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Google Businesses Social Networks

Google+ Divided Into Photos and Streams, With New Boss 146

Posted by samzenpus from the judgment-of-solomon dept.
An anonymous reader writes It seems Google+ will see some significant changes under new boss Bradley Horowitz. Google+ will be separated into different products: Photos and Hangouts will be split out, and the social part is now called "the stream". From the article: "Google+ has taken a lot of criticism — notably the infamous 'ghost town' knock that it's devoid of users and concerns about Google's attempts to force its relevance by tying it in with functions like search results and YouTube comments. But Google executives have denied the 'ghost town criticism over and over. In part that's because the company used Google+ to describe more than just its Facebook-esque service for posting and commenting — the part now called Streams. For Google, Google+ also has been the "social spine" that unifies Google users' activities under a single unified identity."
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Google+ Divided Into Photos and Streams, With New Boss More

Google+ Divided Into Photos and Streams, With New Boss

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  • Youtube Sucks (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    i recently made a yt acct for first time in yrs. you cant do anything as far as looks/design without that g+ trash. i gave up after fighting with it and trying to figure it out, it is such a godawful piece of garbage now i dont even want to use it.

  • Photos being separated (Score:3)

    by Andy Dodd ( 701 ) <atd7NO@SPAMcornell.edu> on Monday March 02, 2015 @10:35AM (#49163915) Homepage

    YAY!

    It would be nice to post my vacation Photospheres without all of the Google+ overhead.

    (I'm a pretty avid G+ user, but it's an utterly shit platform for sharing photos with friends that aren't G+ users. I wish I could just put Photospheres on SmugMug.)

    • Re:Photos being separated (Score:5, Interesting)

      by koinu ( 472851 ) on Monday March 02, 2015 @11:29AM (#49164281)

      1) Google+ is probably not for friends, but for interesting people/companies/organizations/topics who you want to follow.

      2) You can easily post a link which aggregates well with Facebook (this is probably the social network for people like friends and family, who you really don't want to follow, but only want to brag to about what you just ate and how cool your new mobile phone is).

    • Re:Photos being separated (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Monday March 02, 2015 @12:28PM (#49164795) Homepage Journal
      It would be nice to be able to comment on YouTube videos (even reply/respond to comments on my OWN videos), but I refuse to switch to G+ and give them that info.

      My YT account is so old that I guess it was grandfathered in and I never would associate it with G+ or create a G+ account for it (it isn't registered under a gmail email). They have finally quit bugging me to do this.

      But it would be nice if I could comment on my own videos or respond.

      I really HATE the forced association google tries to make with this. I don't NEED a unified account across all Google.

      • I've G+, Gmail and a YT account but can't comment on YT. I blame adblockers, noscript and a hosts file.

      • It would be nice to be able to comment on YouTube videos (even reply/respond to comments on my OWN videos), but I refuse to switch to G+ and give them that info.

        Exactly. I didn't use Google+. I didn't WANT to use Google+. When Google tried to force everyone to use one identity (which didn't work, by the way), my response was simply to stop commenting on YouTube, and stop using Google+ altogether.

        There is one person -- and only one -- who now occasionally chats with me via Google Hangouts, and I'm trying to quash that use as well.

        All in all, it was a dick move on Google's part, and it drove users away in, well, droves. Have you notices how FEW comments there a

        • I want to divorce myself from Youtube, a horrible service for horrible people, but Google wants to tie my social service to it.
          Now if you seem to be insulted by my saying thing, think how the Google+ users feel insulted by what you say.

          • Now if you seem to be insulted by my saying thing, think how the Google+ users feel insulted by what you say.

            Why should I be insulted? You do as you please. I don't particularly care one way or the other.

            Also, why should anybody else be insulted just because I don't want to use Google+??? I mean, I didn't even say why. I just didn't want to.

            • The insult is the implication that no one uses Google+, thus only nobodies would actually be there.

              • The insult is the implication that no one uses Google+, thus only nobodies would actually be there.

