Pinboard (guardiantech)

My take on Google+ today >> Chuqui

guardiantech — 2014-10-14T16:57:36+00:00

Chuq von Rospach has run a bird photography group on Google+ for some years, but has seen a falloff in participation:

One thing I wanted to know was whether this stagnation I’ve seen was a problem in this group, or more widespread. So I’ve spent a couple of weeks of evenings digging into communities across G+ looking for ones I thought were interesting and doing more than “post pictures and plus them” type interactions. Frankly, while those kind of groups exist, they’re really rare, and the admins put a lot of work into building the interactions within the group because it’s clear for them G+ doesn’t make it easy for them, either. So it’s not how we’re running the group, it’s how G+ is designed. Mostly, what I found was a lot of empty groups without anyone managing them, full of spam, wallpaper reshares and low value crap. It’s incredibly hard to find groups where there’s real conversation and discussion. For the record, discovery on G+ is ludicrously bad. I can’t even tell it I only want to see groups in English, so there are many nights the list of “Communities you might like” were in Russian, or Korean, or Japanese, or in random languages I couldn’t identify. One night G+ insisted I really wanted to see middle-aged singles dating groups, another night it was race cars, and another night my recommendation list was full of groups of nothing but groups of animated gifs of cats and dogs and other cute stuff. Kawaii! Seriously, the crap I do in the name of research… My takeaway from all of this; Google doesn’t really give a damn about communities. They put them out here, and then basically ignored them. Discovery is terrible — I think those recommended lists are effectively random pulls from the database. it’s amateur stuff.

He wonders if photographers, who were enthusiastic adopters of Google+, have begun to withdraw from it. But if so, where have they gone now?

Mandatory Google+ Gmail integration quietly shelved >> WordStream

guardiantech — 2014-09-22T16:49:22+00:00

Rumours of the decoupling of Google+ and Gmail first surfaced in the spring. Google, unsurprisingly, hasn’t exactly gone out of its way to shout about the change from the rooftops, instead choosing to quietly shelve the mandatory integration which had previously been in place since 2012. Although the change means that new Gmail users will no longer be forced to sign up for Google+, they’ll still have the option to do so, as you can see in the image above.

Conscious uncoupling?

I HDR’d a photo 3 times over using Google+ Snapseed’s new filter and it came out like this >> The Next Web

guardiantech — 2013-10-30T18:01:40+00:00

This photo was taken with my HTC One stock Android camera. I edited it with Google+ Snapseed, repeating the max HDR effect that Google released today three times over. Nothing else. This is the result. Hit the HDR button three times and you can create art out of almost anything. It reminds me of the visual style of GTA.

Google+ adds 18 new features for Video, Photos, Hangouts and more >> Pocket-lint

guardiantech — 2013-10-29T18:00:46+00:00

Before announcing the changes, Vic Gundotra, senior vice president at Google, confirmed that Google+ users upload 1.5 billion photos each week. There's also been a 20x increase in the number of videos uploaded. Speaking of users, Google said there are more than 300 million active users on Google+ right now. 300m active users? Google+ is now as big as WhatsApp - whether that's good or bad is for you to decide.

Mobile pictures astray: all girl's photos sent to Danish journalist's Google+ account

guardiantech — 2013-04-28T21:05:09+00:00

Magnus Eidem (via Google Translate, so excuse sloppy language):

In recent weeks I have experienced something frightening. Over 300 images taken by a teenage girl's smart phones have been uploaded from the phone to my photo album on the social network Google+. The images would naturally have ended up in the photo album to your phone's owner.
Image files do not reveal the person's name but a few pictures are named depicted.
And not enough, the girl has taken pictures of a passport, where the social security number is fully visible. GPS location where the photos were taken included some photos. I know that is where the girl lives, and where she goes to school.

Her uploads are going to his Google+ account. Google says it can't happen. But it is happening.

