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Comment by Kylekramer | Hacker News Reader

This thought: Further, I think it’s reasonable to assume a correlation between private use & public use kills the whole article. No, it isn't a reasonable assumption. If you look at my Facebook without being a friend of mine, you get a picture of me. Five years of use and that is the only public thing I have published. And I am just another dude no one cares about. I am sure billionaire CEOs and board members who have actual reporters, normal everyday gossiphounds and even crazies caring about their personal lives have even more incentive to be private. Google+'s promise isn't that is a combination of Facebook and Twitter, it is a social network where it does what you want it to. And if Google management wants their sharing to be private, that is good. I suspect a large number of their users have a similar outlook.

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I disagree - he makes a reasonable assumption. G+ allows you to share things that are public and share things that are private.

If someone was sharing things that are private (our assumption), wouldn't it follow that they are sharing things that they have indicated (via some other means) are public?

For example, David Drummond's post on the Google Blog regarding Android patents (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/when-patents-attack-a...). He has authored this post, indicated this is public but failed to share it publicly using G+. Is this not the purpose of G+?

These execs attend press events often where they openly voice their opinion in the public domain. It's a public company too and these people are actually accountable to the public.

However, it seems that although they share publicly when asked to by reporters and their open-ended questions they do not see G+ as a means to publicly share. They do not understand the value of information sharing and user generated content, the cornerstone of web 2.0. They are still stuck in a pull-based world driven by journalists asking questions. Facebook and Twitter understood the value of this change well by living through it (http://vaughan.io/post/10476571077/live-the-problem).

What we can draw from this is that its not going to be Google who jumps on the next big trend in social, if they can't even understand how to use their current product to its intended effect. They only built G+ because the concept was proven by Facebook and now they are just replicating it. Facebook will continue to lead the market here until the top executives like Larry, Sergey, Alan Eustace, etc. can understand their own product, its weaknesses and its strengths.

He has authored this post, indicated this is public but failed to share it publicly using G+. Is this not the purpose of G+?

I write blog posts for my employer, on the employer's blog frequently. I never share them on my private accounts on social networks. Why should I? Thats not "cbs, person" thats "cbs, talking on behalf of Corp X". Even if I was in senior management I wouldn't want to dilute myself as a person by posting things on social networks that are not me.

You're basically arguing that google execs don't understand G+ because, they haven't mixed their personal and professional lives to a sufficient extent. That is a rather bold conclusion to draw. Maybe they're just private people.

It is impossible for me to use the product I work on day-to-day. It would literally kill me if I tried. Does that mean I'm unable to understand it?

Disclosure: author :)

I don't think what a "normal" person has done on Facebook over the past 5 years is a fair comparison. Facebook didn't even have a public "subscribe/follow" concept til last week, whereas Google+ launched with one. Also, these aren't normal people, they're the leaders/overseers of the company using (or not) a landmark initiative whose leader (Vic Gundotra) clearly thinks that ideally it'd be used for both your private and public interactions. At the very least, it'd look a lot better if they had accounts, tried making a public post (even just to congratulate the team publicly), and looked engaged.

In fact, this was one of the main use-cases G+ hammered on when it launched.

That said, I believe G+ has public-facing benefit. It would be nice to see honchos above Vic Gundotra using it publicly.

Marissa Mayer actively uses G+, publicly.

Vic is higher in the org, I think

Vic reports to the CEO, so Larry is the only "honcho" above Vic.

Yes, exactly right, especially considering the broad range that 'private' sharing can take on G+. I.e., I use a circle called "Following" to use G+ more like twitter, which includes a lot of people. So when I share with all my circles, it's technically 'private', but not really private.

Agreed. Thought I think the fact so much of the management doesn't even have a Google+ account is a much more telling/troubling indicator.

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