                And when did I imply any such thing? I'm think you read more into my comment than I actually wrote.

                What I did write, was that there are obviously fewer comments on YouTube as a result of that action.

      • The annoying part is that they forced that idiotic Youtube crap on Google+ users.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by unrtst ( 777550 )

      Photos being separated
      YAY!
      It would be nice to post my vacation Photospheres without all of the Google+ overhead.

      My question/concern is, which sub-project will they kill off first? I'm betting streams will be dead/abandoned in a year or two.

  • Coogle+ (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I thought these witchcraft machines had ubiquitous spell checking nowadays..

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday March 02, 2015 @10:36AM (#49163921)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Not going to use it (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Flavianoep ( 1404029 ) on Monday March 02, 2015 @11:21AM (#49164211)
      The requirement of using G+ to post on Youtube has made this a better world. I haven't posted any comment on Youtube videos since that tie-in began to be enforced.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by itzly ( 3699663 )

        Me too. Now if only they could enforce a tie between G+ and Slashdot....

      • Which sounds good. The inane and idiotic comments are the worst part of Youtube.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Richy_T ( 111409 )

          It's a good job this move totally eliminated them and in no way discouraged posters with something valid to say then.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Richy_T ( 111409 )

        It sucks. I see a comment like "I can't use my computer because X" and I know the answer is Y yet I can't help this poor soul out even though I have a Youtube account and a couple of Google accounts because Google has a boner for getting people on G+. Too bad Timmy, no computer for you.

        How do I turn off the Beta shit?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The sole purpose I would want to use it for would be to comment on YouTube (To comment people who make content, like howto's,

      Click to read something more than two lines of text

      not to troll) but the way they do the comments now it is impossible to follow who posted what and replied to what. So no.

      Thanks, webdevs and UX "experts". Because a simple "expand all" button would look "cluttered", instead we have to Javashit-click for every thread longer than two replies, and within any given thread, we also

      Cl

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Richy_T ( 111409 )

        Sounds like something a plugin could handle easily. You might want to see if someone has already cooked one up for you.

  • I like the ghost town. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by IMarvinTPA ( 104941 ) <IMarvinTPA@@@IMarvinTPA...com> on Monday March 02, 2015 @10:37AM (#49163925) Homepage Journal

    The ghost town state actually makes it easier to follow a few things and keep up. My Facebook feed is long and Facebook's most-recent sorting likes to pick random dates out of the comments of the postings to "refresh" it. With what I follow on G+, a quick browse will catch me up on all of what I am following. It is a feature to me.

    IMarv

    • Unfortunately, most of things I want to follow aren't on Google+.

    • Re:I like the ghost town. (Score:5, Informative)

      by geekymachoman ( 1261484 ) on Monday March 02, 2015 @11:26AM (#49164243)

      Tried filtering ? There's an option on facebook "I don't want to see this" or "Turn off notifications".
      Most of the things people have on their feeds or whatever that "home page" on facebook is called is garbage anyway posted by people you barely know.

      That way you gonna get relevant (to you) feed.

      Nobody I know is using G+.. and everybody I know is using facebook, in all age groups - including my whole family(between age 7 to 66) that I like keeping in touch with. Many people abandoned all other styles of communication (emails, IMs) and just use facebook and fb messenger. Until Google get's all those people to use G+ .. I for one am not interested, because the point is to 'connect' with people and G+ don't have any.

      So everybody can bitch about facebook as long as they want.. but the fact is, the whole damn world is using it - so it's obviously what people want. Google circles.. nobody was interested a year ago, and nobody is now.

      • So everybody can bitch about facebook as long as they want.. but the fact is, the whole damn world is using it -

        Nope-- just, nope. Never used it, never will, never missed it. And when FB finally closes shop, I will shed not a single tear.

      • I'm not on Facebook. It's for the masses. I don't follow fashion and prefer to think for myself. I don't see anything on Facebook that I would want to participate in. The most I would get out of it is to hear some news about distant relatives.