Google Plus >> Benedict Evans

guardiantech — 2013-03-27T20:34:08+00:00

The only country where Google+ is top of the social networking category [for iOS downloads] is Albania.
Of course, 'Google Plus' is arguably a catch-all name for a project to get all Google users to be logged into a unified system and, as importantly, to stay logged in when they leave Google: that way any page you visit with a 'share on Google Plus' button will be linked to your ID and allow Google to improve targeting. To that extent, getting people to go to the Google Plus homepage isn't the main objective.

Discussions about DRM often land on the fundamental problem… >> Ian Hickson

guardiantech — 2013-03-20T22:03:47+00:00

Arguing that DRM doesn't work is, it turns out, missing the point. DRM is working really well in the video and book space. Sure, the DRM systems have all been broken, but that doesn't matter to the DRM proponents. Licensed DVD players still enforce the restrictions. Mass market providers can't create unlicensed DVD players, so they remain a black or gray market curiosity. DRM failed in the music space not because DRM is doomed, but because the content providers sold their digital content without DRM, and thus enabled all kinds of players they didn't expect (such as "MP3" players). Had CDs been encrypted, iPods would not have been able to read their content, because the content providers would have been able to use their DRM contracts as leverage to prevent it.
DRM's purpose is to give content providers control over software and hardware providers, and it is satisfying that purpose well.

Hickson is a Brit who works at Google. It is the music business's biggest regret that CDs were not encrypted.

How Google+ could save RSS >> Colin Walker

guardiantech — 2013-03-18T21:27:30+00:00

Equally as ironic as social killing Reader, it could also be its saviour – Google+ in particular.
The recent Google+ profile redesign gives us more control over how our information is viewed and compartmentalised. As well as our “links” and “contributor to” sections why not have an option for RSS feeds both for Profiles and Pages?

Could happen. Might be a UI nightmare. (Thanks @modelportfolio2003 for the link.)

Google Reader still drives far more traffic than Google+ >> Buzzfeed

guardiantech — 2013-03-15T06:55:14+00:00

According to data from the BuzzFeed Network, a set of tracked partner sites that collectively have over 300 million users, Google Reader is still a significant source of traffic for news — and a much larger one than Google+. The above chart, created by BuzzFeed's data team, represents data collected from August 2012 to today. (Yesterday, Google announced that it would close Reader in July.)
We should add that this data isn't complete. Google Reader traffic became much harder to measure last year when Google began defaulting users to SSL encryption in such a way that masked referral data. And this doesn't include data from apps that use Google Reader as a sync service, such as Reeder. In other words, it's likely that we're actually missing some Reader traffic here.

From the graph, the ratio looks like roughly 70:1 for Reader:G+.

Why is Google killing Google Reader? >> Quora

guardiantech — 2013-03-14T12:20:53+00:00

Brian Shih, former Google Reader product manager:

Let's be clear that this has nothing to do with revenue vs operating costs. Reader never made money directly (though you could maybe attribute some of Feedburner and AdSense for Feeds usage to it), and it wasn't the goal of the product.
Reader has been fighting for approval/survival at Google since long before I was a PM for the product. I'm pretty sure Reader was threatened with de-staffing at least three times before it actually happened. It was often for some reason related to social:
2008 - let's pull the team off to build OpenSocial
2009 - let's pull the team off to build Buzz
2010 - let's pull the team off to build Google+
It turns out they decided to kill it anyway in 2010, even though most of the engineers opted against joining G+.

Google+ is the giant sucking sound at the heart of Google.

Bang With Nobody

guardiantech — 2013-02-08T06:48:21+00:00

After "Bang With Friends" (on Facebook) and "Bang with Professionals" (on LinkedIn), here's the one for Google+:

Bang With Nobody: Anonymously find Google+ friends who are down for the night. Your friends will never know you're interested. Ever.

Advocates and happy users of Google+ will say this is tremendously unfair. But it shows the power of the meme. In effect, Google+ is becoming Google's version of Apple's Maps: laughed at outside, liked inside, with neither side able to understand or influence the other's point of view.

