off switch for that?

Re:Not just UI changes - stop changing SETTINGS!

[BobNET]

Keeping your settings on Facebook where you want them (if that is even feasible) is a full time job.

It's nice to see that Firefox has adopted this model, too.

Re:Not just UI changes - stop changing SETTINGS!

[LordLucless]

Keeping your settings on Facebook where you want them (if that is even feasible) is a full time job.

Man, I wish I had your job. Fiddle with some security settings for a bit each month, spend the rest of the time lying on the beach drinking cocktails with little umbrellas.

Re:Not just UI changes - stop changing SETTINGS!

[geekoid]

You assume it pays well.

Re:Not just UI changes - stop changing SETTINGS!

[antdude]

It is almost impossible to stop people tagging with us on Facebook. :(

Re:Not just UI changes - stop changing SETTINGS!

[elashish14]

Back in the day, I found the best way to stop them from changing your settings... is to give them no settings to change.

I haven't checked them recently, but it's not like I can.

Re:Not just UI changes - stop changing SETTINGS!

[clong83]

THIS!

This is why I finally got around to deleting my account. I've had an account for 8 years. I graduated college, and it was just a place to keep track of what my college buddies were up to, but I pretty much stopped using it. Then, they opened it to the public and I started getting emails from all kinds of people "friending" me that I hadn't heard from in years. I started logging in and actively resetting my security/privacy settings every 6 months or so because facebook changed them without my approval. Still, it was alright, because it was a nice convenient place I could go if I forgot when my Aunt's birthday was, or wanted to get my cousin's/old friend's current email address, etc. A glorified rolodex.

But the email thing. That was the last straw. I had my email set up as private. Only friends could see it, and mainly it was for me to give out my latest contact info to family/friends. Then they removed my visible email address, and put up a new one without notifying me. I had also just lost access to viable email addresses from friends and family as well, because it only shows their facebook one, and most aren't proactive enough to change it back. It shocks me still that they set up email in the way they did. It's just your account number/username@facebook. So now, essentially, my email was now global, when I did not want it available to anyone but my friends. I finally realized they really, truly, did not give a shit. Should have realized it years ago, but I guess I'm a slow learner.

Re:Not just UI changes - stop changing SETTINGS!

[thingummy]

Of late, I have taken to track people who tag me without my permission. I create a fake profile of those people, with all information gleaned from their real profile, including the photo. I also create fake profile of all their "friends", and friend them with the fake profile. If more people do this, facebook would become unusable, with the benefit that people would stop tagging us.

Re:Not just UI changes - stop changing SETTINGS!

[antdude]

Fake profile? Don't you still have to share your real data like your name to do that?

Re:Not just UI changes - stop changing SETTINGS!

[thingummy]

All information will be from my victim's Facebook account including name. It would use a disposable email id of course. I don't understand how you think Facebook can force one to reveal his "real name"? If you say, John Smith is your real name, who is to prove otherwise?

Just the next step in the social network lifecycle

[dkleinsc]

1. Make it really easy to use and feature-full, to build a user base.
2. Attempt to monetize it by loading it with a ton of ads and other annoyances.
3. Sell to investors for big bucks.
4. Users get fed up and leave, leaving a hulking mess.

FB market oversaturated

[Haoie]

There are only so many people in the world who are interested in social networks; it's impossible to attain infinite growth.

Besides, a lot of folks at some point wake up to how much time they spend on FB and the like [a lot!].

Re:FB market oversaturated

[WillAffleckUW]

And this will happen to G+ at some point, and then later to whatever service/site G+ lost to, and so on and so forth.

There's always pinterest or something else down the pike.

I'm out.

[Ehgeekay]

My brother dropped his at the start of the year. I was six months later. Just last night a friend said hey why can't I find you on Facebook? I gave them my phone number.

Re:I'm out.

[Belial6]

Your what? Is that like Yelp! or like instagram?

Re:I'm out.

[WillAffleckUW]

What is this Yelp you speak of?

Is that something involving tin cans and a piece of string?

Re:I'm out.

[shutdown -p now]

It's like Twitter, except you have to actually read everything. Imagine the horror.

Misleading google+ figures

[MichaelusWF]

The same site (siteanalytics.compete.com) that shows "dramatic" growth in Google+ usage (from 20.2 million in April to 31.8 million users presently) also shows considerable growth in facebook usage over the same time period (from 154.5 million to 158.5 million). If you're going to compare sites, use the same metrics for each site, otherwise you look like kind of an asshole.

Re:Misleading google+ figures

[Anonymous Coward]

In absolute numbers, that's G+ increasing by 11.6 M and Facebook increasing by 4 M - or G+ increasing 2.9X as fast as Facebook. In percentages, that's G+ increasing by 57% and Facebook increasing by 2.6%. So I'd say that's dramatic growth at G+, and mild growth at Facebook. Mind you, part of that is because Facebook is practically saturated.

Re:Misleading google+ figures

[Cro Magnon]

It's a question of scale. If a social network has 800 million people and 10 join, that's not "dramatic". If it has 2 people and 10 join, that is dramatic.

