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Google Betting Its Google+ Systems Know What's Best For You
Nerval's Lobster writes "But at this year's Google I/O conference in San Francisco, Google announced that it has a plan to make Google Plus users more engaged, courtesy of new features backed by a handful of data-analytics tricks. Google Plus postings now feature Google-generated hashtags that, when clicked, direct the user to related content from across their network. From a backend-infrastructure perspective, that sort of thing leans heavily on Google's semantic analysis and the ability to make the right connections between various pieces of data. Google Plus will also automatically highlight certain photos out of dozens or even hundreds of shots. Say you went on vacation to India and took some photos of your significant other in front of the Taj Mahal; Google Plus will leverage its database of information to recognize that as a prominent landmark and pluck those photos out of the pile as 'special.' In the words of that posting on the Google+ Blog: 'Your darkroom is now a Google data center.' Are all these nifty, analytics-intensive features enough to change the larger fortunes of Google Plus? That's the big question. Google has a handsome-looking platform, one that performs certain activities with a high degree of polish and zip—but is that enough to counter Facebook?"
As part of the big roll out of these changes, a lot of google chat users have discovered their most frequently used contacts have been automatically "Blocked on Google+", despite not themselves not having Google+ accounts. People have been left with no option other than to sign up to Google+ to access their "Blocked" circle to see what contacts have been blocked, and unblock them.
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why. -- Hunter S. Thompson
"Are all these nifty, analytics-intensive features enough to change the larger fortunes of Google Plus?"
No.
When G+ started out, it was clean, fast-loading, reliable, and did exactly what it was supposed to do and no more. You know ... like Google used to be. I had real hopes that G+:FB::Google:Yahoo.
Every change since then has made it uglier, slower, and buggier; with the latest interface changes they've not only caught up to but actually surpassed Facebook in the amount of irritating crap they shove at the user. Google may be able to coast on people's affection for them as a search engine (especially when the competition is Bing) but they're going to find it increasingly difficult to break into new markets if all they do is ape the worst behavior of the existing market leader--which in this case emphatically includes "adding a bunch of new 'features' when the ones we already have are kind of crap."
I still use Google as my primary search engine, Gmail as my e-mail provider, and Google Maps when I want to figure out how to go somewhere I haven't been before. Nothing they've done since then has provided any reason to switch from whatever solution I'm currently using. And I really don't think I'm alone in this.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I use g+ regularly (I know, insert joke about being the only person on the net to do that here). I've liked it, for the most part.
But yesterday? Man. That new interface went live and how I have three tiny columns of posts. Which itself might be okay, except they're in no discernible order whatsoever. New stuff I haven't seen yet is buried off the screen, but there's six things from two days ago still hanging around at the top. Sometimes new things appear in a visible spot, sometimes they don't. I don't know why I need three columns when each one is so small that it's barely telling me anything, and looks like it was designed for a mobile screen. (The iPad app has a similar layout but has much saner ordering and uses 1 or 2 columns depending on the size of the item. It works far better.)
There's an option to turn it back to a single column, but the column stays the same size and now 2/3 of the screen is totally empty while I have to click to expand everything to see more than 30 words and scroll down like crazy. At least in that mode it seems to be ordered correctly.
The main reaction in my g+ circles to the update was confusion. It wasn't even the usual "change is bad" reaction. People were just lost in how they were supposed to read this new layout and find the new stuff in a simple way.
It's funny because g+ started off with a simpler, easier to use page than Facebook had. That's gone and reversed itself now. I really don't get what Google's thinking. As of right now, I'd actually rank the usability of Facebook more highly.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
The current version is all but unusable on a 1.6ghz Atom netbook and grinds my current also Atom desktop machine.. It's go so many bars that vanish and show up, uses so much CPU that typing pegs the system and uses so much realestate that there's less than a quarter of the whole screen for content.. And so much clicking to access things(When things are not automaticly popping up because my cursor strayed somewere).
Their search engine is great, but G+.. well.. Just because it now mattches the Android/iOS App /dosen't make it a automaticly good thing/.
Go back to your sleek, efficent, neat ways, Google! That's why we loved you!
Google shouldn't be trying to out-Facebook Facebook, they should be creating a 'lean mean social machine'
Google has a handsome-looking platform, one that performs certain activities with a high degree of polish and zip—but is that enough to counter Facebook?
It's not necessary to counter Facebook, Facebook will do that themselves. Facebook is already getting whipped for privacy violations. All Google needs is a 'lean mean social machine' ie. a simple social platform which respects the user's privacy. Quit adding knuckleheaded features and focus on privacy and security. The short game is shiny widgets, the long game is for the win.
We're really digging the bottom of the barrel as an industry if we're putting energy into doing analytics on vacation photos to identify which ones contain landmarks. The way I see it, we've already accomplished the big things in computing (word processing, spreadsheets, image editing, etc.) and now all that's left is the constant development of minutiae.
That data then becomes Google's product which Google then sells on businesses and organisations
Google will NEVER sell data of its customers...not because of any moral code, but because it is simply not profitable. They sell *targeted* advertising space on services offered for free, Like TV...or newspapers. Its why Google make Billions.
It might sound like that, but when you consider the broad spectrum of things they're including as "active", it really isn't.
+1'ing apps in Google Play? Really? So everyone who's ever rated an app in the iTunes App Store is a user of Apple's social network? Everyone who's posted to Youtube, even if they've never created a G+ profile, is a user of G+ now? Everyone who uses gmail gets counted?
I've got no G+ account due to the naming policy crap, but I have gmail and I've posted on youtube. I bet they count me.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Is that "fact" like the three copies of Windows 8 that Microsoft counts me as having "bought"?
I bought three 802.11AC routers from Newegg and automagically had three copies of Win8 added to my cart which were included in the price, but also had an automatic rebate that was applied immediately. That was just before MS came out with the surprisingly large sales figures. I was only one of many.
Just because it's said by a company you rather like doesn't mean it's not misleading. For example, how much credence would you give something similar said by Apple?
Minecraft says differently :)