I don’t really get what the hate was for Google+, it was better than the alternative/competitor at the time (Facebook)
Google+ forced itself on people. I didn’t want it so I stopped using my Gmail entirely. I imagine word of mouth caused people to avoid it.
And the ridiculous part on top of that is that it was the exact opposite situation at first. When it first launched, you had to be a friend of a friend of a Google employee to register or you weren’t getting in. It took me a about a month before a friend of mine studying CompSci at university with the kid of some Google employee was able to pass an invitation my way.
I get the purpose was to generate hype by making it seem “exclusive” like Facebook was in the early days, but it took way too long before the people who genuinely wanted to use it were allowed to openly register for it. It was like that for 3 months, and a lot of people who gave up on trying to get an invite lost interest after the initial buzz died down.
And then Google wasn’t satisfied with upsetting the people that wanted to use it, so they had to go and upset the people who didn’t want to use it by later forcing it on everyone with a Google account.
It’s kind of funny, isn’t this exactly what Meta is doing to everyone with an Instagram account? You have a shadow profile on Threads regardless if you signed up or not.
I wonder why the reaction is so different, maybe because they both are social media? Or maybe just good timing with the whole Twitter debaucle.
Google wasn’t comfortable in letting it grow naturally over time. They tried really hard to push on people by combining it with other more popular google products when it didn’t really make sense (i.e. Youtube). Also, as a teen at the time google plus just felt nerdy and weird. It didn’t really feel like something they cool kids would use so no one used it.
Yeah that’s how I felt too. I remember being excited about g+, then I also remember aggressively turning off any association to g+ because no one was on it and it kept pushing it in my face. Come to think of it gmail was similar, invite only and that, but it wasn’t forced even at release and they made it look a lot nicer than what yahoo and hotmail had going on at the time.
and from what i remember, staying true to typical google fashion, they fucked it up by not opening up the “beta” when they had a critical mass forming behind it. then only to force everyone into having a profile a year or whatever later. lol, too late. i think most of us understood that anything associated with google is assumed to be a never-ending “beta”, so no idea what they were thinking or waiting for.
I think it was definitely the super long beta period where you needed an invite killed it. I knew a ton of people who were interested that gave up
That’s easy to say now, but Orkut (another Google social network, mostly used in Brazil) also had a beta invite system… And that helped it grow tremendously. The secrecy and “status” of getting invited made people go wild - they would even sell invites.
The strategy can work. It’s just very timing sensitive.
It was good but it didn’t really add enough or solve an actual problem. At the time, there wasn’t as much negative sentiment around Facebook. The circles were a neat concept but too much work to use for the average user.
It’s strange to note that if Google had just casually worked on the feature, started gradually integrating it with YouTube etc, they might have beat insta to the punch and also really capitalized on Facebook hate. Instead they made one massive marketing blunder after another.
I agree, and the level of user on G+ was of a techy IT variety of person. It was great and you could have good conversations. Lemmy really has that feel now. Enjoy it till either the general public gets hold of it and it turns into a cesspool or it slowly dies a death.
Personally I hope to face neither of those scenarios, but history is not on our side.
The concept of who you chose to share your status was cumbersome. It at least not auntie or uncle friendly
I don’t remember what it was called? Spaces?
I don’t remember what it was called? Spaces?
Circles. It was a killer feature at the time, the idea of different feeds for different groups, all in one profile. Too bad there weren’t enough groups to make it useful.
Being able to share certain posts with everyone (including your parents/grandparents) vs just your friends vs your work colleagues was a brilliant feature that seems to have just been substituted with private group chats instead. Seriously when I was a teenager the amount of stuff I thought about posting but didn’t because it would appear for everyone…