Re:Misleading google+ figures

[Anonymous Coward]

otherwise you look like kind of an asshole.

Or a shill, which is what I suspect is behind this slashvertisement.

Re:Misleading google+ figures

[gVibe]

And lets not forget that the number presented can never represent the number of REAL users versus automated/bots/scripts etc. So I can guarantee that whatever number Facebook claims is its user number, does not mean they actually have that number of actual real living people using the site.

Re:Misleading google+ figures

[MichaelusWF]

That's a fair point, and it was admittedly uncharitable of me to put "dramatic" in sarcasm quotes. It's objectively a pretty big leap for them. It also detracts from the point I was going for, which is that if a social network has 154 million people and 4 million people join, that is not a decline. The problem I had was just that the OP presents one set of statistics for facebook, and another that uses a different site and a different methodology for google+. Using his own google+ site as a reference, both facebook and google+ grew over the same time frame.

Re:Misleading google+ figures

[kmike]

That's because the numbers from Compete do not correspond to reality. Compete.com is tracking some preselected panel of people, which in no way could represent the entire site usage. And then they stretch and inflate that data, and call it the "site profile".

For the reference, here's another such Google+ profile, from Alexa, which shows no "dramatic growth" whatsoever:
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/plus.google.com

My biggest facebook annoyance

[cpu6502]

They keep redirecting my tablet from www.facebook to m.facebook. That's like me telling my taxi driver to take me to Baltimore, and instead they take me to the tiny town of Columbia. I can't figure-out why the programmers would arbitrarily decide to overrule my desire to vist the full WWW page.

As for google, none of my friends are over there, so I have no interest. It would be like standing in a room by myself.

Re:My biggest facebook annoyance

[gl4ss]

They keep redirecting my tablet from www.facebook to m.facebook. That's like me telling my taxi driver to take me to Baltimore, and instead they take me to the tiny town of Columbia. I can't figure-out why the programmers would arbitrarily decide to overrule my desire to vist the full WWW page.

As for google, none of my friends are over there, so I have no interest. It would be like standing in a room by myself.

why? because they hired some mobile "expert" fucker asshole, that's why. extra work, shittier results to visitors( and then they go on complaining about fragmentation.. that they could just ignore if they had smarts). oh and they copied that from what google did circa 2002(it was really, really annoying to use from ip addresses they had determined to be wap browsers, so they translated every fucking page through their god awful wapizer even if you had been better off with the original page, the god awful wapizer even cut sentences midw prev (1)(2)(3)(4) next ).

out of curiosity does it do it both when you're on 3g and on wifi? also, I suspect the right place for that mobile expert fucker to forward you would have been touch.facebook.com if not to the real full page(touch.facebook.com is a bit like the mobile app, it's different from m.facebook.com which is optimized for dumbphones).

as for google+ satisfaction, I got no doubt that it's higher. but it's like I said the other day, the people on google+ are google employees, facebook haters and people who have no friends. 2/3rds of that group would say they're more satisfied with g+ even if it stuck needles into their eyes and the remaining 1/3rd is using social networks as yet another news aggregator.

Re:My biggest facebook annoyance

[JohnFen]

This is one of my pet peeves in websites today. It's not just FB that does this.

Attention web developers: PLEASE STOP forcing us to the mobile versions of your sites. Just stop it.

Re:My biggest facebook annoyance

[gnapster]

So, where does Diaspora fit in this metaphor? Is that Annapolis? (I have not spent any time in Maryland; this is a stab in the dark.)

Re:My biggest facebook annoyance

[FatLittleMonkey]

If you have Firefox/Firefox-mobile on your tablet, you can use the addon "Phony" to spoof your user-agent if you want. (Or "Modify Headers" addon for something a bit more full featured.) Chrome might have a similar addon. Opera probably already has something like that built in (it usually does).

If you're using an iPad, I can't help you.

As for google, none of my friends are over there,

G+ doesn't have friends, it has circles. So many circles...

Re:My biggest facebook annoyance

[shentino]

Yes, please trust your social network overlords to make your decisions for you.

You are not allowed to play games with your user string. Trust us, we must have total control over your browsing experience in order to provide you with the best possible service.

Thank you and have a nice day

-- Big Brother

Re:My biggest facebook annoyance

[shentino]

Quite simple. Because it's their fucking website and they'll have their servers send you hither and yon as they damn well see fit.

Don't like it? Leave.

Oh right, you can't because they don't honor account deletion requests.

I am being sarcastic, but the fact that they own the domain name pretty much means they get to do what they darned please. You cannot force them to change, and because they already have your information by the balls and refuse to delete it even when you tell them to, they pretty much have you locked in.

Re:My biggest facebook annoyance

[cpu6502]

+ 1

Re:My biggest facebook annoyance

[shentino]

The problem is that Facebook is disobeying the user's web browser.

Re:My biggest facebook annoyance

[perryizgr8]

this happens when it thinks you are using a shitty browser. lemme guess, android tablet, right? try using an ipad, the fb website is amazing on it.

