Google+

[Matthean]

[Matthean]

Originally Posted by sabotai

Yes, it's an add-on.

Adblock Plus :: Add-ons for Firefox

Already had it installed. Not seeing the option to disable an element.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Zynga's CityVille arrives on Google+ | Digital Media - CNET News

[ISiddiqui]

The one big issue I've had with Google+ is that I can't for whatever reason "paste" into the status update bar. If I put something on Twitter, it goes directly to my facebook - I usually don't want to write it again, so I paste it into Google+, because it doesn't link with Twitter yet. But I can't do that.

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Zynga's CityVille arrives on Google+ | Digital Media - CNET News

Thats is a huge deal for Google+ imho - if its to thrive it needs the social apps and games around it ...

[Logan]

Google+ had a chance to compete with Facebook. Not anymore. - Slate Magazine

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by Logan

Google+ had a chance to compete with Facebook. Not anymore. - Slate Magazine

This article is spot-on. I was ready to jump on with the business and really start pushing it much like I do on Facebook. When I figured out they were discouraging business pages, I lost all interest. Snail mail wouldn't exist without junk mail income. Facebook wouldn't exist without advertising/business-driven traffic. If you run a social network and don't use business to drive it, you're not going to do nearly as well as you would if you were to incorporate business into your product.

[cubboyroy1826]

Mizzou you can now setup Google+ for your business.

[MJ4H]

lol

[Ben E Lou]

crickets?

[Logan]

Originally Posted by Ryan S

Google+ now open to the public and being plugged on the front page of Google. It will be interesting to see how it goes over the next few months.

How we doin?

Where does this rank on the list of colossal internet failures?

[Coffee Warlord]

Right next to google wave?

[Matthean]

I think businesses are starting to use it more. I would be using it more but right now with going to school I'm in a time crunch.

[Matthean]

I will add that I have been using Google calendars and docs a lot as of late. If Google music didn't take forever to upload(as in weeks for my collection), I would use it as well.

EDIT: I found out today that if you install Chrome on a separate PC, it grabs your bookmarks from your account and thus no need for importing/exporting. I simply use enough Google products that using G+ should be much more natural.

[Ryan S]

Originally Posted by Logan

How we doin?

Where does this rank on the list of colossal internet failures?

I would not rule out Google+ yet. Google seems to be integrating it into tons of things, so it has a huge head start over any other potential facebook challenger. If you compare G+ to any other social network after 6 months it is miles ahead of anything we have seen before.

Facebook needs to screw something up badly to lose the social network crown, but these kind of things have happened before and will happen again.

[albionmoonlight]

I'm a member. Knew very few people on there. They were all on facebook anyway. No one posts anything, really. Haven't bothered to check it the day after I signed up on it.

At the end of the day, it was hard to see what the point of + is/was. I guess the big innovation was the circles thing to try and keep your posts semi-private. But, really, if you are the kind of person who likes to keep things private, then you are probably not the kind of person who is that into social media.

Once you've decided that the world really needs to know that you "had a really good sandwich at lunch today," you are not going to limit that to any one circle of friends. Oh, no. You are inflicting that on everyone from your co-workers to your mom to your middle-school classmates. And facebook lets you do that.

[Ryan S]

Originally Posted by Coffee Warlord

Right next to google wave?

Google Wave was one of those ideas that sounded cool, but I could not figure out what exactly I would ever use it for.

[Coffee Warlord]

Originally Posted by Ryan S

Google Wave was one of those ideas that sounded cool, but I could not figure out what exactly I would ever use it for.

Which sums up Google+ for me as well.

(though to be fair, I don't use and have no use for facebook either)

[johnnyshaka]

My place of employment has recently moved our email solution to Google Apps and I could see Google+ becoming an integral part of our day to day dealings...we just aren't there yet.

[Logan]

Originally Posted by Ryan S

I would not rule out Google+ yet. Google seems to be integrating it into tons of things, so it has a huge head start over any other potential facebook challenger. If you compare G+ to any other social network after 6 months it is miles ahead of anything we have seen before.

Facebook needs to screw something up badly to lose the social network crown, but these kind of things have happened before and will happen again.

