Is Google+ like, dead?

[HeXen]

Mason's rootbeer ftw.
I also miss the old 7up, the new stuff sucks. i want the oldschool stuff with real sugar and artificial flavors.

 

[Nebbers]

I think Google+ is far superior to Facebook in terms of functionality, but the simple fact that maybe 5% of the people I know who are on Facebook are on Google+ makes it fairly useless right now.

Many people who don't really follow "the trends" have never heard of it. Facebook has a presence all over the place. Even plenty of local stores in this relatively small city I'm in have signs in the windows, on the wall, saying that they're on it. (Although for many of them I don't see the point as there's not any actual content there)

 

[PrayForDeath]

I still check mine regularly. I have various circles ranging from photography to tech news to just random/kitten gifs. It's quite entertaining.

Stop comparing it with Facebook.

 

[Adrenaline]

I think their roll out approach was terrible. A phased approach in which the most likely early adopters/geeks are the only ones who can get in and then let the rest of the great majority in only later is nuts. By then many early adopters are tired of it because there's nobody on it.

I don't like their phasing approach they use for a few things. I may have switched to gmail, but when I was finally able to get in, the email I wanted (my name) was taken and I needed numbers for the email which I extremely dislike. I use my gmail account for one thing, battle.net account, and that is it. I continue to use hotmail, faceboook, and other things not associated with google due to their poor way of rolling out their services.

 

[Doppel]

And I am disagreeing with you. They seem to be similar on the outside, and they basically 'copy' (+improvement, etc) features from each other, but if you look at how each site are currently being used by their users, they have quite significant differences. I can see this clearly because I have accounts on both sites and I go to FB and G+ for completely different reasons.

You're entitled to this opinion even though most people clearly don't share it and consider G+ a direct competitor to FB.

I understand how you (and possibly most people) think G+ and FB are exactly the same thing, but this statement confuses me as Twitter is a completely different animal altogether

Twitter lacks the people-networking aspect of FB but is otherwise used to pimp your own doings to other people, like the status update of FB.

BTW I actually liked the taste of New Coke I think. I'd love to try it again. I do recall crystal pepsi and drinking a lot of it. If it makes a return in March I will stock up and drink the cans 9 months later just to blow the Fing minds of people who see it and wonder how I got it.

I don't like their phasing approach they use for a few things. I may have switched to gmail, but when I was finally able to get in, the email I wanted (my name) was taken and I needed numbers for the email which I extremely dislike. I use my gmail account for one thing, battle.net account, and that is it. I continue to use hotmail, faceboook, and other things not associated with google due to their poor way of rolling out their services.

The phasing works better for something like email because others' use of the service doesn't impact yours; it's just another email. With G+ it's clearly a weaker experience with less people using it.

 

[cronos]

You're entitled to this opinion even though most people clearly don't share it and consider G+ a direct competitor to FB.

Just to finish up this agreement to disagree )), my points are:
Google may have started G+ to compete with FB, but after a few months and people actually started using it, it grew to be something significantly different (usage-wise) and hit a certain niche in social networking. I think Google realized this and will smartly steer G+ forward this way. Because of this, I believe G+ is here to stay, unlike Wave, Buzz and their other friends.

BTW I actually liked the taste of New Coke I think. I'd love to try it again. I do recall crystal pepsi and drinking a lot of it. If it makes a return in March I will stock up and drink the cans 9 months later just to blow the Fing minds of people who see it and wonder how I got it.

As for the soda discussion, I think Vanilla Coke is where it's at. I'm not sure of its status at the time. I believe they reintroduced it a few years back but I don't think I've seen it for a while :\

 

[PrinceofWands]

As for the soda discussion, I think Vanilla Coke is where it's at. I'm not sure of its status at the time. I believe they reintroduced it a few years back but I don't think I've seen it for a while :\

Vanilla is still out in general circulation. I get it at Safeway, Fred Meyers, WinCo, etc.

 

[amddude]

There aren't enough girls on google+. Letting all the nerds in early made it a sausagefest. It's that easy.

 

[dwell]

Just to finish up this agreement to disagree )), my points are:
Google may have started G+ to compete with FB, but after a few months and people actually started using it, it grew to be something significantly different (usage-wise) and hit a certain niche in social networking. I think Google realized this and will smartly steer G+ forward this way. Because of this, I believe G+ is here to stay, unlike Wave, Buzz and their other friends.

A company like Google can't afford to support a niche social network just for a few nerds. I think G+ will stick around for a couple of years then either get a bullet in the head or renamed/folded into something else.

The product as it stands, is a failure.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

not sure if serious...

I hear so much about New Coke I wish I could try it. I see it was released in 85 and discontinued in 2002 (by then almost nonexistent as Coke II). However it was almost completely gone only a few years after 85. I was living in Asia for much of the early part of this period so that might explain why I have never tried it despite potentially being able to have. Unlike most things, old food fads aren't really possible to revisit, given food's inherent shelf life. I'm sure you could buy vintage unopened cans but I would be dubious about trying them. Even if there's no danger I would imagine it would be stale as shit.

Check out what Brad has to say about this:
http://thecinemasnob.com/2010/10/21/brad-tries-new-coke.aspx

 

[irishScott]

I'm not sure how to interpret this comment. Of course you're pointing out the obvious that FB rolled out, essentially, the same way, and it was much slower about broad adoption than was Google+ --or at least it wasn't quite the same (FB really was so much fucking better) because you were immediately tied in with your college peer groups, as well as the "exclusivity" factor.

yes, they were the same, but Google+ was competing against FB; FB was competing against MySpace...

That and facebook was embedded in Universities. I would bet my life savings that at least 90% of the 20,000 students on my campus have a facebook. Given facebook's initial catering to the college crowd, they had an audience. Who's google+ catering to? Nerds who are nitpicky about facebook?

Don't get me wrong I like Google+ and wouldn't mind switching, but facebook has all of my friends and a good chunk of my family, most of whom are not willing to switch for the few minor advantages google+ offers.

 

[oogabooga]

G+ was actually pretty nice for coordinating a large group of people. Get everyone in the same "messenger" room or whatever and it's an easy way to get people talking and is pretty quick.

But overall, feels like it's dead. I can't get my friends to use that messenger feature amongst ourselves, the buzz is gone and with it any chance for momentum and I think google missed their window to try to secure a solid user base.

 

[destrekor]

I joined facebook my freshman year of college (2006) partly because I was able to thanks to the .edu email address (had to be affiliated with a school, and/or enrolled, to use it at that point still); the main reason, however, was due to the fact that I was fed up with myspace and found it an offensively terrible product/service. Facebook was, at that time, something new to try, and allowed me to connect to the specific demographic I was looking for (fellow classmates and the social college students in general). Hell, it was awesome back then, and would gladly go back to that version of facebook.

Favorite feature of the old Facebook was the displaying of class schedules of stuff. Since it was specifically for college students only, it worked very well. Now, I wouldn't want to just post my class schedule to the whole world. And that's when the feature went away too (that happened like a year after I joined iirc), which I remember I was bummed but then it made sense - since the service was public, it becomes a little more of a privacy issue.

Google+, now that it opened up, I was finally able to join. Something new, and it really reminds me of early Facebook, except with more and newer features. It took facebook awhile to catch on. A lot of what G+ offers I really like, but it really requires more users to take actively use the service if it's going to be an enjoyable experience.


Hopefully it gets that chance, because I would like to see it attract that kind of attention.