      • Not here they aren't. The FB experience is a whole lot better than that crap from Google, but I gave up FB recently because the signal/noise ratio was just getting too bad.
        FB served it's purpose but like most things past their peak, it is becoming bogged down in shit. I have teenage kids, none of them use it, they're all on Instagram and some other apps I've never heard of.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rdnetto ( 955205 )

        Nobody I know is using G+.. and everybody I know is using facebook, in all age groups - including my whole family(between age 7 to 66) that I like keeping in touch with. Many people abandoned all other styles of communication (emails, IMs) and just use facebook and fb messenger. Until Google get's all those people to use G+ .. I for one am not interested, because the point is to 'connect' with people and G+ don't have any.

        It's not an either-or. I use FB for keeping up with friends and family (i.e. people I know in real life), but G+ is a far better platform for following hobbyist groups (e.g. distro pages) and celebrities (e.g. Linus Torvalds), because it allows non-reciprocal connections. That is, I can follow Torvalds' public posts without him needing to follow me.

    • Re:I like the ghost town. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ideonexus ( 1257332 ) on Monday March 02, 2015 @11:37AM (#49164351) Homepage Journal

      I think someone in the Science Online community put it best, "Facebook is my private life; Google+ and Twitter are my public life." Facebook is where I go when I want to see my friends' family photos and get a list of small-talk conversation topics for when I hang out with them in real life. I have no interest in following celebrities, politics, or other topics on Facebook because the conversations there are too inane.

      Google+ is where I go when I want to have political debates, read science news, or be exposed to fascinating ideas. The conversation on G+ is heavily nerdy because the community is heavily nerdy. I go there for the same reason I read /., the conversation is deeper and more sophisticated. I don't learn anything arguing with my crazy conservative uncle on Facebook, but I do learn something when I argue politics with David Friedman on G+.I hear Twitter is good for this kind of subject/interest-specific engagement with others, but I simply can't figure out how to have a conversation there.

      That said, I think it makes sense to break out Google Photos. That is an application I have come to really appreciate. It backs up all my phone's photos and videos, automatically creates scrapbooks and artwork out of them, and has created a timeline of my life. I highly recommend it for anyone using Android.

    • Sadly, Google+ seems to have been overwhelmed by political flamewar postings ever since the last election. There's no way to filter that crap out except by turning off all Hot-and-Recommended posts, and some are interesting.

  • Coogle+ (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    It's like google, for cougars.

  • Just buy Facebook (Score:3, Insightful)

    by xtal ( 49134 ) on Monday March 02, 2015 @10:40AM (#49163943)

    Accept it, too little, too late, y'all missed the party.

    Google Chat is still vastly superior to Facebook Messenger, but I'm using GC less. The killer is GMail; without it, I'd be almost migrated out of the Google ecosystem.

    Rock, hard place. I won't even start on Apple.

    What to think different? Open up your APIs again, the cool ones, make it easy to use Google for the infrastructure on third party apps, don't screw over the small guys who join in. ..and stop forcing the damn tie in, all that does is make people ANGRY.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luthair ( 847766 )
      I used GTalk on the desktop for a long time, unfortunately they canned it and Hangouts doesn't really work for me as Google still can't get its shit together with multiple accounts (e.g. legacy gmail + Apps domain). My primary email is my apps domain, but I can't train everyone else to message me at the correct address which means I'd need to go through the Chrome "Switch User" every restart.... or I can just not use Hangouts.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jez9999 ( 618189 )

        I used GTalk on the desktop for a long time, unfortunately they canned it and Hangouts doesn't really work for me as Google still can't get its shit together with multiple accounts

        Yeah, and what's with the fact that the Hangouts app just closes all the time? Every time I leave it running in the background for a few hours, I come back to the PC and Chrome has silently shut down, along with the Hangouts app. Gtalk would just stay in the goddamn system tray.

      • Same here. I had to quit using gtalk just last week and I can't use google hangouts on my work pc because it doesn't support multiple accounts. Guess I'll have to find an alternative.
      • Ok, I did a little research and you can get google hangouts to work on a second google account. You have to go into Chrome and add another user account that you would use your home login for and add google hangouts to that user session.

