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Comment by w1ntermute | Hacker News Reader

The crazy thing about Google+ is that ordinary people are already actually using it. I have a ton of non-tech savvy friends on it already, and people are making posts that get 5-10 replies. This isn't just "yet another social networking site". I think Google finally managed to pull it off this time, and if they ride the wave of positive sentiment they've gained as a result of Android and other successful ventures as of late, they'll probably be able to get people to trust them with their data much more than Facebook ever could.

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> if they ride the wave of positive sentiment they've gained

It's interesting to consider what the impact of the goodwill many people feel towards Google will be on Google+. With traditional commodities (e.g. cars, detergent, etc.) companies are keen to maintain trust, a positive image, and so on, amongst consumers.

That seems to have been less a factor in the success of companies like Facebook, perhaps because what they offered was so new and compelling that many people were willing to overlook trust issues, ethical and privacy lapses, etc.

Perhaps social networks are now becoming a commodity, and as a result, these factors may end up being much more important. It would be fascinating if Google+'s success was less about the technology and more about how people feel towards the company - if people say, "I can get the same experience from product X as I can from product Y, but I trust the company that makes product X more."

> "With Google+ in the open, Facebook finally needs to watch its step. ... Google is the only web property which can even begin to threaten Facebook’s supremacy. ... That’s the problem with monopolies, and the reason they’re illegal: if you have nowhere to go — if there isn’t an alternative service that you can switch to — the monopoly can simply milk you and stretch you without recourse. But now there’s Google+. With Big G hulking menacingly in Facebook’s shadow and just waiting for a misstep or mistake, Facebook needs to be careful. Mess up now, Zuckerberg, and Google will gladly gobble up droves of discontented denizens."

- One of the main reasons I like Google+, from http://www.extremetech.com/computing/89628-too-many-eggs-in-...

>The crazy thing about Google+ is that ordinary people are already actually using it.

No its not. I've been seeing a lot of "Oh look, even the plebs are using it" attitude about g+. Of course they are, its GOOGLE plus not some obscure startup only techies with their ear to the ground have ever heard of.

If that's the case, why didn't everyone start using Buzz the way they've started using Plus?

When they came out with Buzz, they didn't redo the entire interface for every product so that it would integrate well with it.

Even if Google+ is a total P.O.S, people would at least notice it unlike Buzz.

I was unaware for months that Buzz even existed.

Because buzz sucked? "Whos using it" is a different metric than "is anyone using it".

I consider myself as tech-savvy, and although I have a G+ account, I hardly use it, and none of my friends used it as well.

I don't really know what to do with that G+ account. To share my news? I can do it better with facebook, with far more likes than the total number of my friends in G+.

Tech-savvy != early adopter. It's true that tech-savvy people are usually early adopters, too, but it's not always the case. For example, I'm also tech-savvy and I have a very good sense of when a technology has huge potential - and I felt that about Twitter in its very early days, because I knew it is going to be big. I even made an account. But I've never really used it, mostly because I didn't really get what it's for and how I should use it. Similar story with Facebook. But I've never really liked the product, either, so I used it, but mostly by forcing myself to use it.

On the other hand, I'm an early adopter of Google+, and so far I love using it. I suppose its purpose is similar to Facebook and Twitter, so you can use it in a similar way, but like I said, I just don't like those products. Google+ is much better designed and easier to use, even for non-techies.

I'm really curious as to what all the fuss is about, but google+ isn't going to be available on Apps accounts until Q3 2012, at least... It's unclear as to how they hope to drive business adoption (i.e. monetisation), if they're going to lock out all business accounts!

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