Sorry, Google+ users, those Super Bowl hashtags really were for Twitter >> Marketing Land

guardiantech — 2013-02-06T06:34:22+00:00

Danny Sullivan:

Soon after our post about Twitter being referenced in 50% of Super Bowl commercials, and Google+ being shut out, the Google+ defenders started complaining. Since Google+ supports hashtags, was our analysis biased toward Twitter? Nope, some further analysis shows.
You can see some of the complaints in the comments to our original post, and I received a few when I shared our story to Google+ yesterday. As a result of that, I started doing some counting yesterday, to see if those hashtags really were aimed at Google or not.

A definitive analysis involving tumbleweed.

Game over: Twitter mentioned In 50% of Super Bowl commercials, Facebook only 8%, Google+ shut out >> Marketing Land

guardiantech — 2013-02-04T07:15:20+00:00

Matt McGee analyses the ads on the US's most-watched scheduled event of the year:

According to my count, Twitter was mentioned in 26 of 52 national TV commercials — that’s 50% of the spots that aired during CBS’ game coverage. Facebook was mentioned in only four of those commercials — about 8%. Google+, which is reportedly the No. 2 social network in the world, wasn’t mentioned at all…
When it comes to second-screen advertising, it’s Twitter’s world now and there’s no close second place.
Last year, brands split their focus on Twitter and Facebook with eight mentions each. This year, brands recognize that Twitter is where they need to try to attract the online conversation around one of the world’s biggest events.

Google+ has been out for a year and a half, let's check In on the Explore/What's Hot List >> David Chartier

guardiantech — 2013-02-01T06:31:44+00:00

Chartier with the funny. Though looking at G+'s real Explore list, not too far off. (Android phones? Expensive cars? CyanogenMod stats? All there when we looked.)

Google's Lost Social Network >> Buzzfeed

guardiantech — 2012-12-09T20:29:52+00:00

How Google accidentally built a truly beloved social network, only to steamroll it with Google+. The sad, surprising story of Google Reader.

Long - arguably overlong - and detailed look at the dispossessed Google Reader community.

Google adds bizarre requirement for SFPD's bike theft workshop attendees >> SFAppeal

guardiantech — 2012-12-07T12:05:44+00:00

"The workshop will offer speakers from the San Francisco Police Department on topics ranging from how authorities investigate bike theft to tips and tricks on protecting your bicycle," according to SFPD. What they don't mention is that those who create content for Google are apparently offered priority access to the event.
According to the RSVP page for the event, admission to the bicycle theft event is guaranteed only if community members include a link to their Google Plus Local profile with five or more reviews…
"You know you try and do something good, you try and do something for the community and something like this happens," Officer Carlos Manfredi, an SFPD spokesperson told The Appeal in apparent frustration.

Well, it's one way to increase the "activity" on Google+. (Google declined to comment to the reporter.)

Google Plus deletes comments in Gmail; Facebook doesn’t >> ZDNet

guardiantech — 2012-08-20T09:58:39+00:00

Jack Schofield (sometimes of this parish) on Google+, "Google's struggling bulletin board system" (ouch) and its behaviour to comments you email or leave:

Of course, comments on bulletin boards are always at the mercy of whoever started and/or owns the thread. If someone on a forum deletes their original post, all the comments usually go with it. When someone deletes a post on G+, the same thing happens. That shouldn't be surprising. What isn't normal is that email copies of comments get deleted as well.
If Google is going to do this, it should warn people in advance, rather than obliging them to learn the hard way.
Amusingly enough, I learnt this the hard way by making comments that were critical of G+ on a post from a Google employee/G+ evangelist. (It is, obviously, shocking that anyone should have the temerity to criticise G+ in public. Anyone who does this is a troll to be blocked, if not sent to jail without passing Go.) By deleting his G+ post and/or blocking me, Mr A Googler also removed the only visible copies of my comments. These could have been useful to anyone writing a blog post along the lines of "The top 5 reasons G+ deserves to die", though the system's failings may be too obvious for this to matter.

