[KineticTroi]

I believe Google+ failed simply because it was Google. Had it had any kind of a human, friendly, or small startup, perhaps people might have given it a try.

People don't want Google integrated with their YouTube account, coupled with their Facebook pages, coupled with their email, coupled with their contacts, and on-and on it goes with Google. No respect for separation of the information.

I darned sure didn't like it when Google took over my YouTube experience. Now I have pray that I don't accidentally access a sexy YouTube video with the computer logged into my wife's account. Now, all of my previous viewing will be highlighter all over her YouTube page the next time she logs in.

These guys are really stupid in trying to unify every internet experience we have all into one nosy mother-in-law. It's the essence of evil they promised not to become a part of.

[Bartweiss]

Google did manage to strike the worst possible balance of size and network effects. Facebook was good because everyone was on Facebook - Google+ was bad because everything else was on Google.

The positive network effect of social media is that it helps you find everyone you want to talk to. The negative effect is that it denies you the ability to compartmentalize your behavior - to talk about indie bands on Pitchfork, and then secretly enjoy Nirvana on Youtube.

Google+ didn't have any active users, so it lost the positive network effect, but it was incredibly aggressive about forcing you to use it in every place possible (and with more sharing than you wanted). The result was that they only got a loss of compartmentalization, without any actual social benefit.

[dredmorbius]

Thank you. That's an excellent expression of Google's negative value proposition IMO as a social network.

I actually somewhat like G+. But because Google has so much of the rest of my life, I'm:

1. Not willing to participate on G+ as "me" under a real name.

2. I'm going to withdraw as much other content from G+ as possible.

[dimbirol]

Have a look at Google+ and you'll understand why people say that they are an ad company and not a tech company anymore.

[hussong]

I just looked at the page for the first time in ages and I'm surprised they don't even get the fundamentals right: tiny fonts, pinterest layout for text items, terrible line height and length. Hopelessly useless even for skimming news headlines.

[dredmorbius]

Yep. I find it unusable w/o highly customised CSS:

http://i.imgur.com/7sDeNMI.png

[pbreit]

I don't think that's quite right. The problem is that you can't just slap a social network together. You have to figure out why you're doing it, why you're the one to do it, what the user want/need, etc. I didn't see any of that with Plus.