I still wish for a clone of Google+ v1 to succeed and replace Facebook.
Sometimes i still wonder why it failed.
Sometimes i still wonder why it failed.
I think they thought that it was necessary to leverage the rest of Google to give them an advantage in social media, to draw people into a Google ecosystem, but really they just needed to do Facebook better, and take advantage of whatever anti-consumer move that Facebook would make and market "That doesn't happen here!" You can close the net once people are in. Instead people with gmail addresses and youtube accounts felt like they were under attack.
Here's a fun anecdote that comes to mind whenever I think of Google+ :
On YouTube I had either liked or commented on a video where comedian/pianist Tim Minchin performed his song, White Wine in the Sun. To give a simple summary, this song is about how he likes Christmas, even if he thinks the whole religious aspect of it is silly.
This was around my late teens, when I was quietly pulling myself out of my Christian upbringing and had decided I didn't really want to continue pretending I believe all that stuff (part of the reason I was drawn to Tim Minchin in the first place).
Well wouldn't you know, apparently interacting with any YouTube video publicly posted your interactions to your Google+ page, where I had added some random people here or there, including my sister who had seen this "post," watched the video, and proceeded to question me a day or two later as to why I shared that video.
I can't say that left a great impression on me to continue using Google+
Everything else was just googles M.O., wasn't it? Create new shiny platform, rebuild everything around it, annoying a lot of people but also creating some value for those that opt in. Than never address the issues that arise, change strategy midway and remove all integrations, but maybe create new ones when you do the inescapable surface-level redesign that only creates more issues than addressing existing ones (Because now there is a new "strategy"). Repeat until product is canceled.