Re:My biggest facebook annoyance

[brantondaveperson]

Worse even than that, are the sites that insist on pimping their app before they'll let you through to their site. IMDB, for instance.

Re:My biggest facebook annoyance

[ieatcookies]

There is usually an agent setting for your browser on your tablet that you can set to desktop from mobile. This isn't an arbitrary decision to redirect you, it's a calculated one based on the type of browser you're using

Re:My biggest facebook annoyance

[JohnFen]

You are, of course, 100% correct. As a software developer who has had to implement more than one brain-dead design against my will, I know better. My apologies.

I do hope that developers make a huge stink when asked to do these things, though. Project planners should, at least, dread giving these kinds of specs to developers because they know they'll get a lot of grief about them.

Your Mom's on Facebook

[jrmcc]

'nuff said!

Re:Your Mom's on Facebook

[HeckRuler]

Yeah, that was one of the signs for me to get out. Facebook was pretty hip and useful with just the right amount of local connectivity and compartamentalization that I found it useful but not scary. Then they let the highschool kids join. That was a mistake. Facebook was a college thing and highschool kids didn't really need in. No, they really didn't. Facebook handled the immediate events and social circles in college. Prospective students might have an interest, but they didn't need access while still in highschool. If facebook really wanted to enter that market, they should have fired up a seperate server for the school. Or kept a wall between the two groups. Yeah, those walls were important. And when the walls that were around every college broke down and suddenly everyone could be friends with everyone. And everyone could stalk everyone. And when my mother joined. Yep, that was a pretty clear sign that this cool local network was no longer local. Scrutiny would be up. Spam would be up. I was no longer dealing with my just my peers. I was now dealing with EVERYONE.

Now, I appreciate a tool that let's me manage, coordinate, and deal with the masses. But you add my mother to that mix, as much as I love my mother, it becomes lame.

Any party with my mother is just not one I'm going to have a good time at.

Re:Your Mom's on Facebook

[HeckRuler]

I've got nothing. Even if you established a city-based local network, you're still allowing the general public in. Once you do that anyone can lie about where they're at, who they are, and what they're pushing. And my mother can still join.

Apparently I'm ok with Facebook being a college-only thing, since that's what happened with me. While Facebook does technically have a page on me, it's pretty stale. I never connected it with anything other than my .edu email, which hasn't existed forever. At some point facebook became something I wanted to secure, so instead of my throwaway passwords I bumped it up to something stronger... and promptly forgot it. With no accessable accounts hooked it it, that page is orphaned. I could probably bitch to Facebook and somehow get control of it... but meh.

But I guess one answer is that at that point in life you join linkedIn and stop posting pictures of your wild parties. Your past activites in college/facebook don't carry over to the professional world. But hey, that's just me.

I never opened a Facebook account

[circletimessquare]

I never will

For that, I was a smelly old geeky kook before.

But now, I am smelly old PRESCIENT geeky kook.

Yeah!

People are finally understanding they can do everything Facebook does for them without feeding an advertising and spying machine in other venues.

Not that Google is an improvement in that department, but eventually Fabebook's crass manipulation and even Google' subtle manipulation will make way to the realization: you own your data, and you control your data, and it's time everyone woke up and realized what they were giving away for free and what it was doing to their privacy and their integrity.

So what's the next hub? Diaspora?

Re:I never opened a Facebook account

[stevegee58]

You modern day Luddite you. (Sounds just like me)

Re:I never opened a Facebook account

[zippy40]

I never did either. I never saw the need in needing to advertise myself. The only people that I want to communicate with have my email and phone number.

Re:I never opened a Facebook account

[firewrought]

We should start a club for non-facebook users! Someone can run an NNTP server and we can all upload base-64 encoded JPG's of cats.

(Seriously... FB can't die soon enough for me; I'm getting tired of holding out.)

Re:I never opened a Facebook account

[gl4ss]

if I put something on my homepage, google gets it - it's meant to be public in the first place. if I use my email, I get google adverts tailored by it...
and diaspora will fly just as well as private irc networks. not too well.

and if you were on fb you might have had your anti-tea party movie funded already(also there's no need to tinyfy the url, it cuts down on clickthroughs since there's a possibility for goatse now). that's why the internet is a hard game - sometimes you want others to notice.

Re:I never opened a Facebook account

[GodfatherofSoul]

I have a FB placeholder account. If anyone wants to friend me from the old days, I log in and approve it, the log out. People can get in touch with me easily, but I don't have the annoyance of FB tracking.

Re:I never opened a Facebook account

[DogDude]

Integrity? Ha! That's hilarious. People don't have integrity any more (did they ever?). They'll sell their souls for 10% off an Amazon order. Most people are stupid, selfish, and have -zero- integrity.

Re:I never opened a Facebook account

[garett_spencley]

I deleted my Facebook account about 2 months ago.

