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by mindcrime
5213 days ago
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One of the biggest (and best) ways Google could differentiate G+ from Facebook would be by moving away from the "walled garden" approach. Having comprehensive APIs for interacting with their service is an important part of that. Utilizing semantic web technologies to provide "smart data" instead of dumb data would be an important move as well. But Google don't seem to have much interest in going down this path, and I - for one - think that's a huge mistake. I mean, yeah, I like G+ and I use it a fair amount... and that's partly because there are places where it's legitimately superior to Facebook in my estimation. But the failure to truly open up is something I look at as a huge disappointment and it is really killing a lot of my enthusiasm for G+. IOW: "Damnit Google, jump on the federated social network bandwagon, implement comprehensive APIs and TEAR DOWN THOSE WALLS." |
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Worse, since launch they don't seem to have rolled out many improvements, despite the clamor among its users for solutions to various problems.
> Asked about what Google+ actually is, Gundotra answered that, at its simplest, it is a social layer across all of Google's services. For Gundotra, what was missing on Google before Google+ was its ability to really understand its users and their connections. The challenge, in Gundotra's view, is that most people don't actually quite understand this.
Actually, people don't care. They're not using G+ in order to help Google understand them and their connections, they're using it to connect, learn, grow, and enjoy themselves. But as good as the idea of circles is, there are still shortcomings in the service that impede this, and which Google hasn't addressed (hopefully they're in the process of learning from their copious amounts user feedback and fixing it all, but no idea what's going on behind the scenes).
> The general feeling one got from watching Gundotra was that in his view, those who don't quite get Google+ are probably not using it right and not looking at it in the right way.
That's unfortunate. The right way is what is natural, intuitive, and emergent. If Google didn't quite predict all of that exactly, G+ needs to adapt, not the other way around. Again, maybe they're doing exactly that behind the scenes, and just aren't done yet. I hope so, it's a great service with a lot of potential if they can just nail the remaining issues.
> As for a full read/write API that would give developers access to the stream and allow them to post to it, Gundotra noted that he doesn't quite want to do it yet. In his view, just opening up an API would pollute the stream.
I grok his concerns, but what they really need to do is provide the tools for users to micro-manage their own streams. Hashtag filtering for circles would be a huge step in that direction, and give users complete granular control over what they see and from whom. For example, if I want to see Sergey Brin's posts on computer science but not his skydiving vacations or pictures of dinner, hashtag filtering on my CS circle would facilitate that.
Side note - amusing article in the sidebar: "Study: Two-Thirds of Search Engine Users Don’t Want Personalized Results". Yup. I tend to use DDG or Google in Chromium Incognito these days.