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Google Social Networks Technology

Google Launches Google+ Social Network 368

Posted by Unknown Lamer
from the building-another-walled-garden dept.
Randyll writes "Today, Google announced its decisive entry into the world of social networks by introducing Google+, a social network tied around Google services. Its aim is to be different from other networks with emphasis on privacy and a different kind of social networking. Instead of connecting with your friends, Google+ aims to center connections around specific groups—colleagues, projects, or groups of friends—with the ability to use high-quality video chats and a unique and rich web-based user experience. It is currently in beta with opt-in invites." Several other readers submitted speculation about another mysterious new Google service as well.
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Google Launches Google+ Social Network More

Google Launches Google+ Social Network

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  • Wait, there are Google services NOT in beta? (Score:5, Funny)

    by elrous0 (869638) * on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @03:20PM (#36603554)

    It is currently in beta

    Am I to understand that this is notable information?

  • Couldn't be worse (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Afforess (1310263) <afforess@gmail.com> on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @03:22PM (#36603588) Journal
    It couldn't possibly be worse than Facebook. With Google's transparency with privacy, and already working business model (has facebook ever posted a profit?), I'd trust them over Facebook in a heartbeat.

    Facebook screws me over daily. No, I don't want any facebook credits. No, I don't want to play farmville. Disgusting...

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Qzukk (229616)

      It couldn't possibly be worse than Facebook

      It could be Orkut.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Robotbeat (461248)

      It couldn't possibly be worse than Facebook. With Google's transparency with privacy, and already working business model (has facebook ever posted a profit?), I'd trust them over Facebook in a heartbeat.

      Facebook screws me over daily. No, I don't want any facebook credits. No, I don't want to play farmville. Disgusting...

      And yet you still use Facebook, daily?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Afforess (1310263)

        It couldn't possibly be worse than Facebook. With Google's transparency with privacy, and already working business model (has facebook ever posted a profit?), I'd trust them over Facebook in a heartbeat.

        Facebook screws me over daily. No, I don't want any facebook credits. No, I don't want to play farmville. Disgusting...

        And yet you still use Facebook, daily?

        Do I have a choice? Co-workers/Friends (use the term "friend" losely) get insulted if I don't "like" or comment on their inane ramblings at least 3-4 times a week.

        • Re:Couldn't be worse (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Abstrackt (609015) on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @03:38PM (#36603842)

          Do I have a choice?

          Yes, you always have a choice. It may not be a good choice, but it's there.

          Co-workers/Friends (use the term "friend" losely) get insulted if I don't "like" or comment on their inane ramblings at least 3-4 times a week.

          It sounds like your friends list could use a trim. A good metric is to ask yourself who you would have coffee with. Anyone who doesn't pass that test and isn't family probably shouldn't be there. If your friends and coworkers get annoyed that you don't comment on what they post online just tell them politely that you would much rather communicate with them in person as you value your relationship with them.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Americano (920576)

          You should really get some better, or at least more interesting, friends then.

          Seriously.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jitterman (987991)
          You do have a choice (don't read this with any hostile overtones). I stopped using FB over a year ago. Real friends bitched at first (and longest), "friends" mentioned it a couple of times. Eventually, they all stopped. If they're offended that I don't comment or whatnot, honestly they can get stuffed. You do mention that friends in this case is a loose term - my humble advice is, don't let the opinions/attitudes of those you don't esteem hold you hostage. I haven't lost contact with anyone I care about as
        • So...why are you worried about friends who pester you with their inane ramblings? Just delete the account, make up a reason (inane ramblers don't care about the content of the reason, having one at all i.e. "Pluto isn't a planet anymore so I'm deleting my account" will satisfy them) and they'll leave you alone anyway.

        • It couldn't possibly be worse than Facebook. With Google's transparency with privacy, and already working business model (has facebook ever posted a profit?), I'd trust them over Facebook in a heartbeat.

          Facebook screws me over daily. No, I don't want any facebook credits. No, I don't want to play farmville. Disgusting...

          And yet you still use Facebook, daily?

          Do I have a choice? Co-workers/Friends (use the term "friend" losely) get insulted if I don't "like" or comment on their inane ramblings at least 3-4 times a week.

          How old are you, 15? Grow the hell up. If they get insulted, that's their problem, not yours. Or better, yet, just accept and ignore forever thereafter. If you can't do this online, chances are you cannot do the same in real life... and that's a behavioral problem right there.

