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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."
This'll work.
#DeleteChrome
Poole continued, saying: "But what I mostly appreciate are the millions of dollars that Google is giving me."
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?
4chan is social in the way a mosh pit is technically people interacting in a social environment.
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.
It started as a 2chan clone
For Mootles friends a little home
A place to chat and call their own
and let ideas free to roam.
When you let ideas free
There is no way to certainly
contain their strength and make them be
again your own, So Moot did see:
A visitor, or two or ten
and hundreds more who came to lend
a thought, a hand, a new-found friend
But bigger! moar! it would not end.
By word of mouth there rose a roar
No longer dozens, came by score
of thousands, millions! many more
their thoughts and dreams to there outpour.
And what had once been just a board
and just a place to strike a chord
or crack a joke, well now they warred
against some random other horde.
The memes! the battles! lulz and games!
Boisterous with varied aims
to close a pool or mock a dame's
unworthy vapid haughty claims.
And so our 4chan grew and grew
it gave us wings to fly, and glue
and with our posts turned us into
the family that we never knew
But all good things will find an end
The highest fall.. our souls did rend
Right in the back, a knife did send
our once beloved leader, friend.
Cuck! Cuck! the evil fuck
who sold his family for a buck!
Who sold his soul and freedom's cry
for some ugly bitch he saw pass by
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Why say it is lucky that Google hired a social media guy? Who wants Google to be in the social media business? I sure don't, and the evidence is that a lot of other people don't want it either.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I liked Google+'s features in theory but disliked the real name policy. It meant that I couldn't use it for my blogging activities (on which I use a pseudonym) without risking getting all my Google services shut off (including things like e-mail which I used as well) just because my pseudonym isn't my actual name.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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.
They no longer have a real name policy. But I think Facebook added a real name policy in the meantime. But people looove facebook and haaate google, so it's hard to treat any comments on the matter objectively. Basically people who are herd animals are on facebook not because they love it but because other members of their herd are on facebook, and people who are on google+ are there because they like the communities or to keep track of a small group of friends.
Given that he was behind the purge of traditional 4chan, this is just another placement of a SJW.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.