Google+, damn you!
 

Damn you for being slick and easy to use.
Damn you for having developers who care and interact directly with the community.
Damn you for sucking the last vestiges of free time I have.

Now I have to get back to what I was doing and I don't have time to finish it all before I'm off to DC for 4 days.

I like how everyone is raving about Google+, but are not taking any more beta testers to try out the application. Are you getting paid to advertise google+?

+1

Actually they opened it up again for roughly 2 hours last night. I do wonder how many came in.

I don't think of it as advertising their product inasmuch as there are interesting people there to meet and mingle with and discuss topics. It's not a aggregated as a forum but the level of discussion there is something that can happen versus the facebook distractions and walled in cliques. It's hard to meet new people on facebook, whereas on G+ you can meet them instantly.

The major issue is that everyone wants into Google+. Every time they open it up for more registrations, they get swamped and are closed again in about an hour.

I managed to do it by being obsessive and checking multiple times per day.

I'll try it when it's open for long enough to let someone in this timezone get in.

what on earth is google plus?

oh, I already waste half and hour of my life a day building and tending to pretend towns/farms/etc on FB, I probably dont need another such thing.

I don't care about meeting new people. I barely use FB to begin with. I log on for 5-10 minutes a day and log off.
If I found most of my friends start to migrate to Google+ I'd head there as well but until then I'll just stick with FB.

Google+ isn't just about being a social network. It really is more about changing how we use Google. It's Google. Plus.

So far I like it quite a bit.

I already quit using Google, so I sure as hell am not going to use Google +.

If I were working at Facebook, I'd be very, very concerned. It's slick, it's simple, and it's not a clear attempt to collect user data to sell to the highest bidder.

:thumbsup: (except for Google Earth, and bicycle directions on maps) The rest of Google is pointless and are copies of existing products that for some unknown reason, people like...

Yahoo was first...Google search is the same
Yahoo mail was fine, Gmail had the same 'exclusivity' at the beginning, but is the same
YouTube was first, Google Video was the same (until they bought out YouTube)
iPhone was first, Android is on Verizon and a copy that crashes
MySpace & Facebook were first, Google+ is probably the same.

Nice 'new American' business model (and an vastly overhyped stock as well)...

so far as i can tell, the main advantages of google +are that the layout is more open than fb and people are more excited to be there.
but i'm obviously missing some things.
what am i missing?
how do i not miss those things?

help a brother out....

MySpace -> Facebook -> Google+ -> _Your Name Here_

Honestly... this is the first I have heard of it.. I guess I am just out of the loop.

Circles seems like a good idea. When I share something on Facebook (just kidding, I never share anything on Facebook), everyone sees it. Circles allows status updates to be micromanaged for different groups. The same concept behind Circles is expanded to Huddle, which is like Google chat, only it can be used by more than just two parties. Sparks has the potential to be good, too.

Mostly, though, it's the ability to leave google+ without leaving information behind.

I had groups for many different things in Facebook, from no share groups to the different cliques of life. For me it wasn't much different seeing the circles.

Not only do you not leave information behind but you get to take your data with you when you leave.

Well, that's a fun list.

I'm old enough and nerdy enough to remember when Google launched. The consensus at the time was that it was far better than any of the competing search engines (and there was far more than just Yahoo). Even today, nobody outside Google knows precisely what goes into the pagerank algorithms but they're considered the defacto standard for determining search relevance.

Gmail was big because it introduced several innovative features. Not least of these was the unprecedented amount of storage -- I believe it launched with 2 GB, in a time when some of the competition was offering a meagre 10 MB. "Never delete another email" was the tagline, and by and large I haven't. Making your entire mail archive searchable was also new and exciting, and I occasionally consider moving my own personal email to them just for the labeling system which is incredibly powerful if you know how to use it.

Google video was offering videos over an hour in length when Youtube was limited to ten minutes. It finally folded after Google's purchase of Youtube made it effectively redundant. Google also managed to make Youtube profitable, something it's founders were incapable of.