And then I really missed, not the people / friends (the important of whom I speak to outside of Facebook) but the updates from pages that I "liked." I realized that I used Facebook more as a homepage / portal / news feed than anything else. And some of the stuff I couldn't get outside of Facebook. I wanted to create a new account that would have zero friends (except for maybe my wife & kids), but the registration insisted on providing them my cell phone number to "verify" the account. No thanks.

Ironically, I've since "hi-jacked" a fake account that my wife set up with our daughters for games (that never required verification, go figure), which I used to re-like the things I missed. Now I have all of the updates Facebook was actually useful for without the social network element that I never cared much about. And the best part about it, it's anonymous. No more getting tagged in people's photos. No more concerning myself with privacy issues etc. That's why they want to verify new accounts these days (not an assumption, the verification page stated it outright).

Re:I never opened a Facebook account

[geekoid]

"FB can't die soon enough for me; I'm getting tired of holding out"

Did you think about it, or did you just not use it because it's popular, and you have committed to an emotional ID of being on the outside cause you think it's cool?

Otherwise the sentence makes no damn sense. If you don't want to use it fine, but why the fuck are you "getting tired holding out"? That implies you are holding out against your wishes not to be holding out.
Makes no damn sense.

Re:I never opened a Facebook account

[firewrought]

Did you think about it, or did you just not use it because it's popular, and you have committed to an emotional ID of being on the outside cause you think it's cool?

I might avoid a design because of its popularity. I'd be reluctant to wear houndstooth in Tuscaloosa, for instance, and I'd like to wear all-black occasionally except Johnny Cash, Steve Jobs, and all the emo kids got there first. I'm not above ego.

But FB falls into a different category. I have maybe ~half a dozen things I boycott, with varying levels of severity/commitment. Some of them are for philosophical reasons (privacy, liberty, decentralization of power), some of them are for lifestyle reasons (I like to write in complete sentences, you twits), and some are for economic reasons (such as "I could afford your exorbitant rates, but I'm P.O.ed that you've bribed my government into protecting you from competition").

You may argue that these boycotts are irrational, that I apply them inconsistently, and that they are pointless unless they have a significant chance of effecting some positive social change. You would be right, but I wouldn't care much. Rationality is a tool [one I must aggressively apply everyday no matter how often it bruises my ego], but it's not an end to itself. As Bruce Sterling put it in one of his short stories ("Swarm"): "Intelligence is very much a two-edged sword... It interferes with the business of living. Life, and intelligence, do not mix very well. They are not at all closely related.".

Re:I never opened a Facebook account

[tompaulco]

I for one am not ready to make the switch yet from not using Facebook to not using Google+.

last post

[THE_WELL_HUNG_OYSTER]

Second-mover advantage

Google+ and Circles

[Anonymous Coward]

I never liked the idea that anyone can add me to their Circle without my approval. And yes, I know I can "Block", but that just seems mean.

Re:Google+ and Circles

[green1]

Anyone can add you to their circles, but unless you either a) post everything as public for EVERYONE to see, or b) add them to one of your circles in return, they won't see anything you post anyway, so what's it matter?
This is one thing Google Plus has done right. The default for posting is to only show your posts to people in your own circles, but you can show stuff to the entire world if you want.
If you want to talk about what's "mean" the only thing I don't like is that people can see who you have in your circles, so sometimes you feel pressure to add someone just to be polite, of course you can always have a circle for those people and not share anything with them... They can't see WHICH circle you put them in...

Re:Google+ and Circles

[BenLeeImp]

Well, the visibility of the things you publish is based on who you have in your circles, so it doesn't really matter who adds you. That's kind of the point of the circles. You don't need a separate "fan" page, for instance, in order to publish different things for public/private consumption.

Re:Google+ and Circles

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to talk about what's "mean" the only thing I don't like is that people can see who you have in your circles, so sometimes you feel pressure to add someone just to be polite, of course you can always have a circle for those people and not share anything with them... They can't see WHICH circle you put them in...

And that is what is my issue. People will look at someone's profile and see you as someone they have in their circle, so most people will assume there is a relation between the two. Why should some random guy from anywhere in the world, have the option to but a relation to me, if I don't know them in some way? Maybe I'm being anal about it, but I just don't like the idea.

Re:Google+ and Circles

[green1]

You don't HAVE to add them to your circles, if random guy I don't know adds me to their circles, I don't add them back (and I do have a couple of those... though I have no idea why) it is very explicit when you look at it who is following who. if random guy is following you without you following back, it makes them look like a stalker, doesn't make you look bad, in fact if anything it makes you look good because you must be interesting if you have fans like that. The only time it is awkward is when your real life friendship is also awkward (ie that creepy guy who somehow ends up at the same parties as you and just sits in the corner all night... you don't want to add him because he's not really a friend... but he's at all the same events you are, so you don't feel right excluding him either for fear of offending him and having to deal with it the next time you see him)

This allows famous people to interact more easilly, they can have millions of fans following them without needing to approve each and every one, and yet they can still have only their actual friends in their own circles, and share more personal stuff only with them, without having to share it with their millions of followers, and without having to have a seperate persona for their public selves from their private lives. Now famous people are somewhat of an extreme example, but it scales well for all levels.

