Why You Shouldn't Write Off Google+ Just Yet

TheNextCorner writes "Cmdr Taco writes for The Washington Post on why you shouldn't write off Google+ just yet: "Google+ is technically better than its rivals in a number of key ways. The user interface is comfortable and friendly. It's easy to maintain circles of contacts, and to segregate what you share with each group. Discussions of small-to-medium sizes are manageable and readable — even in real time. Facebook wins when it comes to the open graph and app ecosystem, but a lot of people don't care about that stuff.""

Comments

Google What?

[s.petry]

I wrote off all social media long ago, I don't even keep track. No thanks, spy on someone else.

Re:Google What?

[i_ate_god]

but anonymity is bad too?

Re:Google What?

[jamesh]

I wrote off all social media long ago, I don't even keep track. No thanks, spy on someone else.

You're missing the point. Facebook is a tool that _you_ use to spy on and stalk _other_ people. As long as you don't post anything any more revealing that "omg wtf my dog just farted!!1!!!1" then you don't have a problem. It's not like anyone can spy on anything other than what you post there.

Re:Google What?

[bmo]

I wrote off all social media long ago, I don't even keep track. No thanks, spy on someone else.

It's really no different than Usenet. Except with Usenet you don't have any control at all over who sees your post. Ever. It's not Facebook's or Google's fault that you can't figure out the filtering. Treat "social networking" as Usenet or BBS networks, and you're golden. It's not that hard. But wait there's more. Facebook has features that you can use to control *what other people say about you* - you can have tags (mentions of you) in other people's posts set to require your approval. How neat is that? And you can actually control who sees your posts, down to eliminating even single individuals. Want to blab a phone number or picture to all your "friends" but one? You can do it.

But wait, you say, Facebook knows all about you! Well, dearie, I hate to break it to you, but when I was an admin lo those many years ago, I saw who downloaded the watersports binaries. And no, they weren't about swimming. Nothing shocks me any more.

No, really, I see posts like yours, and when I mentally transport myself back to the 90s, it looks like you're whining. If you haven't learned how to manage your privacy by now, you shouldn't even be posting to Slashdot, announcing your views to the world here.

--
BMO

Re:Google What?

[horza]

That's bullshit. Usenet was a public forum and anything you posted you knew was public. Not posting to what you thought was a group of friends but unbeknown to you Facebook changed your privacy settings to make it public. You trusted your server admins (and I've run email servers for people too) and if they stepped over the line and abused their knowledge they would be fired and their reputation trashed. If Facebook abuses and sells your information they make a healthy bonus.

The '90s web of trust didn't scale, and fell apart as it bloomed outside the academic world. It's a different world now with a different set of problems, you can't compare the two.

Phillip.

Re:Google What?

[Americano]

Usenet was a public forum and anything you posted you knew was public.

Yeah, you'd have to have been pretty stupid to post something to Usenet thinking it'd be private.

Come to think of it, the same thing applies to Facebook.

Re:Google What?

[bmo]

No, it's not bullshit.

Posting to Facebook even back when it was strictly an academics-only community still meant that whatever you posted was public to that community. And if you think it was cloistered and that nobody from the outside could get in and read your stuff, you were delusional.

Go ahead and rage that Facebook "changed its privacy policies." People who knew better didn't post photos of drunken bacchanalia, because they knew that doing so was stupid, even in a "closed" network. Only the people who threw caution to the wind were upset when Facebook opened up to the public.

Here's a clue: Don't post anything in public (even in a "cloistered setting") that you don't want your mom, or the cops, to see. Follow that rule and you'll have no problems whatsoever with privacy. Yes it's self censorship. It's also called common sense. I followed the rule even back in the 80s and 90s even on small systems. It has done me well.

When Dejanews showed up and everyone friggin' panicked, I didn't give a shit, because nobody could hold whatever I said against me anyway.

--
BMO

Re:Google What?

[markjhood2003]

I wrote off all social media long ago, I don't even keep track. No thanks, spy on someone else.

It's really no different than Usenet. Except with Usenet you don't have any control at all over who sees your post. Ever. It's not Facebook's or Google's fault that you can't figure out the filtering.

