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Comment by esrauch | Hacker News Reader

Everything that I am getting from trying out google+ is pointing to it being a Twitter killer not a Facebook killer; the lack of things like private messaging (yes you can post with only one person able to view it, but it's pretty unlikely that they would ever notice that you wrote it). The whole system is geared towards 'share to group' rather than 'communicate with individual x'; even the video chat is. I don't think it's correct to say that they care about strong 2-way relationships.

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Isn't GMail a sufficiently powerful "private messaging" feature? You can send a message from anyone's profile if they've enabled the "Send mail" feature. Plus GMail already supports a federated protocol, so you can use this profile "send message" feature with any other mail system you want.

Maybe it's just me, but email just feels way more formal and personal. I would have no qualms writing quick one-offs like "That was fun last night, we should do it again soon" on facebook, but I would never send an email like that.

Maybe, however, Google is trying to change that. E-mail is a perfectly fine choice for the protocol for such messages, but the UI has to change. Look at what they've done in the other direction, brining Talk and Buzz logs into Gmail inboxes, for instance. Why not reverse that and export certain kinds of mails received in a Gmail account out to the Google+ UI?

I haven't tried it yet, but they say it ties in with gmail? Presumably they'll encourage the one-on-one to happen there?

I'm not entirely sure, but the ways that it ties with gmail that I can discern is that you get email notifications, and that the top bar that has the gmail, calendar, documents,... links has a little notification icon in the top right.

Haven't they pushed that off to the side with huddle?

I'm slightly surprised there's no huddle interface in the browser (or I've been too dim to find it). I know it's aimed at the text message/BBM arena, but I'd like to not have to move to a different device if someone messages me.

I don't think Facebook's core product is about communicating with individuals either.

I'm sure Google will add more features

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