          First. You can always delete your account. It's not like you are using it with gun in your head. I use facebook to stay connected with family and friends across the states and overseas. For twitter, I use it to follow up colleagues a

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by revlayle (964221)

      "has facebook ever posted a profit?" - who knows, they're a private company, they don't have to post a thing :)

    • Re:Couldn't be worse (Score:5, Funny)

      by interkin3tic (1469267) on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @03:58PM (#36604174)

      It couldn't possibly be worse than Facebook.

      Back in MY day, we only had myspace. Instead of yer "farmville" we had REAL farms (in civ) and instead of "poke wars" we had "annoying music blaring anytime you load someone's profile."

      Instead of friend requests, we had annoying garage bands from New Jersey constantly urging us to check out their new hip hop album.

      And we liked it! We loved it! You had exactly 10 friends that mattered and everyone else knew you didn't like them, and you got on with your life rather than wasting time posting cute animal pictures from the huffington post!

    • Google... transparent? (Score:4, Informative)

      by caitsith01 (606117) on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @07:24PM (#36606078) Journal

      Google's transparency with privacy

      In what possible universe is Google transparent about privacy?? Can you go somewhere to see what data they have collected about you? I think not.

      You have literally no idea what data they have in the no doubt comprehensive profile they have built about you based on search and gmail. If you read their privacy terms there are an alarming number of "outs" for them to basically use that information however the hell they want. Add to that their creepy wifi data collection, creepy streetview cars, etc etc. Hell, a Google search is a pretty good record of your thoughts.

      I consider Google one of the biggest threats to privacy going around. By comparison Facebook is child's play.

  • This is will be like wave! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Daniel_is_Legnd (1447519) on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @03:24PM (#36603612)
    This is going to be just like Google Wave. Only Bigger!

  • isn't "+" a search query modifier? (Score:3)

    by Hadlock (143607) on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @03:25PM (#36603640) Homepage Journal

    how did this name ever make it through marketing? are they that dense?
     
    being nerds, maybe call it ++ or plus plus at least? i get that they're trying to knock off the "like" feature, but really....

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gmuslera (3436) *
      In urls have a clear meaning. Wonder which Googlers put that symbol for it thinking in the final frontier.

  • Presumably the +1 button rolled out a few months ago will become the "Like" of this new network.

    I have to wonder...is this an attempt to salvage or replace Buzz?

    • Bizarro Buzz (Score:4, Informative)

      by MrEricSir (398214) on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @03:38PM (#36603848) Homepage

      It's the polar opposite of Buzz. You have to add friends manually, and manually assign them to one of four "circles" (Family, Friends, Acquaintances, Following.)

      Then with EVERY damn thing you post, you have to assign to one or more groups.

      So you get very fine-grained control, but at the cost of usability. It really is the opposite of Buzz in that way.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cp.tar (871488)

        From what I’ve seen in the tour, one person cannot belong to more than one circle. Which is... strangely limiting.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by MrEricSir (398214)

          Not sure where you're seeing that. I was able to add someone to two circles with no problem.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by geekoid (135745)

            In the tour, when you move someone picture to a circle, it disappeared from the list.

  • Why don't they just BUY Facebook, maybe fix it to be less loathsome, and work from there. I see nothing new or innovative, which suggests that this too will crash and burn.

    Aside from which, Facebook seems to have peaked, MySpace is in decline, and I'm betting that Twitter is about to begin its own downward slide.

    IMHO the problem is that the things that make social media really attractive are not the things that make them really profitable.

    Well, except Farmville.
    • Congratulations on the repeat GET (#36603660).

      Why don't they just BUY Facebook

      For one thing, what's the asking price? And for another, would government agencies that regulate competition in each of Facebook's markets approve?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Fnkmaster (89084)

      I suspect that most of Facebook's current growth, at least within the US, consists of fake/spam accounts... so yeah, definitely peaked out. Not sure how they'll do in other parts of the world though, there might be more opportunity there for them, though other parts of the world seem to have their own popular social networking sites already.

      Let's just say I wouldn't be too quick to give Facebook a 10, or 70 or whatever billion dollar valuation.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sribe (304414)

        I suspect that most of Facebook's current growth, at least within the US, consists of fake/spam accounts...

        Uhm, apparently you missed the news... Facebook shrank in the US last year.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir (88907)

      I agree. The social-networking fad is over. Now it is just for teenagers with nothing better to do.