      • I used GTalk on the desktop for a long time, unfortunately they canned it and Hangouts doesn't really work for me

        Yes, Hangouts gave me nothing but technical problems. From my experience, it is nothing but broken (in many fascinating ways) and so is almost completely worthless.

      • At least for now, other client programs can still use Jabber/XMPP to connect to GTalk. I'm a KDE user, so I use Kopete or KDE-Telepathy, and I don't know offhand if they currently work on Windows. I assume Pidgin still works with GTalk.

  • Hardly anyone says, "I don't use Google+" (Score:3, Interesting)

    by EmperorOfCanada ( 1332175 ) on Monday March 02, 2015 @10:41AM (#49163957)
    Hardly anyone says, "I don't use Google+". I know people who say, "I don't use Facebook", or "I dumped facebook." but with G+ it is just sort of assumed. Sort of like it is assumed that people don't use MySpace.

    The only time anyone I know mentions G+ is when they blah blah about how G is being an ass about linking it to other things. Google tried to make it relevant but offered nothing that was really new. I found the whole circles thing a confused mess.

    In fact the only people who I find tend to have a google plus presence also seem to have something to do with Google. Either they work for google or do something with Stanford and thus probably are surrounded by googly people.

    I would be curious to know how much money has been spent trying to prop up G+?

    • Re:Hardly anyone says, "I don't use Google+" (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Runaway1956 ( 1322357 ) on Monday March 02, 2015 @11:20AM (#49164189) Homepage Journal

      G+ had so much promise. They screwed up twice. When they linked virtually all services together, then again when they tried to insist that you use your real name on your accounts.

      Hey, Picasso was a pretty cool thing, but I had little use for it. Gmail is pretty cool, and I use it a lot. Google Talk is really cool - I don't need it often, but when I do need it, it is pretty much indispensible.

      WTF do I want all of that linked together? One little code screwup somewhere could expose all of my email to people in hangouts, or expose the mail of THOSE people to ME. G+ should have no connection to email. In order to tie any accounts together, the user should be required to explicitly do so.

      Today, I can't believe that I anxiously waited for an invite to G+ when it started up.

      • Re:Hardly anyone says, "I don't use Google+" (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Jason Levine ( 196982 ) on Monday March 02, 2015 @12:22PM (#49164739) Homepage

        The real name requirement - along with deactivating the Google accounts of people who violated this policy - is what kept me off Google+. I use a pseudonym for my social media activities. (My Slashdot account is a relic from before I started using the pseudonym. It's one of a small number of accounts where I use my real name.) When I joined Google+, I wanted to post under my pseudonym, but Google wouldn't let me. Worse, if I started posting as my pseudonym, I risked losing my Gmail account (which I rely on) along with a bunch of other Google services which I used. I could post under a page as my pseudonym, but that meant I couldn't follow people or reply to G+ posts unless they followed me first - not a workable solution. While they finally allow pseudoynms, they list the user as "Pseudonym (Real Name)". Way to hide that real name!

        I do like the circles model that Google+ had and would have loved for Google+ to have overtaken Facebook, but Google shot themselves in the foot with this one.

        • Re:Hardly anyone says, "I don't use Google+" (Score:5, Informative)

          by JohnFen ( 1641097 ) on Monday March 02, 2015 @12:35PM (#49164877)

          The real name requirement - along with deactivating the Google accounts of people who violated this policy - is what kept me off Google+.

          Me too. When Google said that people who don't like the real name requirement should not use G+, I took them at their word. I no longer use G+ and never will.

          • Add me as a "me too" - I wanted to just use this name as it's my "Nome de net"... but I ended up making a completely fake account with a 'real sounding name" just so I could use Hangout with some co-workers as our informal "virtual office"

            Yeah, I could use my real name, but I wanted to keep any activity strictly not-directly-officially-tied to me or my employer... they've got a social media policy which I just would rather avoid by using a pseudonym.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by mythix ( 2589549 )

      I found the whole circles thing a confused mess.

