Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded?

I have sources that say, unofficially that:

1) They were not blindsided at all. They worked hard to compete on major features before g+ ever came out.

2) "Groups" has more or less similar functionality, and the feature is known to have a poor UI right now. The point though is that FB thought about this and even though they aren't up to the same polish with that feature, the feature exists, no architectural changes necessary. Just UI polish.

As he correctly notes later in the article, the lists feature is not prominent on Facebook, and therefore few use it (or maybe few people actually want it?). But it definitely will not require a major architectural overhaul by Facebook.

I find google circles a very engaging idea, as your friends list will never get stale. Total sharing may be less, but you are no longer afraid to share (e.g.) technical stuff with your colleagues. The problem is how they're going to figure out re-sharing right.

  > The idea that there are meetings at FB where people
  > are saying "F___, we're screwed" is implausible.

If the description of Google+ is accurate (don't have an invite, haven't really tried to get one), Google may have found a solution for Facebook spam. I tried to use my Facebook account for awhile, but it quickly became a wall of Farmville updates. I know there are settings I could use to get rid of those, but investigating it seemed too much work to bother.

So it seems that Google is attacking Facebook at their weakest point, and that's pretty interesting and worthy of discussion, and I'm glad it got up voted enough that I saw it, in spite of the bad title.

Using Google's example: If I have a biking group and a work group, there's probably someone in the intersection of those two groups. I might want to share something with my biking group but not share it with my work group. There's not a mechanism to do that, that I can find, in Google+.

On the other hand, in Facebook, if I post something but restrict it from my work group, people that are in my work group won't see the post even if they're also in another group that does have permission.

This is a vastly superior approach, it seems to me.

I do agree with this, obviously, whole-heartedly. But, at the same time, I feel like the lack of research in this case is kind of making a point of its own. The circles feature has garnered a lot of praise from people while it seems that very few people even know about Facebook lists and even fewer even use them (if the articles and discussion on HN are any indication). A feature nobody knows about is as good as missing and I'm sure their designers are going to have some fun if FB decides they need to emphasise their lists more.

I agree with the sentiment and the subtley here that I've come to appreciate over the years which is this; A feature which is hard to discover or understand is the same as 'not existing' for a large portion of the customers.

There is also the "Facebook's privacy controls are actually pretty sophisticated now ..." which dismisses the painful walk it took to get there. That pain doesn't go away quickly or easily.

Having used G+ for a while I tend to agree with the article that FB will have to step up their game here. The beast is awake and its opening move was much more credible than previous attempts. What is more I think it has moved the expectation of what your social network should do for you forward.

I'm sure FB will respond, and there are a lot of smart folks who will no doubt have their own killer ideas. If nothing else, having a credible competitor will make social networking better for everyone.

Facebook has lost a lot of user trust with their arguably shady practices. I think there are many of us who want to be in on the whole social networking thing, but don't want it on Facebook.

Then there's Google's almost monopolistic leverage using Google's services to give Google+ its much-needed bootstrapping boost.

Whether all of this is enough, or is more or less than the actual relationships already captured in Facebook -- I don't trust anyone to really know.

It would also be a major UX shift to bring Lists back to the foreground and make it a part of every interaction a la circles. And if they did, it would be hard to do it without offending existing users.

Facebook also may have big datacenters but perhaps not currently architected to handle videochatting at the volume that Hangouts require. Google has a one-up on them there since they've offered free video chatting for years, and they also have gotten many people to already install the Voice and Video plugin by offering free phone calls in GMail for the past two years. That plugin is key to a good videochatting UX in a browser (Flash by itself has some technical and UX problems with webcam access).

Google+ has positioned and designed itself for Circles, and has firmly shoved Circles into everyone's skull. I think it's more of a branding thing than a technical difficulty thing at this point.

i personally like it, and enjoy the list/circle-centric nature of it, but if none of my friends are active on it, there's no reason why I "should" use it over FB.

“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” [1] - Palm CEO Ed Colligan, 2006

[1] http://daringfireball.net/2006/11/colligan_head_stuck

To be clear: it's asymmetric so you don't have to "approve" followers or not. Feel free to put anyone in your circles, and you'll see their posts if they make them public, or if they post them to a circle they've put you in previously.

You get notifications when people add you to a circle, so you have the opportunity to add them to a circle if you want, but it's not required. Whether it's socially expected (as it seems it used to be on Twitter), is something of a debate among G+ users currently.