With Facebook, even if you make comments somewhere, if you get them emailed then you'll still have them.

Google I/O fireside chat: how Google is pulling an Apple with Google+ >> ReadWriteWeb

guardiantech — 2012-07-05T21:25:09+00:00

Q: When will the full API for Google+ be available for everyone?
[David] Glazer: "We deeply wanted to be sure we were building a platform that worked for developers. And at the same time, we knew there were a couple of failure modes around doing that. The obvious failure mode is 'don't give you tools.' That's an easy one to avoid, and this question is saying 'I want more tools' - understood.
"But there are some other failure modes we've seen out there, and one of them is to provide tools before we know if it's a good idea and then to change our mind, and then to change our mind again, and then to change our mind again. The other failure mode we've seen is that it's possible with a platform that has insufficient guidelines or tone or doesn't nudge the experience in the right direction to build something that creates a tragedy of the commons, where the more [that] people build on the platform, the more it hurts the overall community. Once we know what sticks, we're comfortable opening up more widely."
[Bradley] Horowitz: "We have a very high velocity team. You don't want to be chasing after a moving target."

EXCLUSIVE: Google+ History API will bring in your past updates from around the web >> VentureBeat

guardiantech — 2012-06-28T05:48:30+00:00

Stop the dadgum presses! Googler Louis Gray just told us about a new Google+ feature that you won’t read about anywhere else.
Called Google+ History, this new API will let you add past statuses, updates, purchases, pictures, and more to you personal Google+ timeline from a variety of social and mobile services. These objects are displayed in pretty tiles called “moments.”

Pretty tiles, but will you have pretty things to put in them?

Google+ chief: “I don’t think we’ve hit hyper growth yet” >> FT Tech blog

guardiantech — 2012-06-19T14:19:33+00:00

“I don’t think we’ve hit that hyper growth phase,” [Google vp Brad Horowitz] said, while pointing out that Google+ had still managed to reach the scale it had faster than many social networks.
“While I’m stunned at the growth… I do think our best days our ahead of us. A lot of the things I know we are yet to launch will make dramatic difference in usage.”
Google said in April that 100m of those 170m users logged in during the last month but Mr Horowitz gave little further information about how active its users really are today.

Tim Cook at the D Conference: Between the Lines >> Dan Frommer

guardiantech — 2012-05-30T22:22:04+00:00

When an ABC News journalist asked Cook about Ping, Apple's music-related social network-of-sorts, he said "I don't think we have to own a social network." He continued: "But does Apple need to be social? Yes." Then he gave the examples of Apple integrating Twitter into iOS and OS X, its iMessage and Game Center services, etc. "We tried Ping, and I think the customer voted and said 'This isn't something that I want to put a lot of energy into.'"
Then, when Kara Swisher joked that Cook should sell Ping to Google+, Cook laughed very hard.

Google+ gets a sexy new iPhone app that you’ll actually want to use >> The Next Web

guardiantech — 2012-05-09T20:48:28+00:00

Google has just released a new version of its Google+ iPhone app, and boy is it impressive. This release features crisper fonts, larger profile pics and a friendlier home-screen. In addition, Google worked to make the stream easier to scan and easier on the eyes, with overlays, gradients and other visual elements.

Google+'s original app for iPhone never received much praise, but this latest iteration is, for lack of better words, surprisingly good. Given how unexpectedly sexy this app is, my intuition leads me to believe that the acquihire of Kevin Rose and the Milk team has played a part in this.

Updates to Google News US Edition: larger images, realtime coverage and discussions >> Google News Blog

guardiantech — 2012-05-08T21:40:34+00:00

Many news stories inspire vibrant discussions on Google+, and today we're starting to add this content to both the News homepage, and the realtime coverage pages. This way you can see what your circles, journalists covering the story and notables like politicians or others who are the subjects of stories have to say about breaking news, and even contribute to the discussion directly from Google News.
Note that these Google+ discussions will only appear for those of you reading the US edition who have signed in and upgraded to Google+.

