[reitanqild]

And a lot if techies are actively recommending the most useless alternative (twitter: everyone shouting to everyone, only very basic features etc) while actively hating the only network that had a chance, google+.

And the reason for the hate: mostly it seems because google in their infinite I-dont-know-what decided to 1. push the hated (but understandable for technicians even at my level) common identity solution under the same name as the new social network 2. destroy reader at the same time and for apparently no good reason.

(Oh, and for those who missed it they since came back with support for using pseudonyms.)

Edit: I hope for something better, for google to create something that connects to g+ and can be self hosted, I hope for them to hold out a hand and make Facebook look bad, I hope for somethong like matrix or hubzilla or something to become common. Oh, and I already use sandstorm.io

[newscracker]

[Sliding off topic - going deeper into the Google experience] Google+, and Google services in general, have become unintuitive and almost hostile to users in the past few years.

I find it difficult to even navigate around in Google+ to get certain things done. Google Docs and stuff - same story - there's not even a sign in button that's visible when one visits the homepage(which I usually go to by typing docs.google.com). You look at some pretty pictures and blurb and then click on something and then get a new tab to open and then you may login.

The days of the Google founders counting the "weight of the homepage" (in number of words for google.com), page load speed and simplicity are long gone from other apps.

I like the Google+ posts layout and font sizes better than Facebook. IMO, Facebook looks like a decade old web application built for IE 6. But getting things done and moving around is a huge pain in Google+. The same is much easier to do in Facebook (this could also partially be because I've used Facebook for longer).

If someone in the Google+ team reads this, I'd love to rant and provide examples if you're willing to consider changes.

[iainmerrick]

I agree with most of that, but why are you keen on G+? It was never open and never amenable to self-hosting or anything like that. It was just a Facebook clone (arguably a little bit different now).

Going further back a year or two, I think Google Wave was going to allow self-hosting. But of course that sank with barely a trace.

[reitanqild]

> but why are you keen on G+?

It is just the only viable alternative with major commercial backing for now. Twitter could have been but they are too busy painting themselves into the corner.

Old Google at least could be crazy enough to do whatever it takes just to kick Facebook where it hurts. But I'm dreaming.

(Oh and don't underestimate how much I love it just because of all the haters that hang around here :-P)

[spriggan3]

> while actively hating the only network that had a chance, google+.

Google+ is like Wordpress.com, it's no replacement for Facebook. The fact that is it public BY DEFAULT is a no go for me. Facebook at least allows me to configure what data can and cannot be accessed by my friends,friends of friends ... I'm also a bit sick of giving all my personal datas to Google so i'm not going to use more of their services.

[reitanqild]

> The fact that is it public BY DEFAULT is a no go for me. Facebook at least allows me to configure what data can and cannot be accessed by my friends,friends of friends ...

Google+ allows this as well. No way I would share my family photos with the Internet.

Also, unlike Facebook, Google+ hasn't (yet) at least gone back and retroactively made private stuff public. (They did however mess upp the buzz launch pretty badly though.)