      This. I get the idea, and how it could be useful, but it's just a mess.

  • Yes! We are now calling it a "stream!" The "stream" will have the ability to be more in-your-face! It will be the NUMBER ONE choice for social blaggers within a couple of years! Everyone is going to want Google+'s stream in their face! NUMBER ONE!

  • Not what i hoped (Score:3, Interesting)

    by LegionX ( 691099 ) on Monday March 02, 2015 @10:50AM (#49164017) Homepage

    Good of them to do something with photos. But what i really wish they did was to turn the circle concept on it's heads.

    Content should be put in circles instead of people. As an example I like to follow Linus Torvalds, but only for Linux related stuff - if they allowed linus to put his Linux content in Linux circles, and Diving stuff in Diving circles, and then allowed me to follow the content i like, then we could talk about managing information.

    Pinterest is splitting it the right way, but are only focused on pictures. I want google+ to do it for content.

  • Sounds about right... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Monday March 02, 2015 @10:57AM (#49164065) Homepage

    I, for one, don't really use Google+, but it's not because of any particular problem other than, "No one else is using it," with just a smidge of "I don't know what I'm supposed to be using it for," thrown in.

    It does seem to me like "Hangouts" should be its own thing, along with chat and VoIP. If anything, those things should should sooner be integrated into Gmail somehow. I'm not sure I want that, but it would make more sense, at least, since it's all, roughly speaking, private communications.

    I also think that there should be a separate web application that is, "Where my phone automatically uploads my photos, where I can organize them and track them myself, but they're private." Personally, it just makes me a little uncomfortable for that to be bolted straight on to the "photo sharing social networking site," but maybe that's just me. I'm old. I feel ok if the social networking site can connect in and pull photos from the private site. Hell, even if I know it's all ultimately stored in the database, that's not what bothers me. It's just to have my private stuff be in the same interface as the publicly shared stuff, without a clear apparent distinction... it worries my poor little monkey brain.

    Ultimately, between Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, I tend to use Facebook for sharing posts/photos/updates. Not because I like it or think it's good, and only somewhat because my friends seem to use it more. As much as anything, I think it's because it's the site that confuses me the least.

  • They need to divide it into the department of nobody and nothing and the department of gtfo of youtube. That's the proper corporate organization.
  • I know this is standard for /. but what the hell is Coogle+

    Can't you at least do a basic spell check?

  • The reason I don't like it (Score:3)

    by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Monday March 02, 2015 @11:34AM (#49164315)
    I think G+ looks great visually and in terms of what it is (a Twitter/Facebook a-like) I guess it's okay.

    The problem for me is that it nags me constantly. Do I know these people? Do you want to connect to these people? Are these groups of interest to you? Tell us about yourself. Naturally it doesn't offer options to hide these panes or put them away in a "discover" section where they're out of sight. They're always there nagging me.

    I don't expect to give my fucking life story over for a glorified feed and so I don't use it much at all. Another issue for me is that I used to use iGoogle as my home page. They canned that service and some other related ones, presumably because they thought people would use G+ instead if they removed the alternatives. It didn't work for me because I want a page with news headlines and some other RSS stuff I read and some wall of stuff is simply not what I want - so I use My Yahoo instead.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jafiwam ( 310805 )

      Playing catch-up made Google make some stupid decisions.

      iGoogle was absolutely awesome. I resorted to making my own web page for a while, but then switched to a place called "NetVibes" While they are after a corporate "watch overall my stuff" type environment, carefully picking the apps to put on your page gives you a useful start-up interface.

    • Hmm. About a year ago Yahoo tried to do some kind of "let's consolidate all your stuff" play. I got annoyed and stuck with the old version. Finally, the day came when they forced the issue. I took the my.yahoo portal off of my start page and never looked back. For my news portal I just go to google news now. Somewhat ironic given the topic.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DrXym ( 126579 )
        Google does it too - very annoying it is as well. At least by splitting accounts across providers it limits the amount it can happen.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I must admit, Apple's resistance to the social media gimmick deserves respect. I'll never buy their shit, but that's one thing they got right.