  • Oh my. (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by milbournosphere (1273186)
    Google seems to fail at social networking. Didn't they learn from the flop that was Google Wave? Granted, Wave was a collaboration-based network, but it was still focused around a small group of friends or colleagues. The fact that it's based around real-time communication is interesting (and really cool for businesses not using MeetingPlace), but it would seem like this approach will fail just like Wave did.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Altus (1034)

      That's just it, Wave wasn't really about social networking, it was about social collaboration. Now I'm not honestly sure if it was good for that, because nobody ever used it but what it comes down to is, people do the social networking thing but aren't generally that interested in collaborating to create anything.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by TheSync (5291)

        I used Wave for social collaboration once - it got unwieldy very quickly.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by N0Man74 (1620447)

      We'll have to see, however there is one thing that Facebook sorely lacked that Google is addressing. The abilility to seperate people into different social "Circles" to control what you want to share with who. How many stories have we all heard about posts causing issues for a person because Facebook putting all your posts and friends all in one bucket.

      To me, it seems like a no-brainer. The things I want my family, friends, highschool and college acquaintances, coworkers, and potential dating partners to

  • So far, photo sharing doesn't work right for me (I think it's an issue with window sizing interactions with the HTML5/CSS), but otherwise the interface is pretty slick. The GUI for adding contacts to "Circles" is very slick and intuitive. If this makes it as easy to do on-the-fly easy content sharing permission groups as it seems, I think this could really take off...but I'll reserve judgement until there are more people using it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zero0ne (1309517)

      Once it gets integrated into Android, it will take off. I bet the GUI was designed with touch phones in mind (IE I show you four circles, you drag the content through whichever circles you want it associated with (kinda like swype(sp?) typing).

      • Yeah, that would make sense of some of what I'm seeing. I bet it looks nicer in Chrome than in Firefox, too.

        Oooo...I need to try it in Safari on my iPhone...

        OK, that is pretty slick. I'm gonna go home and post some screenshots...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AngryNick (891056)

      Instead of connecting with your friends, Google+ aims to center connections around specific groupsâ"colleagues, projects...

      I see that Google doesn't count their Google Apps customers among those having colleagues or projects on day 1. It won't let my org join. But that's ok...Apps users are used to being shunned...no Buzz, GV months after everyone else, etc.

  • Sounds familar (Score:3)

    by CastrTroy (595695) on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @03:35PM (#36603810) Homepage
    Except for the part where Google hosts all the data, a lot of the features sound a lot like Diaspora [joindiaspora.com]. That project sounded quite interesting. Too bad it seems to have not moved anywhere in a very long time.

    • What do you mean Diaspora hasn't moved anywhere in a long time? Their blog (http://blog.joindiaspora.com/) didn't get updated from January to May, but they stated that they've been bad about updating the blog because they've been busy on Github.

      Check out the commit log if you want to see progress: https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/commits/master [github.com]

      Instead, I'd say Google hasn't gone anywhere with their social networking attempts in a very long time. I'd be surprised if this newest incarnation is any better

  • Instant Upload (Score:3)

    by ecliptik (160746) on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @03:45PM (#36603944) Homepage

    Don't over look the Instant Upload [youtube.com] feature, it allows you to store photos and video directly to your Google account from your phone.

    Handy in situations when the cops see you recording them and try and destroy your phone [slashdot.org]

  • Good Opportunity (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sgt scrub (869860) <saintium@@@yahoo...com> on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @03:49PM (#36604016)

    Facebook has been making too many mistakes. This is the perfect opportunity to bring back wave in a context that fits. Like Facebook though, I don't think I'll participate. I've never understood the desire to make personal information about yourself public. I had a near miss with an employer that wanted everyone constantly available through skype, twitter, and facebook. If I wanted to share my personal life, phone conversations, and listen to someone's pointless babble I'd get back together with an old girlfriend.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by brunes69 (86786)

      The whole point of Google+ is that you don't have to make personal information public. You define specific circles of contacts and decide who sees what.

      Facebook actually has this ability as well, but it is so buried and unfriendly most people don't even know it is there. For example, when I post to Facebook, sometimes I say my family can see it, sometimes my work collegues, sometimes everyone, sometimes all 3, sometimes none (private info only for me and my immediate family).

      Google is taking this idea and m

    • Re:Good Opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hey! (33014) on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @06:24PM (#36605550) Homepage Journal

      I've never understood the desire to make personal information about yourself public.

      Well, it's no wonder you don't understand the desire to make everything about your life completely public, because for most people *total* exposure isn't a feature of the Facebook model; it's an unfortunate side effect.

