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?

[cpu6502]

Yesterday Google-Youtube asked me for my real name. Well actually they already KNOW my real name via my email account, but they wanted me to start using it on youtube so everybody else would know too. (Posted by cpu6502, Bill Smith)

I refused.
Now I can't reply to comments. I can post new ones on videos, but the reply button is disabled. What a crummy thing for Google to do (try to take-away my anonymity). I don't want thousands of posts hanging-round with my real name for the next 60 years.

And here's another reason to dislike google: Quoting Rob âCmdrTacoâ(TM) Malda article: "Google doesnâ(TM)t really need you to use Google+ to post status updates with your friends as much as they simply need you to log in and tell them your age. If you do this, suddenly they can tie together your iPhone, your work machine, and your laptop. Your 3 machines become one person. You. And you are broadcasting signals all the time. If you don't* explicitly tell Google where you live, what you do, and how old you are, they will be able to make fantastically informed guesses."

On facebook almost everything is faked. My age, my location, only thing's that real is my name & my school (to reconnect with alumni).

*
*Why is Opera telling me that don't is mis-spelled?
*:-o

Re:Google What?

[horza]

With the Google Real Names policy, and always badgering you for your mobile phone number, apparently it is. Hence G+ being a desolate wasteground.

Phillip.

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?

[Jafafa Hots]

Facebook can spy on every website you ever visit that has a Facebook "like" button. They then sell the information about what you view online, combined with who you interact with on facebook, who lists you as a relative on Facebook, who names you in photos... and YOUR IMAGE if someone tags you in a Facebook photo using their face recognition software.

Which they package and sell.

Happy privacy.

Re:Google What?

[gtaluvit]

I wrote off all social media long ago

As you post in a threaded message board...

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?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have a browser cache? Because if so, companies can spy on you using e-tags. Hulu was discovered doing it, and others probably are too. No cookies/scripts necessary, just base html.

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?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Yes all that can happen if you don't handle your cookies properly.

You seem to have missed the last ten years worth of advances in systemic internet tracking systems.

Re:Google What?

[PopeRatzo]

.Yes all that can happen if you don't handle your cookies properly.

Yeah, see, that's the thing. Telling people that they can maintain their privacy if they learn how to figure out which cookies they can keep and which they cannot is like saying your money is safe in the bank, but only if you can solve ten partial differential equations in under 10 minutes.

Privacy should not be conditional on you having to engage in one-upmanship with the designers of Facebook.

Of course, nobody has to use Facebook, and I strongly recommend that my friends do not use Facebook at all. It's easy enough to contact one another and no matter how careful you are, you're always going to get someone on facebook from grade school bothering you to be their friend and it just all becomes sad and unpleasant. I've managed pretty well to wean a few people off facebook and convince then to use online communication tools that are not "social media" (which is Latin for "sandbox for stalkers". Yes, they still exist, including good old IRC.

My daughter, who from what I can tell is one of the cool kids, and her friends manage to stay on top of what's happening without ever touching facebook or twitter. I showed her IRC and now she and her friends think it's retro but cool. I heard one of the kids explaining how "Facebook spies on you and shit" so apparently the message has gotten through.

As for me, Facebook and Google+ have only served to teach me just how much I enjoy not being constantly in touch with a lot of people. My friends know how to find me, and they know that I don't always carry a communication device. In the past year, I've even stopped checking email every day, which was a big step for me. My wife, who's a mathematician and professor, refuses to own a mobile phone. For a while people looked at her like she was from mars, but now I see more understanding and appreciation for her position on these things. Now, for a lot of people, work requires them to use social media (for some reason) and 24/7 mobile communications. but that affliction has been lifted from my shoulders, praise Jesus.

My life is full of technology still, some of it more advanced than 95% of the population, and I enjoy it, but I don't feel that I have to use every new thing that comes along, especially if it's just a cover for marketing and social engineering. Discernment is good.

Re:Google What?

[Raenex]

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

Re:Google What?

[Homr Zodyssey]

Well, I've known since "Wargames" that any teenager with an acoustic coupler modem could hack into a government super-computer. The password is the programmer's kid's name, for chrissakes.

Yes, you were delusional if you thought that stuff that you made digital and put on a network was somehow "safe". Somehow, eventually, it's going to make it to the public. Ask any teenage starlet who send nude pictures to her boyfriend's cellphone.

This is why my wife only lets me take her nude pictures with a poloroid. Man, I wish they'd fix the resolution on those things.

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?

[hairyfish]

Slashdot has a half decent moderation system, although by no means perfect so it can be done. I don't know if a paid system would work since you'd never get critical mass. Most off the forum I've used that work, generally have committed moderation team, and a mature user base that know how to effectively deal with trolls (ie ignore them)

Re:Google What?

[knorthern knight]

> Does anyone know the Ip range of the like button so i can drop it in IPtables?

There are half-a-dozen ranges, depending where on the planet you are. The following blocks all of Facebook that I know of (LIKE and facebook.com and various foreign versions). Here are the ranges in both CIDR and traditional formats.

66.220.144.0/20
66.220.144.0 - 66.220.159.255

69.63.176.0/20
69.63.176.0 - 69.63.191.255

69.171.224.0/19
69.171.224.0 - 69.171.255.255

74.119.76.0/22
74.119.76.0 - 74.119.79.255

173.252.64.0/18
173.252.64.0 - 173.252.127.255

204.15.20.0/22
204.15.20.0 - 204.15.23.255

Re:Google What?