I do have a fair number of complaints about a few things google has done, but the setup of their circles is not one of them, that's one place that I feel Google nailed it just right.

Re:Google+ and Circles

[AmbushBug]

If you want to talk about what's "mean" the only thing I don't like is that people can see who you have in your circles

You can change this: go to your profile, click on edit. People in your circles appear on the right hand side - notice that it highlights in blue when you mouse over it - click that area and you can change the visibility. Uncheck the box to turn visibility completely off, or you can choose to just show them to people in your circles.

Re:Just the next step in the social network lifecy

[LoudMusic]

Except I don't see Google pawning off their service. They ARE the conglomo-corp. And historically their ads are not terribly invasive in their services, because the ads are so much better targeted at the users that they don't have to pepper the page with a dozen ads.

Google can really stick it (gymnastics term, weird of me) if they don't force the UI changes on the user. Develop new stuff, absolutely, don't force it.

Re:Just the next step in the social network lifecy

[Anonymous Coward]

Tumblr is around number 2 right now. Expect a a Tumblr hype-storm soon and then the buyout/IPO and then all the users will move to the next trendy blog. It's so lame the users think they're being hip constantly switching to hip new blogs but all they're doing is making a bunch of venture capitalist dickheads rich.

Not sure if trolling or just stupid

[stevegee58]

-insert pic of Fry from Futurama-

Seems obvious

[amRadioHed]

It sounds kind of obvious that Google+ would have higher satisfaction then Facebook. The only people using it are people who really want to use it, no one is there just because all there friends are there.

Re:Seems obvious

[kamapuaa]

And half the people who use it are Google employees, so it makes sense they'd be more positive in satisfaction surveys.

Re:Seems obvious

[gVibe]

I use Google+ because when you first join...you are asked verbatim whether you would like them to use your information for advertisement revenue. Now whether they actually don't do this when you say no is another issue. I supposed I would know if I were logged in and suddenly the ads started showing me things tied to what I was typing or to what was being said during a meet up.

Re:Seems obvious

[perryizgr8]

g+ has 150 million users, not active users.

Re:Seems obvious

[kamapuaa]

I need to grow up and stop making jokes about G+? Are you a Google employee?

But yes, of course a lot of people signed up for the service to give it a try, and then quit and never used it again. Actually that describes just about all my friends who use Facebook.

Yeah, right

[fiannaFailMan]

Google+ users are more satisfied with the site

I'm sure they are. Both of them.

Re:Yeah, right

[93 Escort Wagon]

Get with the times, man - there are THREE now.

Re:Yeah, right

[Anubis IV]

Dangit. You beat me to the exact punchline I was going to use.

It is true

[Giant Electronic Bra]

Of course MySpace REALLY just went noplace in terms of creating features. They piddled around but it was like everything was user interface nuclear disaster. It was the ugliest site in history. I guess FB COULD screw up that bad. I think they probably won't. They'll screw up a little bit, but so will Google.

Re:It is true

[MozeeToby]

Facebook's mobile app is mediocre at best. If you believe even half the hype, that will be enough to seriously hurt them in the long run, especially considering they've admitted it themselves that they don't know how to do mobile well.

Re:It is true

[youngone]

I kind of assumed that once the Myspace guys got the millions from the mark that bought them out, their job was done and could kick back. Seemed like quite a clever business model really. Couldn't remember who the mark was, but google did: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/06/doing-the-math-on-news-corps-disastrous-myspace-years/

Re:It is true

[rcharbon]

They don't know how to PROFIT from mobile.

Re:It is true

[interkin3tic]

I know this much: the first one of them to start allowing you to blast shitty music on your friends' computers? Invest heavily in the other company.

Re:It is true

[kakur]

Of course MySpace REALLY just went noplace in terms of creating features. They piddled around but it was like everything was user interface nuclear disaster. It was the ugliest site in history. I guess FB COULD screw up that bad. I think they probably won't. They'll screw up a little bit, but so will Google.

I disagree somewhat mildly.
The ugliest site in history was Geocities. Think Myspace, but web 1.0. Blink tags and marquee everywhere. Mouse cursors with trails.
Also there were 'neighborhoods' with 'numbers' and the idea of referencing a site by the username of the person who created it simply didn't exist.

Myspace was bad, very eye-searing, but I doubt it ever took the title from Geocities.

Re:It is true

[Pieroxy]

They also don't know how to do it at all. The iPhone app sucks ass really badly. G+ iPhone app is a model of stability and usability in comparison.

Re:It is true

[Pieroxy]

I want to suck ass.

Then use the iPhone Facebook app !

Re:Analyzing explosive Google+ growth...

[Daetrin]

A quick check of my circles shows about two dozen people who post occasionally, about a dozen of which post on a fairly regular basis, and if i'm counting right seven have posted in the last 24 hours. Oh, and that's not counting the two Google topics i follow. I have two friends who work for Google who post occasionally, but i also have three or four friends who work for Google and never post at all.