      The problem with Facebook is that it assumes you have only *one* social network. That your work colleagues, family, and spouse swapping club are just different entry points into one big homogeneous social network. This is manifestly false, but Facebook wants every individual's social network to be as large as possible because that's more profitable. That's why Facebook's twiddling of its privacy controls only produces more confusion. Users can't *get* what they really want with Facebook's network model, so any attempt to impose security on top of that model only makes it harder to share what they *do* want to share with the people they want to share it with.

      The big question is how much of this is deliberate? Some think Facebook has a goal of training people to accept less privacy. I don't think that their goals are that long term. Still, I do not think Facebook is unaware that they're not providing the service that people want, nor do I think they are unable to give people what they want. The one homogeneous network model happened to be the one that maximized revenue in the short term. With the gathering backlash against Facebook's usability and security, I think users have figured what Facebook probably already knows: Facebook isn't the service they need.

    • I've never understood the desire to make personal information about yourself public.

      I realize it's fashionable to hate Facebook, but the average FB user has no such desire. It's just a tool for keeping in touch with people. Other than your name (which needn't be real), no other information need be public, or even included.

      If your friends are assholes, you'll have a bad experience. If your friends are not assholes, it's an innocuous -- and sometimes useful -- tool.

  • Best thing ever: go to the WDYL [wdyl.com] thing and put in "sex" for double-entendre fun.

    "Have a debate about sex!" "Find sex nearby!" "Watch videos of sex!"

    Bonus points for doing it with "goatse".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hipp5 (1635263)
      I'm a big fan of "Plan your sex events". I do admit, a calendar would be very useful for my plethora of sex events.

      • My favourite one was when it suggested I make a photo album about muffdiving, which is frankly the best suggestion I've ever received.

  • .. but I guess Marketing people didn't like it. A change for the worse, methinks

  • This is going to fail. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by slasho81 (455509) on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @03:55PM (#36604132)

    Facebook specifically benefits from the lack of privacy of its users to generate attention grabbing content to as many users as possible. The endless time people spend on Facebook is not spent creating content or communicating - it's spent stalking other people. Facebook is like a super-tabloid or like gossip on crack.

    Businesses everywhere promote Facebook by requesting users to Like them. Most users are blissfully unaware that by Liking they aren't just anonymously adding 1 to the Like count, but they are also endorsing the business and giving permission to the business to spam them. The friend counter is like an addictive game with the aim to accumulate as many points as possible with shame built-in if you don't have as many points as others have.

    Facebook is a useful communication tool, but it's also evil. It takes advantage of its users in order to promote itself and its interests. If Google isn't ready to go full evil, they have no chance to compete in that arena. Sure, people will use the new awesome services Plus will offer, but it's not enough to get the attention Google wants for its advertising needs. People who can't kill will always be subject to those who can. Same thing applies to businesses who won't turn evil.

    • Google went evil a long time ago. See: Google's handling of Chinese censorship, Google Buzz's rollout, Street View data collection, Schmidt's comments regarding kids getting name changes when they're of age, Google killing three services in the last month (two of which I used every now and then), etc..

  • Focus on search (Score:3)

    by Animats (122034) on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @03:57PM (#36604166) Homepage

    Google needs to focus on improving search. Blekko is doing a better job in some areas, especially health.

    Ads which appear in search results appear when the user is actually looking for something. This makes those ads valuable. On "social" systems, ads are annoying interference while talking to your friends. Facebook has a fraction of the ad revenue of Google.

    Facebook's period of growth is over. Facebook, like all its predecessors from AOL to Myspace, has peaked on user count and is now shrinking. They should have gone public before that happened. Now their value is far less.

  • I'd be wary of Google services (Score:4, Informative)

    by Bloodwine77 (913355) on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @03:59PM (#36604188)

    They are starting to rack up a nice stack a corpses made from discontinued Google services. Google Wave, Google Translation API, Google Health, and Google PowerMeter to name a few.

    I would hate to get too invested in a Google service only to have it disappear on me. As far as I am concerned, Google Search and Gmail are their only sure bets.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rsborg (111459)

      They are starting to rack up a nice stack a corpses made from discontinued Google services. Google Wave, Google Translation API, Google Health, and Google PowerMeter to name a few.

      I would hate to get too invested in a Google service only to have it disappear on me. As far as I am concerned, Google Search and Gmail are their only sure bets.