-- BMO

Google's privacy controls are pretty transparent, but Facebook appears to deliberately obfuscate their privacy settings, and the policies change frequently. I believe Facebook does this deliberately in order to maximize the amount of personal info their customers and 3rd party developers have access to.

Usenet was indeed a form of computer-mediated social networking long before the term was invented, but otherwise there are not many similarities. Nobody had any expectation of privacy on Usenet; all you had to do was grep through the raw feed to find anything you want. Facebook on the other hand promises privacy control but in practice they actively thwart it and only provide the illusion of privacy. They always have complete access to your info even if their customers don't.

Re:Google What?

[datavirtue]

They almost have to do this. Online communities are being poisoned to death. While I value anonymous posting, much of the web is becoming unusable. This could be solved with better (think: out-of-the-box) moderation, but the other alternative to cleaning up something as invective as YouTube is to require real names. I would be willing to pay a small amount in able to join a community and use a handle, with the chance of getting banned by a REAL moderator, to participate in a grown-up conversation.

Re:Google What?

[kermidge]

Real moderators are one the things I missed the most going from GEnie, Delphi, CompuServe to "the Web." People could choose a handle to use in the forums, while the company knew your real name for billing and access control.

Posts were sorted by topic and thread, people were admonished, counseled, or banned for misuse. 'Twas fairly civilized, and sorely missed.

Re:Google What?

[Raenex]

One of the things I value about Slashdot is that the comments aren't moderated beyond +/-.

Re:Google What?

[yoshi_mon]

It is kinda bullshit, can we agree on that?

Because the profit motive of Usenet was not to spy on people, but as a value added service by ISPs to get you to buy the service.

Facebook's and Google+'s profit motive IS spying on you.

Re:Google What?

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's absolutely 100% the only reason Google's interested in having your mobile number. Really.

So?

[Johann Lau]

We're waiting for something that's not Facebook, not something that's not Facebook, but is basically Facebook.

Oh, and if you work in advertising: kill yourself.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not like Facebook but people are trying to use it as such. Google plus is a set of tools to find things to do socially while Facebook is just a way to communicate socially.

Re:So?

[bill_mcgonigle]

And what internet, exactly, do I see today? One that is "a bit faster, a bit sooner", and has more tracking code than content on it? You are seriously saying this is a good thing with a straight face? MOAR = GUD?

One that has search engines on it, one that has given millions of people gmail/hotmail type services which allow them to meaningfully use the Internet without a subscription fee, one that has all sorts of cloud services that are allowing people to not worry about local storage.

Hell, I've got a * next to my username, I pay Slashdot an astonishingly small amount of money per day. You don't - your Slashdot is funded by their ad model!

Re:Strange title....

[Black Parrot]

... as it's FB I wrote off long ago - as G+ will surely one day join it - in the land of fad induced mass market websites. Anyone still using GeoCities or MySpace?

Meet the new Web, same as the old Web.

A 12-1/2 years ago when you watched the evening news or saw a commercial you got the distinct impression that both only existed to get you to visit their shiny new web site.

Now you get the distinct impression that they only exist to get you to visit their shiny new Facebook page.

We're past due another dot-crash.

Re:user friendly?

[Urza9814]

OK, I won't defend Facebook as a shining example of good UI design, but Google? How do I write on someone's wall? That is, how do I say something directed to someone, but in a public way?

Same way you do it on Twitter -- you don't. You post things to your own page and tag the other person. You don't post something on someone else's page -- which actually makes a lot of sense. The problem here is not their UI, but the fact that you've gotten used to doing things the Facebook way.

facebook wins...

[buddyglass]

Facebook wins because that's where all my friends and acquaintances are. That Google+ is technically superior doesn't mean much so long as it lacks a critical mass of users. It's also foreign. People have been on Facebook long enough that they're comfortable with it. In order for people to defect Google+ has to be not just "better" but "way better".

Re:Okay?

[Darinbob]

Why does there have to be a splash before people notice that there's water?

Re:Parable of the format wars

[glodime]

Betamax was not universally better. It had higher quality, shorter recording ability. People wanted longer recording times. Maybe Betamax could have improved to allow for longer recordings, but people didn't want to wait and choose lesser quality longer recording media.