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4chan Founder Chris Poole Will Try To Fix Social At Google (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Google never "got" social. For all the resources thrown at it, Google+ just never quite felt human. But luckily Google just hired the guy behind 4chan -- a site that epitomized the good, the bad and the ugly of humanity on the internet. Chris Poole started 4chan in his bedroom at age 15. In the 12 years since, he built it into a 20 million active user image-sharing community around topics ranging from cosplay and cute animals to anime porn and the notoriously uncensored anonymous channel /b/. While Google probably won't force him into a suit and tie, Poole now has a much more corporate job: He'll be working under Google's Bradley Horowitz, VP of streams, photos and sharing. Poole writes: "When meeting with current and former Googlers, I continually find myself drawn to their intelligence, passion, and enthusiasm -- as well as a universal desire to share it with others. I'm also impressed by Google's commitment to enabling these same talented people to tackle some of the world's most interesting and important problems."
The creator of the biggest hive of scum and villany on the internet has gone to work for google, and will "fix" social. What could go wrong?
Personally I'd rather have my idiots at home glued to the TV than out doing idiotic things
The summary seems to imply there was something fundamentally wrong with Google+, and that's why it didn't take off as Google had hoped. But is that really the case, or was Google+'s main obstacle just that Facebook already existed and was spectacularly successful?
Can you get any more fucked up designs and user experience. Every time I go to my accounts I'm scratching my head as wtf happened since I was here last time. I only used it for my shop and gave up after one day there was a new page for my business which replaced my other one that was linked to when my shop shows on the side search. After a 30 min of wanting to smash someones face I said fuck it its not worth the headache besides social media is useless for selling promoting a business unless you a multi national brand.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
1. Do not talk about /b/ /b/!!!
2. Do NOT talk about
3. we are anonymous
4. anonymous is legion
5. anonymous never forgives
6. anonymous can be a horrible, uncaring senseless monster
7. anonymous is still able to deliver
8. there are no real rules about posting
9. there are no real rules about moderation either-enjoy your ban
10. if you enjoy any rival sites, DON'T
11. all of your carefully picked arguments can be ignored
12. anything you say can and will be used against you
13. anything you say can be turned into something else-fix'd
14. do not argue with trolls - it means they win
15. the harder you try the harder you will fail
16. if you fail in epic proportions, it may just turn into a winning failure
17. every win fails eventually
18. everything that can be labeled can be hated
19. the more you hate it the stronger it gets
20. nothing is to be taken seriously
21. original content is only original for a few seconds before getting old
22. copypasta is made to ruin every last bit of originality
23. copypasta is made to ruin every last bit of originality
24. every repost is a repost of a repost
25. relation to the original topic decreases with each post
26. any topic can easily be turned into something totally unrelated
27. always question a persons sexual preference without any real reason.
28. always question a persons gender-just in case its really a man
29. in the internet all girls are men and all kids are undercover FBI agents
30. there are no girls on the internet
31. TITS or GTFO-the choice is yours
32. you must have pictures to prove your statements
33. lurk moar. Its never enough
34. there is pron of it. No exceptions.
35. if no pron of it is found at the moment it will be made.
36. there will always be more fugged up crap than what you just saw
37. you cannot divide by zero (just because the calculator says so)
38. no real limits of any kind apply here-not even the sky
39. CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL
40. EVEN WITH CRUISE CONTROL YOU STILL HAVE TO STEER
41. desu isn't funny. Seriously guys, its worse than Chuck Norris jokes
42. nothing is sacred
43. the more beautiful and pure something is the more satisfying it is to corrupt it.
44. even one positive comment about something Japanese can make you a weeabo
45. when one sees a lion one must get into the car
46. there is always furry pron of it
47. the pool is always closed.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
Fuck Chris Poole and his feminist SJW bullshit.
Actually, wait, I just realized I don't give a shit about Google+, or even Google for that matter anymore. Nevermind.
Google's problem with social isn't social, it's Google. Google knows too much about us already, and people are starting to realize that. And because Google already provides a huge portion of our digital footprint, they thought they could get away with being heavy-handed about tying all their services together into a single, "use your real name or else" profile, and everyone balked. I almost posted a YouTube comment the other day (which I can't remember ever doing before) until I got the dreaded "use your real name" popup.
The UI of Google+ was and still is a disaster, although that should come as no surprise to anyone who has ever used any Google service. The company's devs simply have no concept of what makes a good UI at all.
Google services with clear, functional UIs are almost non-existent, beyond the single input box of Google search. Gmail is a total joke compared even to primitive email clients of the 1980's, and it gets worse with each "improvement" made to it. (People use Gmail simply because it's free and has good spam filtering). Awesome services like Google Wave died miserably owing to Google's incompetence at UIs and nothing else.
But that's not really what prevented Google+ from succeeding --- it was their attempt to eradicate user privacy, and their Eric Schmidt. To understand why that killed G+'s chances you need to consider the demographic of Google users up until then. This was essentially the demographic of email accounts, a community in which pseudonyms are not only normal but absolutely essential for a huge number of reasons. When Google tried to force a Facebook-like "real names" policy onto its Gmail-oriented userbase, the pushback was severe. And then Schmidt compounded the problem for Google by making it very clear that he wanted user privacy abolished, the final straw for Gmail users who saw their pseudonymity vanishing to forced integration with G+.
Although Google has drawn back (slightly) from Schmidt's failure to understand his own userbase, it's not enough to restore trust in a company that makes its billions from connecting advertisers to users, and thus hates privacy at its core. This won't change, regardless of who they bring in to restore confidence.
This, 100 times.
I almost never heard anyone say good things about the real name policy (except Google themselves of course, when forced to), and can't imagine anyone who would, except marketing drones. If you want me to participate in an online community in a lasting and meaningful way, there's no way in hell I'm using my real name.
Even worse, Google tried to confuse the issue (i.e. talk out of both sides of its mouth) by drawing a practically meaningless distinction between your "real" name and your "common" name. See, your common name is "the name that you commonly go by in daily life," as opposed to your real name which is . . . fuck if I know. IMO, it was intentional double speak so they could claim "it's not actually a real name policy" whenever convenient.
Add to that at least one false start of rescinding the policy (is this one for real? Who knows?), and it's no wonder most of the internet judged them no more trustworthy (and of course potentially more dangerous) than Facebook.
It's also telling that in numerous Google+ post mortem pieces, you never hear the execs and PR people address the real name policy as a root cause, despite the widespread criticism and rejection of it. They wouldn't feign rescinsion of the real name policy if they didn't know everyone hated it, and they wouldn't fail to acknowledge it as a problem if they really intended to fix it.
If that new social network is one that respect anonymity and freedom from censorship like 4chan then is that a bad thing? Those things alone would already make it a better social network than just about every other one out there.
Part the reason Google+ failed so early on was because Google insisted hard on a real name policy and that got them a bad reputation for their social network from day 1. If they now have someone looking at social who actually understands the real internet than the pretend internet then it may well work out.