      Discontinued efforts are good. That means Google knows that it's not the end-all-be-all of tech, and have chosen their battles. I'm also glad Apple shut down their xServes and Microsoft shuttered the embarrassment that was Zune.

      btw, Google Translation API is available now, you just have to pay for it (since they couldn't justify it as a free service)... if you have a business model around that API, it's now priced appropriately (like others in the same market).

    • As far as I am concerned, Google Search and Gmail are their only sure bets.

      Add Calendar, Docs, Photos, Reader, Photos to that list. I have a difficult time imagining those vanishing any time soon.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! (33014)

      Well, who is their competition for Health, PowerMeter and Tranlation API, and what is that competition up to? Why business rationale does Google have to continue those services?

      From a purely economic view, Facebook is a direct competitor for the transactions that bring cash into Google. The eyeball brokers. Why does Google have mail and mapping and all that other stuff? To keep your eyeballs corralled on Google services. Facebook is trying to extend its offerings for the identical reason. Google would

  • I actually may use it, but not how they think (Score:5, Interesting)

    by odin84gk (1162545) on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @03:59PM (#36604200)

    This does look promising.

    If they truly allow group video conferencing using a browser, I will certainly use it.
    If they truly implement voice chat, I would gladly replace Skype, possibly even Vent. (Depends on how it gets implemented)
    If they implement group chat that works across cell platforms, I will certainly use it. I would love to use something like this to organize weekly spontaneous events instead of massive text messages. (Email is too slow and unreliable for the last-minute changes, phone calls takes too long.)

    However...
    This must be painfully easy to use, no special invites and 10 day waiting lists. If this thing gets rolled out using small groups, it will die.

    • This must be painfully easy to use, no special invites and 10 day waiting lists. If this thing gets rolled out using small groups, it will die.

      They aren't likely to change their invite-only tactic. It has been quite successful in the past due to the false demand it creates without having to spend much money on traditional advertising. But the larger factor is likely that they want to be able to very accurately compare the adoption rates (and the rate of changes in the adoptions rates) to their other advertising platforms when they were new.
      uh-oh, we've got a delta eyeballs resembling answers.google here!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by davevr (29843)

      If this thing gets rolled out using small groups, it will die.

      yeah, because that gradual roll-out stuff really killed facebook.

  • Relevant: Google research on social networks [slashdot.org]

    It looks like Google Plus is a direct result of this research.

  • Since I seem to be the last person on earth without a Facebook account, I think I'll sign up for this and start sending invites to all of those people on Facebook who keep spamming me to join.

    Anyone have any invites to spare?

    Steve

    • I'd be interested as well. I used to hop on Facebook more regularly when it was very young (back when you had to select your university from a list of less than 25 or so and have a matching .edu e-mail address), but their privacy has eroded so much over the years that I finally got fed up and deactivated my account. I used to be able to only let me friends see any of my information, but as time went on, more and more strangers could see my information, which meant that I kept removing more and more of it.

      Th

  • They want to set a *.google.com cookie that contains identifying social data. That would greatly enhance their ability to data mine useful, and profitable, information from the combination of your social profile and your searches. It's a marketers wet dream: detailed demographic data with detailed personal interests (every search you do). All they need to do is sell ad space that matches you up with buying habits of people in your demographic and having the same interests. An advertiser would pay a lot

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Albanach (527650)

      I'm not sure I mind relevant ads if they're targeted at me as part of an anonymous group.

  • Finally, a social network that won't.... err wait (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dontmakemethink (1186169) on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @04:52PM (#36604824)
    Isn't Google already guilty of all the issues people complain about in Facebook?

  • Visiting from Google Future (Score:5, Interesting)

    by retroworks (652802) on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @05:09PM (#36604976) Homepage Journal
    Hi, I just found this website "Slashdot" using "Google Time Machine" app. I'm posting from here in the year 2078. Google says I'm 234 bitcoins away from getting my children back, and I can earn credit by doing this research, polling Geeks of the Past about what efforts they may be hatching to keep this Google Universe from occurring (or slowing it). By the way, I see many references to something called "facebook", what is it? And what's a farmville?
  • I must admit that "circles" is a much nicer term than "aspects" which diaspora uses.
    "Huddle", however - as a term for a group chat - is a bit silly. Perhaps it will appeal to football fans, though. ;)

  • 'Entry'? (Score:3)

    by omni123 (1622083) on Tuesday June 28, 2011 @05:53PM (#36605302) Homepage

    Is it really an entry if this is their third attempt or did everyone just forget Wave? How about Buzz?

We want to create puppets that pull their own strings. - Ann Marion

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