If this is the sales pitch, I guess my refrain from the beginning is still the same: I have no clue how the hell people should be using this.

[jeff061]

I'm still using it as I was before, more as a replacement to twitter than Facebook.

[Groundhog]

Love the document suite/calendar/android-syncing etc. features of Google. Google+... not so much. The last update I had from anyone in my circle was on Jan 6.

[Galaxy]

Google is in a very interesting position. You got Facebook, and their closed system, basically defeating them on the networking front. Twitter is even ahead of them here.

Siri, and Apple, could be its biggest threat in the future.

Android is doing well, but it's still a very, very small revenue and profit generator for the company, considering they basically give it away.

And it's privacy policies will be interesting to watch.

[Autumn]

I think G+ has kept enough of a toehold to keep fighting. They are planning more and more integration into their projects, I know. There was a Wired story recnetly where they hinted that for instance they're working on this idea of Hangouts, as a way to share and watch mass media with friends. I think tehy have the ability to do some new things with social media that Facebook can't do, so a lot will depend on how good those things are. It's hard to count Google out with their successes.

I think the Circles is a great innovation. But it also makes it harder - if people on your list aren't sharing with you, it makes G+ seem quiet. But if they can keep pulling people in slowly I think they still have a shot. They really should concentrate on making it easy to use both FB and G+ for now, and then pull out a killer app down the line.

[AnalBumCover]

Originally Posted by jeff061

I'm still using it as I was before, more as a replacement to twitter than Facebook.

Same. My close friends hardly post on G+. When they do, it's usually a cross post from FB... stuff I've already read. So I tried something different and searched photographers or photography on G+ and started to add them to my photography circle... several hundred now in that circle. My stream is now primarily public posts/photos from those folks.

[Logan]

The Mounting Minuses at Google+ - WSJ.com

To hear Google Inc. Chief Executive Larry Page tell it, Google+ has become a robust competitor in the social networking space, with 90 million users registering since its June launch.

But those numbers mask what's really going on at Google+.

It turns out Google+ is a virtual ghost town compared with the site of rival Facebook Inc., which is preparing for a massive initial public offering. New data from research firm comScore Inc. shows that Google+ users are signing up—but then not doing much there.

Visitors using personal computers spent an average of about three minutes a month on Google+ between last September and January, versus six to seven hours on Facebook each month over the same period, according to comScore, which didn't have data on mobile usage.

Behind the lack of engagement are Google's difficulties in differentiating Google+ from Facebook.

When Google+ launched last year, the Internet search giant positioned it as a Facebook competitor where people can share comments, articles, photos and videos with specific groups of friends and contacts.

While Google+ has some original features—including "Hangouts," which lets people start a video conference with up to 10 people—analysts and some consumers say the distinction isn't enough to lure Facebook members away and persuade them to build a network of contacts from scratch on Google+.

"Nobody wants another social network right now," said Brian Solis, an analyst at social-media advisory firm Altimeter Group. For those who already use Facebook, "Google hasn't communicated what the value of Google+ is," he said.

Google executives downplay the direct comparison to Facebook, which has 845 million monthly active users. They have repeatedly said they are making a long-term bet on the initiative, and the company has yet to build up some of the weapons that made Facebook successful, including encouraging app development.

In an interview, Bradley Horowitz, a Google vice president of product management, said Google+ is designed to be more than a destination site and, as a result, is "extremely hard for any third party to measure." Rather, he said, Google+ acts as an auxiliary to Google services—such as Gmail and YouTube—by adding a "personal" social-networking layer on top of them.

For example, Google+ members who search on Google.com can now get personal results that include content from Google+.

Mr. Horowitz declined to share data about how much time people spend on Google+ but said "we're growing by every metric we care about." A Google spokeswoman said comScore's data is "dramatically lower" than Google's internal data.

Still, some key Google+ partners are underwhelmed by the lack of user activity.

Last August, for instance, social-games company Zynga Inc. began offering its games "Cityville" and "Zynga Poker" to people who use Google+. Zynga now has 46.8 million monthly active users of "Cityville" on Facebook and 33.2 million for "Zynga Poker," according to tracking service AppData.com. But the growth of its game players on Google+ has been slow, Zynga said, declining to reveal underlying numbers.