[WombleGoneBad]

Also, If you have the facebook android app, facebook can do any of the following without your knowledge

• Access all the stuff on your SD card
• Track your current location with GPS.
• Download anything they like onto your phone.
• Access ALL the accounts (not just facebook) that you use on the phone.

On many phones (like mine) this app is pre-installed and actually uninstallable it was the main reason i switched to cyanogenmod

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?

[bill_mcgonigle]

NSFNet made up much of the Internet backbone for a while. Its AUP prohibited advertising. These were the days of the Internet Yellow Pages and David and Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web on akebono. This ended on April 30, 1995, and at that point everything exploded - the Internet you see today has been built on advertising revenues.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, you're playing to the anti-marketing demographic. There are a lot of dollars in that demographic.

Re:So?

[dAzED1]

...really? You're gonna go there? So it had nothing to do with all the other stuff happening in 94-96? rfc1700 - assigned numbers in 94, rfc1737 Functional Requirements for Uniform Resource Names in Dec94, http/1.0 finalized in 1996, Linux bringing a bunch of common folks exploding onto the scene with things like RedHat 1.0 in Dec1994...you're not really giving credit to bloat and advertising for the explosion of the internet, are you? I owned an ISP from 1994-1996 (sold it). There was practically no advertising at the time, and it was still exploding. It exploded in spite of the bloat that came later. Are you just a ad exec or something, that you would put all the other things happening in the mid 90's behind advertising. Yeesh.

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!

Okay?

[steevven1]

This has all been true since it came onto the scene, but it has still made no big splash. The title of this article implies that there is something significantly new now. There's not.

Re:Okay?

[MrEricSir]

...it has still made no big splash.

I'd say it's made a pretty big splash for those of us who haven't "upgraded" our accounts to use Google+. If you're not a Plus member, many links and settings in Google services no longer work or take you to 404 pages. And some of the help docs have been re-written in such a way that they only apply to Plus users.

Re:Okay?

[Darinbob]

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

Re:Okay?

[Homr Zodyssey]

"don't see any compelling reason to use it."

Maybe...all those things you just said?

and it provides advertisers with one stop snooping

[davidannis]

Let's face it, FaceBook can't provide every shred of information about me. Sure they know who my friends are, but Google will be able to layer on top of that things from the location of my cellphone (android), my search history (google.com), what books and movies I've bought (google play), websites I've visited (adwords), and even the contents of my e-mail (gmail) and files (Google drive). Since my primary goal is to only see relevant ads I'm going with Google+ and I assume advertisers will push me in that direction anyway once they realize how effective Google ads can be.

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.

Facebook hasn't screwed up...yet

[KalvinB]

What killed MySpace was allowing the level of customization to a profile page such that the result was GeoCities. I stopped going to MySpace because I valued my eyesight.

Until Facebook makes me not want to look the main page or other people's profiles, it's not going anywhere.

Features aren't going to win people to Google+ because Facebook has a perfectly solid team of developers that will happily spend their days copying the things that make the user experience better.

Image sharing

[nxcho]

I use facebook,g+ and twitter, mostly for maintaining a presence rather than posting personal stuf. But I've discovered that google+ is quite good for sharing images with family and closer friends. The fact that you can can share things with people that doesn't have a g+ account just by their e-mail address means that I can show them whats happening in my life from a single place.

Re:Image sharing

[partofthepuzzle]

You can also invite people who aren't Google+ users to events via the same invitation that I use for the G+ folks. email address. This is a major usability win for me.

Re:We use Google+ for mini meetings

[Tough Love]

Google Plus's chat feature has rudimentary desktop screening, and is just more convenient than Skype for small group projects.

Not to mention more reliable, responds faster and presence notification is low latency. And doesn't crash like Skype does (some platforms). And seems to have better sound qualilty. And I'm more like to find people actually logged in there, people don't seem to hang on Skype any more like they used to. These days, it's more like send an email or call on a land line or cell phone to set up a Skype call. And that makes sense exactly why?

Parable of the format wars

[fiannaFailMan]

Betamax was technically better than VHS. Brunel's wide gauge railway system was technically better than the standard gauge. We all know what became of them. It's the scale of adoption that counts. A squillion people are now in the habit of living their lives through Facebook. They're not going to simultaneously migrate to G+ because of a few bells and whistles no matter how good they are. Sorry Google, you missed the boat on this one.

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.

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.

Google+ Hangout are the killer feature.

[Above]

I've used at least a dozen video conferencing solutions, and Google+ Hangouts seems to work across the most platforms, with some of the highest quality video, and it's free. I can communicate with folks inside and outside of the company without any special clients or problems. It really is a killer video conferencing solution.

But it's buried inside Google+, and I am amazed how many people I meet have no idea it exists, have never tried it, and so on. Everyone I make use it the first time instantly falls in love. Google could easily sell Hangouts as a stand alone video conferencing product.

Which is why I think Google+ may make it yet. There's some really cool stuff buried in it. Not enough to unseat Facebook on its own, but if Facebook stumbles, Google+ could pick up the market. Much like when myspace fell behind Facebook moved in.

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:What social network existed in 1998?

[Ken_g6]

Well, there was Classmates. If they hadn't tried to monetize (or monetize so soon) they could have been Facebook years earlier.

But it looks like they started all the way back in 1995!