Android is interesting as compared to iPhone because it's open source, and effectively takes the opposite stance to Apple's walled garden approach. I like that I can get an app from pretty much anywhere, without it being subject to review by committee. Android being a far more flexible platform also leads to much greater choice in devices. You want a hardware keyboard? You can get one on Android. There's no app for that.

If you want to get nitpicky on the social network stuff, Google was actually first on the market with Orkut, although that never took off outside of a few overseas markets (Brazil being the largest, I believe). I suspect it'll get folded into Google+ down the road.

I'm not saying that you have to like Google, but it's a bit disingenuous to suggest that none of their products were innovative.

What's interesting about Google+ as a product is how it integrates with Google's current offerings, or more accurately how they integrate with it. We're seeing the very beginnings of it with +1 buttons popping up everywhere, but if it's successful it could represent a paradigm shift in how people use Google products (and by extension, the internet itself). This is personal bias, but I'm also far more willing to trust Google with my personal info than I am Mark "dumb fucks"* Zuckerberg.

* Facebook CEO Admits To Calling Users 'Dumb Fucks'

I'll give google+ a try, but I'm not sure I want to maintain two separate online social accounts. Much like other people, I deleted my old myspace page and solely use facebook now.

That being said it would be nice to be on a social site that didn't continuously force unwanted changes on its users.

That and it's really difficult to erase Facebook. At least when you've got an IQ of 98.

So what if it's true? He created the hamster wheel for vapid humans.

I'm sorry, but your talking about using Facebook and how Facebook works is like my talking about using guns and how guns work.

Hey....I've shot an air rifle a few times. I've played Duck Hunt....


Or wait.... are you on Facebook now? Add me, bro.

As roachboy has mentioned before: Facebook is merely a structure.

If you don't like vapid, don't add your vapid friends.

Great post, Martian.

And I like Google+ for similar reasons to Cynthetiq--it was easy to set up my circles, honestly easier than setting up groups in Facebook. I have people on my Facebook that I don't want to see every single thing I post, and so it's set up that way, but it was a pain in the ass to do.

Plus, there aren't any of those dumb games to clog up my stream.

Don't be fatuous, Jeffrey. Any dipshit can master Facebook in a weekend.

Hah! You know I can't friend you on FaceySpace. You're a stranger.

Structure for morons. And well, yes... but I don't have friends.

you know, abusing this kind of weird judgmental attitude is a gateway thing that can ruin people's lives by persuading them to think things like: celebrity rehab is not quality television.

I'm a pioneer, what can I say?

...

I think George Orwell said it best:

"Social networking is a lot like contemplating your navel. It occupies time, but while you're doing it you're not doing anything else."

My point was that you were talking about it without having knowledge about it. Are you on Facebook? Now I have no idea.

My feed consists largely of the technorati on one hand and the literati on the other. It has a very low moron quotient. A lot of these guys are writing and publishing poems and novels in an age when the average high school student struggles to write a single sentence without destroying their native language.

"Structure for morons" doesn't make sense to me. What's moronic about making social connections? Do you hate telephone and email technology as well? I mean, morans use those too.

And why do you post here? Lots of morons use forums, you know.

Are we all just morons?

Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Fuck. I've been on it for half a decade. It's not a mystery; it's proletariat stream of consciousness with a few self-important talented assholes on top. Charlie Sheen included. It's endless wedding and baby pictures, rants about their jobs (some of which get them fired), snaps of their new car (A gold Nissan? Really?) and vacations to places so trite it's like late night TV. Maybe something hosted by Gilbert Godfried. Oh, look... they're by the Hollywood sign. See? I get the nature of "structure" (easy to use input GUI to speed along the data mining for a "free site" that does God knows what with your input) and how "it is what we make it." Most users make it what it is: a glimpse into our vain, materialistic culture that is completely out of touch with... (insert Roachboy diatribe). Facebook is a mental McDonald's, Baraka. Social junk food for the masses. You can't polish that turd.