"So far, Google+ is a nice platform but it's been slow on the uptick with users right now," said John Schappert, Zynga's chief operating officer.

Google hasn't yet approached companies to advertise on Google+, but some marketers who are testing the site say their brand messages haven't resonated with consumers as much as they had expected.

Intel Corp. said 360,000 Google+ members have signed up to receive updates from the chip maker since it set up a brand presence on the site. But Ekaterina Walter, who manages Intel's presence on social media sites, said activity on the company's Google+ account is "not as great as we were hoping it was going to be."

While Intel gets dozens of responses to its posts on Google+ Ms. Walter said the company has nine million "fans" on Facebook and gets thousands of comments there.

Google+ "does not have the same degree of vibrancy that Facebook, Twitter or even Pinterest has at the moment," said David Cohen, an executive vice president at Universal McCann, a media buying unit of Interpublic Group of Cos. that helps big marketers spend ad dollars. "Without active engagement, it will not be as attractive to advertisers."

Google has much at stake as it spends heavily on newspaper ads and commercials to promote Google+, including a TV spot involving The Muppets that ran during the Academy Awards. The company's main financial goal of Google+ is to obtain personal data about users to better target ads to them across all of Google.

To some observers, the challenges Google is facing in creating a rival destination to Facebook and Twitter Inc. evokes the problems that software giant Microsoft Corp. has had in creating a rival search destination to Google search with Bing.

Facebook and Twitter helped change the way people discover new things on the Web, rivaling Google as the chief gateway to the Internet. Much of the activity on Facebook is private and can't be accessed by Google's search engine, making search less useful as people spend more time on Facebook.

While some Silicon Valley executives privately give credit to Google for not just ceding territory to Facebook, Google has an uphill battle in slowing down Facebook's momentum.

A Facebook spokesman declined to comment.

All of this makes it more important for Google to win over people like Ben Hopper. The 29-year-old photographer in London joined Google+ shortly after it launched and said he believed the service had potential.

But in November, Mr. Hopper stopped using Google+. Instead, he re-focused on Facebook and social media sites like Twitter. Google+ "was an additional tool that needed time investment—time I didn't have to begin with," he said.

[Dutch]

What does it mean if I have no idea was tumblr or pinterest are?

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Dutch

What does it mean if I have no idea was tumblr or pinterest are?

Well, in the case of Pinterest, it means that you do not have a vagina.

[Dutch]

lol.

Street Cred + 1.

[sterlingice]

Holy crap:

Originally Posted by wikipedia

In January 2012, comScore reported the site had 11.7 million unique users, making it the fastest site in history to break through the 10 million unique visitor mark.^[11] Pinterest's wide reach helped it achieve an average of 11 million visits each week in December 2011. Most of the site's users are female, with 97% of the site's Facebook "likes" being made by women.

97%?!? What a crazy demographic skew. And looking at the description on wikipedia, it's not like it sounds particularly gender specific. I wonder if it's a right brain/left brain sort of thing. Or maybe they just advertise the crap out of it on Lifetime or some other media with a significant demographic shift.


SI

[Ronnie Dobbs2]

All the stuff on there right now is crafts/cooking/beauty. Its just that that was the first demographic to utilize it. Also those lend themselves to the "pin a picture" concept better than sports or tech.

Its actually pretty handy, and I won't be surprised if it is soon used by more.

[JediKooter]

Welp, looks like we know where all the girls hang out on the internet now. PANTY RAID!!!!!

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

Well, in the case of Pinterest, it means that you do not have a vagina.

Most of the site's users are female, with 97% of the site's Facebook "likes" being made by women.

I only stereotype when I'm right.

[Radii]

My experience with Pintrest is basically seeing a facebook friend post a picture of her new engagement ring and then over the next week: "Female Friend X has pinned 35,000 Wedding Styles to Pintrest" or whatever. I know nothing else about it past that.

[lungs]

All I know is a guy on Twitter I converse with uses Pinterest and catches holy hell from other guys for using it.