I certainly wouldn't mind those numbers being a little higher, and perhaps i should go out looking for a few more interesting people to follow, but that doesn't seem too bad to me.

The fall in facebook stock

[damn_registrars]

... is not due much to the loss of users. It is due primarily to the fact that the investors realized facebook has no long-term business plan. The notion of "bring in users, sell their information" only works for so long. They don't have a good plan for getting users of mobile devices to pay attention to advertising. They don't have a plan to keep users interested. Eventually the novelty wears off.

Facebook wants people to believe they are the next google. They are more likely the next AOL.

Re:The fall in facebook stock

[GodfatherofSoul]

When Goldman Sachs was telling the world it was worth $50 billion 6 months or so before the IPO, that should've been a sign for every investor to run for the hills. If you're not smart enough to turn tail when you detect the taint of GS, you deserve to get looted.

The high water mark.

[gallondr00nk]

Hardly surprising really that just after the IPO the numbers start flatling. It seemed obvious to me that the IPO was simply to cash in while the going was good, rather than to move on from there.

There's no sustainability in social networking, and I imagine the smart money knew that already. I imagine the people who invested in it were the same ones who thought that the housing market would never crash.

Re:The high water mark.

[Tom]

It seemed obvious to me that the IPO was simply to cash in while the going was good, rather than to move on from there.

Of course it was. Everyone who believed otherwise is an idiot. Facebook did not urgently need cash and had no known expansion plans that would require massive amounts of capital right now. It was large enough to take on Google because it is large enough to make the rules.

In my experience, the rules for Internet companies are still that you do an IPO either early in your growth phase, when things are looking good but not guaranteed, to distribute the risk and get the cash you need for your growth - i.e. on the verge of your breakthrough. Or you do it after the breakthrough, to cash out, selling to people who believe your business will still last long enough for them to make a profit on their original investment and/or find another idiot later on who pays even more.

So any company doing an IPO after it has become the #1 in its segment is cashing out. Doesn't mean it's a bad investment, but investors who think they are investing in a Star and not a Cash Cow are very likely kidding themselves. If you have a star on your hands and believe in it, you'd be stupid to cash out. Even if you're bored and want to do something else, keeping it around will give you the capital for the next ten failed startups.

There's no sustainability in social networking, and I imagine the smart money knew that already.

I do think there is sustainability - but exponential growth on a limited resource base simply can't work. Sooner or later, everyone who wants to be on Facebook, is. But you can then keep the user base, the way some European companies have been around for one or two hundred years without much growth. Smart money (i.e. not Wall Street) knows that "growth" is a buzzword outside a certain (short) period of a company's lifecycle. Part of what caused the financial crisis is this fanatical, quasi-religious belief in growth. People needed to grow in markets that didn' have room for growth at the time, so they had to cook the books, invent new financial fake products, everything to shift the same money around in a way that generated pseudo-profits and fake growth.

Re:The high water mark.

[Pecisk]

While I completely agree that social networking and Facebook is way overrated (in eyes of marketing people), it's not completely useless and without any value. However, this value can be extracted only by working with users. Problem with social networking is that it is so easy to do - there is stiff competition, G+ already showed that it can deliver much better product for niche users, etc. And that's not counting Diaspora, which actually works (as software) - so I can build social networking for my school in few days.

So in nutshell what's really is important how you handle your user base and their needs. How well do you respond to their requests. How well do you respect them. How well do you stand by your promises.

So it is real competition, actual free market. Money grab period in this industry came and has gone.

Timeline

[zidium]

It's the damn timeline forced migration in May. I haven't been a regular since. I can't STAND IT!!!

Bring back the walls, please!

Comment in subject idiocy

[zidium]

It's amazing how difficult it is to read your entire comment, when half of it is in the subject.

Re:Comment in subject idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

Comment in subject idiocy it's amazing how difficult it is to read your entire comment

That's not even a sentence.

( :P )

Re:Comment in subject idiocy

[psiclops]

It's amazing that you're so new to this site that you don't understand that putting part of the comment in the subject line is meant to grab attention..

BAH. REAL INTERNET USERS KNOW THAT THE BEST WAY TO GRAB ATTENTION IS TO TYPE EVERYTHING IN CAPS AND BOLD.
FUCKIN NEWBS WITH THEIR DUMB-ASS SPLITTING THE COMMENT OUT - TOTALLY INEFFECTIVE

besides, exactly how does splitting the comment attract attention? i don't even know someone's done it until after i start reading their comment....

Re:Comment in subject idiocy

[Khyber]

>he doesn't know 4chan stuff spawned from Slashdot

Re:Full time job?

[Attila Dimedici]

Are you sure that Facebook has not created a "ghost" account for you with information they have gleaned from people who are actual Facebook users, just waiting for you to create a user account to link it to?

Yup

[Giant Electronic Bra]

They will both do grouping, the g+ version is just infinitely easier to deal with. I guess FB has been working on that, but honestly I only use it myself basically so I can actually see all the messages that people I know mysteriously seem to think that posting to FB will magically get to everyone. FB is OK, G+ is definitely nicer in most ways.

