Google+ Enters Open Beta

First time accepted submitter morgosmaci sends us a Google Blog post about the transitioning of Google+ from a closed "field trial" to an open beta. As part of the update, Google threw in a number of enhancements to the Hangouts feature: an Android client, named hangouts, integration with Google Docs, and a preliminary web service API. And you can finally search for users, posts, and other content.

For the impatient...

[damn_registrars]

go to google.com/+ [google.com] and you can sign up through there.

Or you can read the article and eventually find the link.

Still no Apps for Domains

[Imagix]

And yet you _still_ cannot join Google+ if you have a paid-for Google Apps for Domains account.

Re:Google+ is a success

[ge7]

That initial crowd was mostly just curious users. I wanted to see it too, but after that it hasn't seen pretty much any usage.

What comes to sane defaults, Google+ has exactly the same problems. By default all your data is very open, and because it's tightly integrated into Google, your details go public the very second you just register to Google+, because everything is public by default. When you run some game or app it also asks all the same kind of permissions that Facebook apps do. Google+ apps can also spam your whole friend the very same way that Facebook apps can.

Re:Still no Apps for Domains

[grasshoppa]

You know, it's annoying that it's not available but my main issue is the lack of communication from Google on this issue. What timeline do we have for this being implemented? "Soon", for the past 6 months we've heard that. What does "soon" mean? Tomorrow? That's soon. Or is it "Google Beta" level soon, where it could be YEARS before they get around to fixing it.

As an administrator of a number of paid for Apps domains, I find their behavior on this issue to lack any kind of competence or professionalism. I am regretting my decision to recommend google web base email and am actively exploring alternatives because of their behavior.

Re:open?

[trunicated]

I think you're starting to get into the "Free as in freedom or free as in beer" territory. This is open as in "available to everyone", not open as in "open source".

Re:Google+ is a success

[tycoex]

This is untrue. Yes the default (you can uncheck it) is to upload all your photos to Google+, but they are not shown on your profile until you specifically go onto G+ and show them. Until you do this they are just hosted online for you to view privately.

Re:Google+ is a success

[DerekLyons]

Meanwhile, in a limited beta, Google+ became the fasting growing social networking platform in history.

It's pretty easy for any Google service to become the fastest growing anything 'in history', because all Google has to do is induce existing Google users to sign up. Their historical problem has been to grow beyond that initial surge.
 

Facebook has been around for over 7 years. It took 4 years to reach 100 million members. Google+ got 14 million in a few weeks in a closed beta.

It may have taken Facebook four years to reach 100 million users, but it currently has 750 million users. 14 million is a bit of evaporation off of a drop in the bottom of the bucket. (And likely most of those 14 million were existing users of Google services, not new users.)
 

I wouldn't be shocked to see them reach 100 million in a year.

I would be. Despite Gmail being around for years now - it still remains a distant third among web mail systems. Despite Google Groups being around for years, it too remains in second place. Picasa, the horrid piece of crippled crap that it is, remains a distant second... Buzz is practically unknown Etc... etc...
 
Practically everywhere Google faces entrenched competition, it comes off badly. If it doesn't have to do with search and/or data aggregation, their services are rarely better enough than their competitors to get people to switch. (That Google tends to roll out a service and then benignly neglect it for years at a stretch doesn't help much.) On top of that, with G+ they are at or near the point where they're going to have to deal with a reverse network effect - I.E. once the novelty wears off, they still don't have the numbers to assure critical mass. And when it comes to social networking, those numbers (of grandmas, and old classmates, and old shipmates) are everything.

Re:Google+ is a success

[znrt]

Well, you better hope Google doesn't ban you for not using real time or if they even think you're not using your real name - Google+ ban isn't only to Google+, it's to all the other Google services like Gmail and YouTube too.

not true. i'm banned from g+ because of name policy violation and can access gmail and youtube. ban only affects socalled social services like g+, picasa and buzz. besides, I can still access g+ in readonly mode.

the naming policy is completely off. they really can't pretend to know better than me how I want to be named. I find it outright idiotic, so there goes g+ ... good sw, though. a shame.

Re:Google+ is a success

[Riceballsan]

Not true, in both categories. Google+ by default lists the main parts of your profile, that is true, but as soon as you upload any content, comments, posts, pictures etc... the first thing it does is ask you who you want to be able to see it with the default being your circles (people you have added). Facebook 6 months ago, if you created an account, and uploaded 3 photos and made a status post without changing any options, all of that would have been public. Games take a list of people on your friends list, which makes sense, a social game should list your friends for the sake of knowing who's high scores to show you. Now if say I added a jerk to my friends who idiotically plays a ton of games and accepts every darn "tell your friends about the retarted cow you stepped on" update. Those go to the games feed. If I don't play games, I never click the games feed and thus I never even see the spam. It never mixes in with the posts and things my friends are sharing, etc... Facebook 6 months ago, if you had 2 friends who clicked every stupid share with friends in their games, your feed got so frickin crowded you couldn't find any of the non game-based posts until you started blocking the games, and then you have to block each and every game to keep up with them. Bottom line G+ isn't perfect, but it is leaps and bounds foward from facebooks defaults.