Note subtle things in the language. "Many" news stories "inspire" vibrant (vibrant?) discussions on Google+. (As they do on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, to name just a few. But those don't belong to Google.) And that these discussions are only available if you've "upgraded" to Google+ - not "signed up for", or "logged into", or "joined". Language shapes the world.

Google is making a huge and annoying mistake >> Wil Wheaton

guardiantech — 2012-05-03T06:04:14+00:00

Wheaton is a big star in the US. He starts by saying he likes Google+. But by forcing people to "upgrade" in order to like a video on YouTube, he says it's putting people off.

By crippling functionality on sites Google owns (like YouTube) and forcing users to "upgrade" to a service that they may not want or need to get that functionality back, Google is making a huge and annoying mistake.
You get people to enthusiastically use services by making them compelling and awesome and easy to use. You don't get people to enthusiastically use your services by forcing them to. In fact, that's probably a great way to ensure that a huge number of people who may have been interested in trying out your service never even look at it.

When the producers don't like it, that's a problem.

Introducing the Google+ Share Button >> Google+ Developers Blog

guardiantech — 2012-04-25T05:27:54+00:00

When your visitors come across something interesting on your site, sometimes you want to encourage a simple endorsement (like +1). Other times, however, you want to help visitors share with their friends, right away. Today's new Google+ Share button lets you do just that.

You get to email it or send it to particular Circles of your Google+ following. (There's a phrase that would have made no sense three years ago.) Will publishers have two +1 buttons (the old and the new) or, facing button overload, will they go with this one? Having to choose which Circles you send it to sounds, as Orwell would say, plusungood.

Six months later, Google Plus still doesn't add up >> Forbes

guardiantech — 2012-04-17T16:01:31+00:00

Pul Tassi:

Fans may love the fact that pictures and videos are featured more prominently on G+ than other sites, but it also makes navigation quite bit more cumbersome. Right now on Twitter, I can view eleven tweets without having to scroll down. On Facebook, there are four stories, complete with photos. Google Plus? My newsfeed home screen is showing me one giant picture from Tom Anderson‘s recent vacation, which takes up the entire vertical space. To its right? A vast white gulf of sheer nothingness. For those making the “prettiness” argument as to why G+ is superior to Facebook, I just don’t see it.

Want to know another platform where the screen layout seriously limits the amount of content you can access rapidly? Windows Phone.

If Google's Really Proud Of Google+, It Should Share Some Real User Figures >> MarketingLand

guardiantech — 2012-04-12T22:26:57+00:00

Danny Sullivan, in a long, long post:

I’ve been meaning to write my “Google+ Is Like The Apple Store For Google” piece for some time. Maybe I’ll never get to it now. But you know when you go into an Apple Store, and it’s filled with sometimes scary Apple fanatics who seem to have arrived at a holy place? That’s Google+ for Google.
If Google+ isn’t anything else, it’s a place that Google fans can call home. It’s a place that Google’s never really had before, a spot for its millions (and let’s face it, there are millions) of fanboys and fangirls to rejoice in all things Google.
I’ve experienced this firsthand in my time at Google. I’ve learned that if I share anything negative about Google, I can expect to get comments, sometimes many, asking why I hate Google or am biased against Google.

Sullivan generally writes positively about Google, and you can see how wrestling with his dislike of its slipperiness over Google+. The "170m" figure this week seems to have been the last straw, and won't have been improved by the complete lack of useful numbers in Thurday's quarterly results.