Sort of

[Giant Electronic Bra]

G+ is less designed around getting everyone to join and more around actually communicating. You can put people in your circles that are just email contacts. They'll get invited of course, but you can happily post things to them. I get what you're saying though. FB is conceptually easier to wrap your head around in a sense.

Re:Sort of

[mcmonkey]

You can put people in your circles that are just email contacts. They'll get invited of course, but you can happily post things to them.

That's part of the problem. If I use G+ and my friend uses G+, let's connect. But if I use G+, and my friend doesn't, I want to be able to tell.

By "they'll get invited" I read "they'll get spammed." I don't like spamming my friends.

Since I couldn't tell through the site who used G+ and who just happened to have some other Google account, I gave up on adding to my circles.

Re:Sort of

[coolmadsi]

You can put people in your circles that are just email contacts. They'll get invited of course, but you can happily post things to them.

That's part of the problem. If I use G+ and my friend uses G+, let's connect. But if I use G+, and my friend doesn't, I want to be able to tell.

By "they'll get invited" I read "they'll get spammed." I don't like spamming my friends.

Since I couldn't tell through the site who used G+ and who just happened to have some other Google account, I gave up on adding to my circles.

When you post to a circle that has someone not using Google+, it says "Also email X people" as a checkbox option. You could send one post to everyone as a notification of your use (including emailing non-Google+ users), and then uncheck it after that to not bother anyone who didn't create an account. You can choose this on a per-post basis, so you can email everyone not using Google+ again if you are posting something particularly important that you want to share.

Google+ GUI & Privacy

[lilfields]

I find the Google+ GUI to be way too intrusive and annoying to use. Others will disagree, but I absolutely hate their GUI. Neither of the two giants have great privacy policies...so why should I switch to Google+ from Facebook, if it has less people, annoying to use and has the same or worse privacy policies.

Re:Google+ GUI & Privacy

[geekoid]

How is the GUI intrusive? I don't understand annoying either, but that's subjective.

Google has pretty good privacy policy and implementation.

Re:Google+ GUI & Privacy

[perryizgr8]

i agree, g+ ui is horribly ugly and slower to load. fb pages look like works of art compared to g+.

Re:Just the next step in the social network lifecy

[dehole]

5. Facebook sells to some other corporation such as Yahoo to cash out for good.

Bzzt all.worship.facebook.bzzt

[gelfling]

We identify with the Zuckerberg peaceful ruler of the 9 galaxies. All hail facebook. All hail.

1.6 billion shares could be dumped in 12 months

[knorthern knight]

The actual problem for FB is that 1.6 billion shares could be dumped by insiders in the next several months. I don't expect it to happen, but a bunch will. But, but, but... didn't they only sell 421 million shares at the IPO. Yeah, but, insiders have been granted 1.6 billion shares beforehand. See http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/columnist/krantz/story/2012-05-25/facebook-insider-lockup-period/55208546/1

> The onslaught of Facebook stock looks like an avalanche. At the 91-day point after
> the IPO, insiders are able to sell 268 million shares of stock. Between 91 and
> 181 days after the IPO, insiders can sell an additional 137 million shares. And
> then after 181 days following the IPO, another 1.2 billion shares are free to be sold.

I don't think that every insider will cash out (e.g. Mark Z wants to retain control) but obviously a bunch of "paper millionaires" will want to get out while the getting out is still good. For a country-by-country breakdown of Facebook's numbers, over various timeranges, check out http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/?interval=last-month#chart-intervals

Facebook is a bloated website

[Svartormr]

Doesn't work without telling NoScript to run its scripts. Then its scripts freeze your browser every now and then. And you have to keep killing the process to recover all the memory lost to leaks.

Re:Facebook is a bloated website

[perryizgr8]

Then its scripts freeze your browser every now and then. And you have to keep killing the process to recover all the memory lost to leaks.

somebody needs an upgrade!

Re:Facebook is a bloated website

[Ash-Fox]

I do not have noscript, but use the latest Firefox. Why don't I have this problem?

Yeah....but....

[erp_consultant]

From what I've seen, G+ has some interesting features. The circles feature is very elegant. They seem to respect your privacy a bit more and make it easier to get your data OUT of the system. But all of that doesn't mean a hill of beans if everyone I know is using Facebook. It sort of reminds me of the HP Touchpad. Great OS but no apps. So you use it for a while and realize you can't really do anything with it so you either put Android on it or ditch it and get an iPad. That's the feeling I get with G+. It's cool and all but if I don't know anyone there what am I going to do? Follow a bunch of strangers? Now if the momentum changes and people start abandoning Facebook in droves, kind of like what happened with MySpace and Friendster, and moving over to G+ then you've got something. The problem is that the more you use Facebook the more you have invested in it and the less likely you are to go to the trouble of switching to something else.

Re:Yeah....but....

