#“The 627,000th Post on Google+ This Week”
You are all probably as sick as I am of all the stuff written about Google+. But I've found very few posts digging into the functionality beyond the usual top-level feature list. I'm really pleased that Google is actively soliciting feedback after their ostrich-like behaviour with Buzz. But there is too much here for me to enter as individual tickets.
Overall
Overall I like Google+ and think I'll be using it quite a bit. But only with the understanding that some of the major problems are fixed in the short-term. I kept going back to Buzz to find that none of the fundamental design errors had been addressed. Signs are good that we won't have a repeat here.
Sharing and Privacy
I know Google was looking for a USP over Facebook and Twitter and decided Privacy/Sharing Circles was it. I'm still not convinced. Like a lot of people I just break most stuff down into Public and Private. I don't have the time to ponder every post and wonder what tiny sub-section of the world I want to share it with. With me, Twitter is 100% Public, Facebook is 80% Public and the rest is Family-only or Friends-only sharing on Facebook. That's it. Having said that, the implementation of Circles in excellent so if you care about that level of refinement on Sharing, you'll love it.
Mobile App
The mobile app is superb. In fact, just like Buzz, I think G+ could have been launched as a mobile-only product and the web stuff could have come later. The mobile product understands that people want to scan quickly through things and presents everything in a really compact and efficient way. Far better than the web-app, which I'll address below. BUT, BIG BLOODY BUT, the Mobile App is blocked from the Irish Android Market. What the hell were you thinking? US fine. UK fine. But those bloody Paddies, they'll wreck the thing? Luckily many of us know how to work around such silliness and the APK is available to install from many places.
The Mobile App already has slick Places integration and effectively has check-in using that. I have no doubt that they will add the Hotpot reviewing functionality soon and then Hotpot on Places makes far more sense. Another nail in coffin of Yelp etc. But just like Buzz, they haven't tied the mobile activity to the Places pages on the web. This is critical to compete with Facebook Places and will be great for mobile Deals too. I'm looking forward to adding Places/Plus reviewing to LouderVoice to join Facebook and Twitter.
Mute, Mute, Mute Mute
Unfortunately two of the biggest design flaws in Buzz are still present in G+ (and indicate that Plus has a lot of Buzz under the hood). The first is that every thread is expanded by default. This simple feature renders G+ almost unusable once you add more than a few friends and any of them get more than one or two comments. Given that the layout of G+ is very similar to Facebook, I just cannot understand why they didn't copy the best features of a system with 700m users. Every post should have comment count and maybe one sample comment with the ability to optionally show them all. That's it. And honestly, just like Buzz, this will be a deal-breaker for me if it isn't fixed. I ended up in exactly the same use-mode on G+ yesterday as I did on Buzz, hitting Mute over and over until the newsfeed was readable.
UPDATE: Did they fix this on Saturday night? Suddenly I'm seeing much less noise and now they have comment counts.
The same comment applies in general to the use of screen real estate. Everything is too spread out and bloated so your RSI goes through the roof using the mousewheel. e.g. the inline images and YouTube thumbnails are too big and you see all of the content of very long posts. I've watched Facebook iterating this a lot over the past few years and I think they have nailed it on the sizing. Just copy em Goog, no shame in copying the best. "More ...." is one of the best features on any site.
Finally there is chronology. Any app like this must be strictly chronological based on original posts only. It works for Twitter, it works for Facebook and it works everywhere else the concept of "real-time" appears. I never want to see a post bubble back up to the top of the screen due to +1's or Social Clout or Comments. Ever.
Notifications
These work brilliantly (and even better on Android). One of the best features of the system.
Hangout
All the webcams on all the laptops in the world and I have done Video Chat once in my life. Completely uninteresting for me unless you have grandparents chatting to grandkids who live far away. I hear Facebook are adding this too. Anyone have numbers on who uses this on Skype?
Huddle
Haven't used it but like the idea I think.
Sparks
Not really sure about this. Tried it a couple of times and didn't get anything valuable out of it. But see my comments below on "The News"
Profile URLs
Yes we want our vanity URLs and we want them now. http://plus.google.com/conoro please
Non-Import of Feeds
Thousands of words have been written about why Buzz was a flop. My take on it is that the ability to add external Feeds from day 1 was the killer-blow. Everyone came in, added Twitter, Flickr, Google Reader, Random RSS Crap and then left. So if you went into Buzz, it looked busy but not a single post was by a person actually live on the system. I've already seen some of the usual Social Media Ninjas look for this feature on G+ so they can spam us all to death with their Top Ten Lists. Please please please Google, resist.