Google+: The Charge Of The Like Brigade >> TechCrunch

guardiantech — 2012-03-28T06:16:49+00:00

Devin Coldewey:

Google never said “What you’re doing is broken. Use our thing instead.” They always said “Did you know you we can do that too, for free?” Did they say Excel was broken when they let you make spreadsheets in Docs? Did they break down email to its bare bones and remake it for Gmail? Of course not. Google was about ubiquity, diversity, and a few memorable little quirks or improvements that set them out from the crowd. To attempt to build something new, a la Apple, with the assurance that company likes to make (“This is the best way, which is why we made it the only way”) is not a Google strength. They just aren’t good at making new things. Never have been. Making existing things easier, faster, more accessible — sure. But inventing them? Not so much. So the idea that they were going to invent a new way to share should have rung alarm bells to begin with. Sharing was never broken; Google merely found that they were losing a battle they had not even prepared for. Their declaration of war was a declaration of defeat.

Subtle point.

The current (global) Google Trends chart for Google+ >> Benedict Evans

guardiantech — 2012-03-15T06:33:49+00:00

The current (global) Google Trends chart for ‘Google Plus’ - a clear indication of how it is sliding away into irrelevance.

Or just slipping out of the media's eye. Not necessarily tied to actual use - the media overlooks such stuff rather easily.

Google+ aims to more than double users this year, executive says >> Bloomberg

guardiantech — 2012-03-11T21:22:00+00:00

Google added the social-networking service in a bid to keep users on its site longer and boost ad revenue. The company said in January that Google+ had topped 90 million members, more than double the amount in October. Still, its user base is dwarfed by Facebook Inc. (FB)’s 845 million-plus members. And ComScore Inc. estimates that Google+’s members spend a fraction of the time on the site than their Facebook counterparts. Google+ is the basis for a broader shift at the Mountain View, California-based company, Gundotra said. “Google+ could be viewed as Google 2.0,” he said. “Google+ is the next generation of all of Google becoming unified because it understands you and your relationships. And so all services get better.”

The question is to what extent people want that - or whether they want something more dispassionate. (Thanks @modelportfolio2003 for the link.)

Countering the Google Plus image problem >> NYTimes.com

guardiantech — 2012-03-08T12:48:33+00:00

Perhaps conscious that G+ really isn't wowing the media, Vic Gundotra gets on the line to the NYT.

“This is just the next version of Google,” Mr. Gundotra said, noting that he sees Google Plus as a social blanket that envelopes the entire Google experience. “Everything is being upgraded. We already have users. We’re now upgrading them to what we consider Google 2.0.” In Google’s eyes, citing the amount of time people spend on Google Plus would be like judging a takeout restaurant by how many people sit down to eat at a table, even though a number of people take food to go. But Nate Elliott, a vice president and principal analyst with Forrester Research, said the numbers just are not adding up correctly. “I don’t know how you can have a social layer without having a social network that people use,” Mr. Elliott said in a phone interview. “If Google is saying that someone who once signed up for Google Plus makes them an active user, then that’s not entirely convincing.”

Why Google+ doesn’t care if you never come back >> TechCrunch

guardiantech — 2012-03-02T22:29:16+00:00

Isn’t it curious that Google+ doesn’t actually show you any ads? It’s because the time-on-site and page views there are trivial. Hit the road, Jack. Don’t you ever come back and post an update, upload a photo, or add anyone to your Circles. It doesn’t matter. What’s important to Google is getting your biographical data.

Logicaly consistent.

Google+ trending down? Data suggests users only visit the site three times a month >> The Verge

guardiantech — 2012-03-01T06:45:59+00:00

To go with the ComScore data from the other day:

according to Compete, Google+ visitors went to the site less than three times a month and spent about three and a half minutes per visit (on average from July 2011 through January 2012). Facebook visitors, on the other hand, ended up visiting Facebook about 21 times each month, spending almost 20 minutes each time they visited. This works out to a little over 10 minutes spent on Google+ compared to about 7 hours spent on Facebook.

The question is whether people have the spare time to make that additive, whether they'll abandon Facebook, or what.

As a person, publisher, news organization and Twitter user, I think Google’s new personalized search results are AWESOME! >> Thmas Hawk

guardiantech — 2012-01-26T17:35:23+00:00

Earlier this week Twitter put out a statement saying that they thought this new search integration was “bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.”

