MetaFilter posts tagged with googleplus

Everything is fleeting

Wordshore — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 04:27:46 -0800

"It feels strange to be active and highly visible on the Web for 15 years but it was only when I joined Facebook that someone from elementary school or high school ever contacted me." In which on Ev Williams's platform, Mr Haughey compares his experiences of Facebook and Twitter. Other recent comparisons of Facebook and Twitter by Forbes, Forbes again, the New York Times, Social Times and Tweetsmarter.

Choose Your Own Adventure By Committee!

juv3nal — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 10:20:12 -0800

Toiling away in the obscure backwaters of Google+, mefi's own Shakespeherian has been engaged in a compelling serial storytelling experiment: three THRILLING TALES of MYSTERY and ADVENTURE in a Choose Your Own Adventure By Committee format:

I: In which YOU determine the FATE of a man named BJORN! (begins here and continues here)
II: In which YOU run away to JOIN THE CIRCUS...OR DO YOU?
III: In which YOU are WRONGLY ACCUSED of MURDER and must detectivate to prove your innocence!

[via mefi projects] flat file story-text-only format for I A spreadsheet put together to try to solve the mystery in III

Comin like a ghost town

mediareport — Mon, 21 May 2012 19:53:50 -0800

New Google+ Study Reveals Minimal Social Activity, Weak User Engagement Fast Company summarizes a new study from RJMetrics that looks at public posts, +1s, replies and reshares on Google+. It concludes "the average post on Google+ has less than one +1, less than one reply, and less than one re-share." Google replies that public posts are a poor metric of user activity; Fast Company replies that "Google has refused to provide clear figures and metrics for its social network's active user base" and links to Danny Sullivan's "brilliant rundown of Google's lack of transparency on the subject" - If Google’s Really Proud Of Google+, It Should Share Some Real User Figures.
There was also Wil Wheaton's recent angry "Oh, go fuck yourself, Google" rant in response to a recent experiment replacing YouTube's "like" button with a Google+ button for a small number of users, thus requiring them to sign up for Google+ before they can 'like' a YouTube video. Is Google Forcing Google+ Down People’s Throats?

YouTube, circa 1997

stopgap — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 09:25:18 -0800

If Google+, YouTube, and Facebook were created in 1997. "Three important contemporary web sites, recreated with technology and spirit of late 1997, according to our memories. Best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.03 and a screen resolution of 1024×768 pixels, running under Windows 95."

a bit of a trickster

Potomac Avenue — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:27:06 -0800

Amalgamation, an animation by Micaël Reynaud based on an animated gif of photos by Michael Jang from his series "Summer Weather" with Music by Memory Tapes. Higher quality film on Youtube More films by Micaël Reynaud: Pizza Loop Milk and Cookies The Hulk Hands Theory Moonlacholia Nimes Google+ In Real Life Fast Focus on the Rails You Never Got Me Right Crushed Cat Small Fish, Big Pond Microscoped King of Legoland

...the product being sold.

ardgedee — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 06:54:12 -0800

The social graph is neither. Maciej Cegłowski, owner/founder/operator/sole employee of Pinboard (recently), blogger of idle words, lays down some science and thoughts about the charting of your personal connections, and why it's doomed.

"Google+ is a Prime Example of Our Complete Failure to Understand Platforms"

flex — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 10:26:47 -0800

"Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product." "Last night, high-profile Google engineer Steve Yegge mistakenly posted a long rant about working at Amazon and Google’s own issues with creating platforms on Google+...The most interesting part to me, though, is Yegge’s blunt assessment of what he perceives to be Google’s inability to understand platforms and how this could endanger the company in the long run." It's quite long, but there's some interesting insight - all the more because it wasn't initially intended to be made public. (via SiliconFilter/via G+) "You know how people are always saying Google is arrogant? I’m a Googler, so I get as irritated as you do when people say that. We’re not arrogant, by and large. We’re, like, 99% Arrogance-Free. I did start this post — if you’ll reach back into distant memory — by describing Google as “doing everything right”. We do mean well, and for the most part when people say we’re arrogant it’s because we didn’t hire them, or they’re unhappy with our policies, or something along those lines. They’re inferring arrogance because it makes them feel better. But when we take the stance that we know how to design the perfect product for everyone, and believe you me, I hear that a lot, then we’re being fools. You can attribute it to arrogance, or naivete, or whatever — it doesn’t matter in the end, because it’s foolishness. There IS no perfect product for everyone. And so we wind up with a browser that doesn’t let you set the default font size. Talk about an affront to Accessibility. I mean, as I get older I’m actually going blind. For real. I’ve been nearsighted all my life, and once you hit 40 years old you stop being able to see things up close. So font selection becomes this life-or-death thing: it can lock you out of the product completely. But the Chrome team is flat-out arrogant here: they want to build a zero-configuration product, and they’re quite brazen about it, and Fuck You if you’re blind or deaf or whatever. Hit Ctrl-+ on every single page visit for the rest of your life. It’s not just them. It’s everyone. The problem is that we’re a Product Company through and through. We built a successful product with broad appeal — our search, that is — and that wild success has biased us."

you can have my nym when you pry it from my cold dead signature file

luvcraft — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 11:17:45 -0800

The "nymwars" rage on. Despite a passionate post on their own public policy blog earlier this year, outlining all of the reasons that Google is a strong supporter of the use of pseudonyms on the internet, Google is continuing to take an uncharacteristically draconian approach to the use of pseudonyms on Google+. Google+ users with pseudonyms not only risk losing access to Google+, but also access to other Google services including Picasa and Google Reader as well. Naturally, this is a significant inconvenience for users who are known primarily by their pseudonyms, and a more significant inconvenience to users who use pseudonyms to protect the physical safety of themselves and their families. [previously] There is an "Appeal Process" whereby users can try to have their Google accounts reactivated, usually by faxing Google a copy of a government-issued ID proving that their name is really their name. Compounding the confusion and upset was the fact that, for two months, the official page for the Google+ name policy stated "If you’re referred to by more than one name, just choose one". Earlier this week, however, that page was changed to one that more closely matches the policy that Google has been enforcing, despite some promising talk from Google execs a month ago.

#crashtags: Why add space-economical hashtags to near-unlimited Google+ posts?

joeclark — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 13:06:50 -0800

#crashtags. Why, MeFi’s own Adrian Holovaty asks, would one need to add hashtags – designed for space-economical Twitter, where every character counts – to Google+, which has orders of magnitude more space to express oneself? And should Twitter really be influencing our online behaviour thus, given “how limiting (and, frankly, silly) Twitter is”? Holovaty (previously) continues: “I think in a few years people will look back at Twitter and feel like they were, well, duped in a way – millions of grown men and women, adults, typing in obscure abbreviations and making up messy syntaxes just to fit a semi-arbitrary character limit.”