[Fidatelo]

My wife is all over Pinterest, she is addicted to it. I've tried a couple of times to figure out why I should like it, including signing up and installing a specific app on my phone. But everytime my experience is like this:

Junk *scroll*
Crap *scroll*
Who cares *scroll*
Junk *scroll*
wtf? *scroll*
Meh *close app*

[MJ4H]

Ditto ^

[Matthean]

G+ needs to be what iGoogle failed to be. Your homepage that integrates the rest of Google apps and adds the social network aspect.

[terpkristin]

Pintrest is a waste of my time.

And I very rarely visit or post to G+. When I do post, I'm usually posting the same thing I already posted on FB...on FB, I typically get replies.

/tk

[ISiddiqui]

I think G+ has failed in not being able to link to, say, Twitter. I make a tweet and that also updates my Facebook status. I don't want to write that up again for G+.

[JonInMiddleGA]

LOL at the Pintrest sub-topic that popped up.

Timely too as I just asked my wife to check out how we might be able to leverage it for a client, since after a couple of attempts to wrap my head around it I finally just gave up. There's only so many pictures of bed linens, curtains, wedding dresses and really bad scrapbooking idea I can fucking look at.

[cartman]

I hadn't heard of Pintrest before this thread, and now I've noticed it in several other places today.

First was an article that the founder is going to have a keynote at SXSW, then another article about tech companies, and how they are different because they started in Iowa, and third on the Facebook wall of one of my cousins, where her friends made fun of something she was doing on Pintrest.

[Logan]

My fiancee and her friends have been pretty obsessed with Pinterest for a few months now. I like it because she can sit on the couch with her iPad while I'm watching a game and all I have to do is give a cursory nod every time she says "check this out".

A buddy of mine posted on Facebook a week or so ago something along the lines of "So can anyone tell me what Pinterest is about? Is it worth signing up?". To which another friend replied "This is like notifying the world of your impending sex change" which I thought was pretty appropriate.

[Ryan S]

BBC News - Pinterest: Just what exactly is on it?

[PilotMan]

Pinterest has a huge future, just the way it's set up. My wife, a bunch of her friends that she got started have been all over it for weeks now. I wish I could buy stock in it right now, that's how hot it is.

Her take, it's all about today, what's hot right now. The ultimate in customer trend, style, and preference. And a way to drive massive hits to a website. But the shelf life of those hits is limited to daily, unless you can get hot day after day after day.

[Matthean]

I actually found a person who is on it and uses it. Now I feel obligated to use it more.

[Lonnie]

Starting to look like Pinterest needs it's own thread. One of you ladies fire one up.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

On a side note that I was about to post anyway & it might as well just go in this post:

I believe that FB has already set the standard in terms of how mainstream social interaction is "supposed" to work, connections are mutual two-way relationships. FB has now hit as high as 65% penetration in the U.S., Twitter just hit a new high at 13% ... which relationship model do you figure is going to seem "right" to most people?

Was just re-reading this thread and came across this comment from 2 1/2 years ago. You nailed this one. It's a bit of a tangent, but I'd now argue that FB is shaping other social interactions. Thinking about those of my family/friends who have joined FB in the last 2 1/2 years, probably the most interesting is my m-i-l. She quit FB at some point (I think in 2011 or early 2012,) in no small part due to the fact that she was seeing things that she didn't want to see. (Specifically, seeing her college-aged niece's FB posts shattered her image of her as the most innocent and wonderful thing ever and she wanted to go back to pretending otherwise. ) However, she felt "forced" to rejoin FB because she was feeling dumb too frequently in social interactions because her family and friends knew some details of what her nieces, nephews, and sometimes her children were up to that she didn't know.

[ISiddiqui]

The Pinterest discussion is interesting. I "signed up" just for the Hell of it. I figured that every once in a while there is a picture over the internet that is really cool and I'd like to save it to look at it again - not to share it. Especially since Feedly has a Pinterest thing built in. I doubt I'll use it that often at all, but its there, just for the heck of it.

[Ryan S]

I was going to post "What the hell is Pinterest anyway?", but it looks like I helpfully answered my own question a couple of years ago.