Instant Upload and Picasa
I have tried so many apps on Android to do this and none of them was reliable or seamless. This is both. Love it love it love it. Picasaweb is the first Consumer Google service where I actually handed over money for extra storage and have been uploading all my pictures over the past few months. So the timing on this is fantastic.
Google Apps and the Enterprise
We beat you up relentlessly over this on Buzz and you kept saying "coming soon". We've all been through the hell of the Account Transition over the past few months and yet it's still not there. And on this topic, why do G+ and Picasa not offer the account-switch functionality? Look at how Reader does it and copy that. Having to load-up the resource-pig Firefox 4/5 just to use G+ in more than a little annoying.
After two days of using G+ I came to the conclusion that it is a killer app for the Enterprise. The core sharing functionality with GApps would be a Yammer killer. More importantly, add desktop sharing and voice-only group conferencing to Hangout and there goes GotoMeeting, GotoWebinar, Webex and Skype. Make Google Voice global, give us the ability to have dial-in international numbers like Skype and I could see Skype being wiped out. Give me all of that and then I'll happily pay for Google Apps. Right now, pay-for is just not compelling.
Filters, Meta data, Hashtags and The News
This is not only a huge topic but the one area I feel that G+ could have a much more attractive USP than the privacy thing. I think Goog needs to flip the thinking on G+. Who I share with is not that interesting. What I want to read is the interesting bit.
I am currently using Circles not for sharing but as Twitter Lists. I have my News Circle and that's what I have displayed by default, just like on Tweetdeck. But, as with Twitter, there is no way of filtering the content of that list down by topic/interest/hate. My little Curation By Me experiment (totally new version coming later this summer) was a micro-step towards filtering Lists so that you can see exactly what you are interested in and not see the stuff that bores you to death.
Yeah, I know, I'm back on to my Sports Saturday Die Die Die obsession. But it is important. Facebook could have nailed it with the newer Groups functionality but insists you are a Facebook user to see them. I had a go at using a Group for the Irish Election but it was a waste of time due to the login restriction. That's why Twitter is the winner for News. Nothing comes close for open indexable real-time news.
But I think Twitter is wide-open to be very badly damaged by G+. Hashtags are a brilliantly useful horrific hack to get around the lack of interest grouping in Twitter. I don't want raw hashtags on G+, I want out-of-band labels, custom meta-data (when we have an API), global public topic search and Groups.
I watch US TV shows now and they publish their hashtag on screen. How many of the millions of people watching that have a clue what they are? Surely it would be so much clearer to say "go to http://plus.google.com/groups/americasgottalent to talk live about the show". Tie that into Google TV and suddenly Twitter+Boxee looks less compelling. Hell, tie in Huddle too! And with your Android App running on a Tablet......Awesomeness.
APIs & Platform
We know APIs are coming so I won't say much other than to re-iterate that People+API is what made Twitter successful. On a personal note I would highlight that there is no Write API for Reviews on Places and this is a big hole that needs to be filled to make the Places+Plus experience seamless.
Other thought on API is that as much as possible should be available without authentication. Give us the Public data to do interesting things with.
In the same way that the APIs created so much opportunity in the Twitter ecosystem, the Facebook Platform is what took them from 20m users to 700m users. I love Facebook's approach: "Here is the Platform. Here are the APIs. Here are the Rules. Knock yourself out".
Facebook has played a genius game of giving businesses control of their Pages and giving users the ability to interact with those Pages. To achieve the same thing, some major changes will be required by Google and a lot of control will have to be ceded by them to businesses on their Places Pages.
I don't believe that people trust Facebook Pages less than Google Places pages because Google controls 90% of the content on the Google Places Page. People have judgement. If Goog Places could become an API-driven platform for businesses to interact with their customers via Google Plus, that would be the first major competition to Facebook since they launched their Platform.
It makes zero sense that Goog shows reviews from TA, Yelp, etc etc on a businesses Places Page but that business cannot show its own reviews from its own site there. The answer that "we do what is in the best interest of our users" doesn't cut it since the users are all over on Facebook interacting with the businesses there. It's a trust and control issue for Google and feeds into both SERPs and Maps so I know it's not going to be easy. But eventally they will have to change.
Twitter-Killer or Facebook-Killer?
The same question asked every time a new Google service launches. With a few tweaks, I think G+ could damage Twitter quite badly. Facebook not so much, due to user inertia. But it's great that Google has created a worthy competitior to these sites. Competition ups everyone's game. Choice is good.
Yeah of course they are a global multi-$Bn corporation but I do have to say, well done GOOG, great job.