[laffer1]

Some of the strangers are interesting. I've been following a lot of tech people including Linus and several FreeBSD developers. There is a totally different user base on G+. The content is interesting and not stupid cards and signs spamming my Facebook feed. People use the site differently. It's not a replacement for Facebook. It's like the intellectual's social network in comparison.

Re:Yeah....but....

[shutdown -p now]

Follow a bunch of strangers?

When strangers include Linus Torvalds and Jon Skeet, why not? They actually have interesting things to say.

And, by the way, our very own CmdrTaco is on G+, too.

Re:Yeah....but....

[perryizgr8]

following a bunch of celebrities does not make you an "intellectual". i'd rather say that if you find your friends' posts "stupid cards and signs spamming my Facebook feed", why are you friends with such people. as for following famous people, twitter already does that, with far less complexity and bullshit.
in conclusion, people use g+ because they wanna be all smug and feel "intellectual".

Re:Yeah....but....

[perryizgr8]

why not use twitter then? it does the follow strangers thing a lot better than g+.

Re:Yeah....but....

[shutdown -p now]

You missed the part about following strangers that say interesting things. Twitter is incompatible with that by design due to message length restriction.

People use it to monetize

[tkprit]

G-users are interested in getting you to look at whatever their product is. Ads pretending to be a group of friends, with a smattering of people who believe Pepsi is their friend. An online business convention.

Re:Just the next step in the social network lifecy

[shentino]

Let's see...I don't recall G+ ever playing with my privacy settings behind my back.

If I hadn't gotten my naive fingers caught in facebook's "too late we already have your data and we're not giving it up" mousetrap I'd have deleted my account there a long time ago.

And this stupid "2 week of no access" didn't work. I deleted my account there and then had facebook completely firewalled from my computer, and I waited a *month* for my "deleted" facebook account to disappear.

Not a god damned fucking thing happened.

Been getting kind of tired of FB myself

[WillAffleckUW]

About the only thing keeping me on FB is games, and Zynga has peeved me off a lot recently, so it wouldn't take much of another privacy theft by FB to get me to leave it, right about now.

Sayonara. Get used to being Friendster or AOL or CIS.

Re:Full time job?

[Zebai]

I'm sure this is the case for me, i have never visited it but i do not doubt my parents held nothing back when filling out their family details settings. Even if i ask them to delete it it would have little point, facebook would still hold onto it.

"Facebook Loses Users"

[formfeed]

.. but still uses losers.

FB Keeps shooting itself in the foot

[SuperCharlie]

I quit my FB 2 or so years ago but the wife is on 10+ hours/day. She has around 900 followers of a parrot gift shop and parrot rescue help site she promotes and works on FB. Every single thing FB has done in the last year or so has made her cuss. (all according to her) The timeline is crap. They made it so people cant see her posts **even when they want to** and even more crazy.. when you actually freaking PAY to PROMOTE posts still..still..not all your followers are even freakin ALLOWED to see them unless the visit your page.

Every decision they have made has limited the interactions between people instead of making it easier to interact. To me, it appears to be their attempt to choke the audience and force the monitization of the interactions. It is simply pissing people off and if they dont stop soon, someone WILL come up with a better mousetrap.

Good old Rupert

[Giant Electronic Bra]

Yeah, he did nothing with it. I think it was really just not worth anything. Their platform was half-assed and they were bound to get eaten by any of the other players. The guy definitely played it well.

hmmmm no

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you have a gmail account doesn't mean you have g+ one. You still have to enable create it. You can easily opt out when you sign up for a gmail account

MySpace

[cwgmpls]

Frustration with UI changes and too much advertising -- the exact same problems MySpace had before they went down.

Slashdot has been losing users !!

[Taco Cowboy]

Look at the following graph, if you don't believe me -

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/slashdot.org
 

Re:Slashdot has been losing users !!

[Ginger Unicorn]

It looks like a steady rate of visits with one unexplained giant spike for a month near the beginning, rather than a downward trend. I wonder what caused the traffic to double a year ago. I don't remember anything particular than happened then.

Social behavior

[SlashDev]

This behavior is typical of human species, they gather somewhere (myspace), then get bored, go elsewhere (facebook), get bored again and go somewhere unusual (google+) and then go back to see what happened to their friends (myspace) and the cycle re-starts again....

Facebook uses losers.

[PiSkyHi]

Facebook uses losers.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

OK

[Giant Electronic Bra]

Yeah, you got me there. Geoshitties was pretty bad. I guess I'd wiped it from my brain...

"me too"

[jjohn]

I use both FB and G+. FB is useful to friends and family. G+ is superior as a hobby news stream. G+ has a more focused, less cluttered UI.

And hangouts? FOR THE WIN.

I appreciate that this just one nerd's opinion. YMMV.

Re:Just the next step in the social network lifecy

[denis-The-menace]

IOW: Facebook followed Digg's recipe for failure.

Re:Hmmmm, no

[tehcyder]

in my job (IT) almost everyone is on facebook, and lots of fun and crazy stuff is shared every day.

What has your job got to do with it? Or are your bosses so thick they think you're working while you're on facebook, just because your job is something to do with computers?