The same shit that was on MySpace; the same shit that'll be on Google+, although Google+ seems to feature the precursor design structures (what's the reverse of a vestigial organ?) that may evolve into a more forum-like discussion with out-of-primary-circle individuals (strangers!) depending on whether or not Joe Prole is actually even interested in talk. Hell, I'm a total moron prole and I'm leery of anything that tries to introduce strangers into my life because I typed in "I love zombie movies" in my profile or whatever. Then again, how personal does it get? It's a weird balance, I'd imagine. It has to have some personal ties or it turns into drivel. Reddit is a prime example of what happens when you take away the name and face of people in a discussion setting: oral diarrhea. As has been shown since Usenet newsgroups started back in the dark ages: Anonymity leads to stupidity.

/hot garbage

Hey, that's great. Giving 500 people a paint brush gets you 2 masterpieces and 498 parakeet cage liners.

Did you just say Mormons?

Because I'm a moron. Did you somehow miss the 1,238,483,765 times I've said it since that June I joined? I wasn't kidding.

That's way too existential for 1300. Hit me up in a few hours.

Yet.
Is the emphasis on the "not" or on the "clear?"

So, what's in Google+ for Google? They surely aren't just doing it out of the goodness of their warm corporate heart. Or are they? Or is it hearts? Is Google a corporate collective?

Lindy

Please, Google is likely mining the shit out of us with GMail.

Shit, 9er. The problem is in your connections, not Facebook (or MySpace, or Google+, or whatever).

Calling Facebook mental McDonald's is like calling novels mental McDonald's because you know about Dan Brown.

I can't help but think this "limited time invitation" business is nothing but a viral marketing strategy to whip up hype about the latest whateveritis. Who the hell would care about a new google product otherwise? I hope it's cool. But I guess I won't know until i get there.

Wow...I am so behind the times.
I have never used an ATM...
I have never sent a text message...
I have never had a MySpace or Facebook page...
And now Google+...how have I survived?

Am I truly missing anything? I wonder sometimes...

Yes ... it immediatly reminded me of how gmail was invitation-only. Back there then, I was 'take it or leave it' until eventually I joined. I think that since then, I've lost some of my independent spirit. Cynthetiq's mention in this thread was the very first time I had heard of it ... and the fact of 'invitation only' and 'registration open for two hours but you do not know WHICH two hours' ... hit me straight in my 'herd of sheep' button. I don't even like Facebook-type stuff. However, 'limitation, paucity, exclusivity and unpredictability' supplied all the leverage needed for me to anxiously google my way into Finding and Applying for an invitation.

Mea Maxima Sad Puppy.

mix, I'd like to think it was a marketing strategy, but G+ isn't ready for the masses yet. If Buzz was any indicator of how a product should not be launched, G+ is trying to learn from the mistakes of the past. There is only so much testing you can do inside the walls and the sandbox. Eventually you have to branch out and have other people assist. This is why I've been slowly asking people for help with TFP 5.0.

I can't see all the facets and components. I'm just one person working on an off the shelf app making modifications. I won't know if it's a problem accessing a page or feature because I do it one way and you may come at it from a different way.

And yes, if you are interested in TFP 5.0, it's out there and I've been trying to get it off the ground for 6 months. I'm about 2 weeks away, 5 if I keep getting sidetracked by G+

---------- Post added at 05:13 AM ---------- Previous post was at 05:09 AM ----------

"Google+ feels like the social network for adults."

I have had some discussions over there that made me wax nostalgic for TFP circa 2004. Discussions that actually didn't have a moderator or a bunch of morons spouting off to each other.

Now it doesn't mean that trolls and morons don't exist, but by far they are right now the lesser of the bunch.

Why can't I find any of you to add to my circles? Are you hiding from me?:orly:

I finally got in there this morning. I'm not really quick to catch onto these types of things, though. I will be taking baby steps and learning by osmosis.

Yes!

Ha ha ha ha ha!

type in cynthetiq and you'll find me. you can then find the others if you know them by name.