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by powera 3978 days ago
The one person at Google more wrong than Vic Gundotra still thinks that G+ failed because people didn't listen to HIM enough. How shocking. (and seriously, do you really think one person could have fixed the turd of G+ even with a billion dollar idea?)
2 comments
sheepmullet 3977 days ago
Listening to him couldn't have made G+ any more of a failure.
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michaelochurch 3978 days ago
Google+ needed to establish a core group of users who (a) weren't associated with Google, and (b) liked their offering better than Facebook, and (c) were in a space that Facebook would have trouble taking over. Games was prime territory, because Facebook fucked it up by letting Zynga be its tapeworm for so long. If we could show caution and attention to quality in this space, people would have been more likely to trust us in a time when they were (much moreso than now) upset with Facebook.

U.S. Facebook engagement was actually dropping in 2011 and the Zynga games were the reason why. People hated those games.

Google+ could have gotten some more air time with that idea. What they did with it, I can't predict. Sometimes, more air time means not crashing; sometimes, it just means crashing later. It would have had a chance with Real Games, though, and I'll take "a chance" over "no chance" any day of the week.

Anyway, I'm glad that Google lost. A closed-allocation company with stack ranking deserves to get beaten. So there.

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S4M 3978 days ago
> U.S. Facebook engagement was actually dropping in 2011 and the Zynga games were the reason why. People hated those games.

That doesn't make any sense. Facebook goal is to have people staying connected to Facebook as much time as possible. Be it to check their friends status, the fan page of their idols or to play whatever game is trending. If Zynga's games are popular, the better for them since they monetize that popularity, and the better for Facebook since people spend more time on their platform, and they can water their virtual crops or whatever in between checking the cat pictures some friend posted and reading about the new thing some other friend's baby did. If Zynga's games lose their popularity, someone else will overtake them (it was King with Candy Crush) and Facebook will not be impacted.

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