  • Haters gonna hate... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gbcox ( 868098 ) on Monday March 02, 2015 @12:14PM (#49164675) Homepage
    I've never really understood the vitriol toward G+. The press doing what they do (and no doubt strongly encouraged by Facebook, Microsoft, Apple) created a narrative of Google taking aim at Facebook and how they will most certainly fail. Google has repeated many times what the G+ initiative was about, but the press either ignored the facts or said Google was lying. How dare Google try to disrupt their narrative with something as inconsequential as facts. G+ is a framework to unify Google services. Before, it was a complete mess. You had different userids and passwords, Google App accounts were completely walled off from non-app services, every service had it's own comment engine. This was because each of those services were developed in their own bubble. Now, Google has a unifying framework for existing and new services as they are created. Yes, I'm sure they would have been thrilled if the G+ stream would be more popular than FB, but that wasn't the goal. They had to do something with the mess of unrelated services. It was becoming an administrative nightmare for them. Making hangouts and photos available through their own entry point is a good thing. Some people didn't want to deal with the stream or even see it. They figured fine, make a separate entry point. The important thing to remember though is the framework did exactly what they wanted it to do, and it is a success. You have one Google account that accesses all their services. Apps users can access all services. The more people use the services they'll find it's easy to just click a button to put it in the stream if they wish.

    • G+ is a framework to unify Google services.

      Which is #1 in my top three reasons why I detest G+. I absolutely don't want Google services to be unified like that, nor do I want to have to have many Google accounts in order to keep the services separated (and I'm not sure how doing that is legally possible, given the stupid Real Names policy).

    • Re:Haters gonna hate... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Monday March 02, 2015 @01:35PM (#49165387) Journal
      Google Plus was an attempt to get the name, age, and gender of millions of users. Why? Because that's what advertisers demanded, and what Facebook was able to provide. Thus Google doesn't really care if no one used G+ as long as they signed up.

    • I've never really understood the vitriol toward G+.

      That's because you've drunk deeply of the kool-aid.

      The press doing what they do (and no doubt strongly encouraged by Facebook, Microsoft, Apple) created a narrative of Google taking aim at Facebook and how they will most certainly fail. Google has repeated many times what the G+ initiative was about, but the press either ignored the facts or said Google was lying. How dare Google try to disrupt their narrative with something as inconsequential as fa

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Richy_T ( 111409 )

        The thing too is that I already had a login that worked with gmail, voice, youtube, chat and the play store. All of a sudden I need to register for a G+ profile to be able to leave comments on Youtube and Google Play because.....

        You tell me.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Richy_T ( 111409 )

          Though, of course, the Youtube one was after they *forced* me to merge my gmail and youtube accounts.

        • The thing too is that I already had a login that worked with gmail, voice, youtube, chat and the play store. All of a sudden I need to register for a G+ profile to be able to leave comments on Youtube and Google Play because.....

          You tell me.

          Because... one of the keys ways for Google to compete with Facebook in the only arena that matters (the bottom line) was to compete for advertising dollars. G+ was a shortcut to more easily tracking Google users across multiple services and increasing the value (to Go

    • Crap. If it was just SSO, then we wouldn't have been forced to share our contacts, or be nagged to connect with people we might know. Or have viable products shutdown and forced into the G+ alternative. G+ is a lame attempt at the social network information grab. Get as much info about as many people to be able to sell to advertisers. Fuck Google and fuck Facebook. They make Apple and Microsoft look good by comparison.
  • Sounds a lot like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org] sadly enough there may be more similarities than we want.

  • It's always lurking there, waiting for Facebook to fail. Please never stop using it, as it is the only real threat to Facebook.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Richy_T ( 111409 )

      I would like for something like Diaspora to succeed but, to be honest, I haven't really cared enough to look into it much (I don't really facebook much either though).

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