I disagree. Sure, it may be be bad for *Twitter*, but to say it’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users is wrong.

He goes on to explain why in detail.

Focus on the User for Safari >> Florian Eckerstorfer

guardiantech — 2012-01-25T20:35:14+00:00

This Safari Extension is based on the bookmarklet by focusontheuser.org. It is just a wrapper for their code and the original developers receive all credit.

The video by Focus on the User explains pretty much everything. The only difference between the bookmarklet and my Safari extension is that you don't have to activate it.

Intriguing to follow the download statistics at Github.

Toward a more inclusive naming policy for Google+ >> Bradley Horowitz - Google+

guardiantech — 2012-01-23T22:02:35+00:00

Google offers an olive branch to those who prefer to be known by their online alias – albeit alongside their "real life name". But does nothing for those who want to be known only by their pseudonym. (The people who complain to Google about this make up 0.1% of its applicants, it says. So that would be 90,000 complaints so far. How many have turned away because they couldn't use a pseudonym?

A bookmarklet to ward off Google evil >> Focus on the User

guardiantech — 2012-01-23T16:57:14+00:00

Utterly brilliant bookmarklet that, for users in the US, will undo all the skewing of Google's results in favour of its nascent Google+ network to reflect the actual popularity - as measured by Google itself - of rankings. Install at once.

How much better would social search be if Google surfaced results from all across the web? The results speak for themselves. We created a tool that uses Google’s own relevance measure—the ranking of their organic search results—to determine what social content should appear in the areas where Google+ results are currently hardcoded.

Irresistible.

This post on Google+ statistics is a billion* times better than any other post >> VentureBeat

guardiantech — 2012-01-21T22:35:36+00:00

Remember those stats about Google+ users?

This isn’t the first time Google has tried to mislead with statistics about Google+. In July, Page claimed that the service had 10 million users who shared 1 billion items a day.

That sounds incredibly impressive. But let’s do the math. That would mean that the average user was sharing 100 items a day. Robert Scoble was flooding my feed before I blocked him, but I don’t think even he was sharing 100 items a day. (I have since unblocked him.)

So how did we get to that number? Well, it turns out Google was counting every potential recipient of that message. A single message from Scoble today would count 240,000 times toward that number. That’s preposterous.

Google is by no means alone in how it plays with numbers. This deception happens nearly every day and is especially rampant in Silicon Valley where new business models are created and standard metrics aren’t always available. It also reflects the optimistic nature of the Valley. We want to see exponential growth. We see hockey sticks everywhere. Even worse, these statistics get thrown around in the echo chamber and presented as fact. And as they get reblogged and retweeted, they lose the disclaimers that made them technically true in the first place.

Whoa, Google Plus Has 54m Daily Users? Not Quite. >> Forbes

guardiantech — 2012-01-20T10:49:37+00:00

Here’s what Page said, according to the transcript of his remarks he posted on Google Plus:

"I’m also pleased to announce that there are over 90M Google+ users — well over double what I announced just a quarter ago on our earnings call. Engagement on + is also growing tremendously. I have some amazing data to share there for the first time: +users are very engaged with our products — over 60% of them engage daily, and over 80% weekly."

Note that Page said users are “very engaged with our products” — “products,” plural. So 60% of the 90 million people who have created Google Plus profiles engage with some Google product every day, but that product could be Gmail, Google Documents, Google Calendar or even just Google Search. Google just isn’t breaking out how many of those 90 million users are actually visiting G+ pages every day, week or month.

The more you examine his quote, in fact, the less it seems to mean about Google+.

Hitler Hears About Google Search Plus Your World - YouTube

guardiantech — 2012-01-18T05:30:33+00:00

"When I search for Katy Perry I want her Facebook page and her tweets, not her empty Google+ page." Yes, Downfall is back.

FTC said to expand antitrust probe of Google to social networking service Google+ >> Bloomberg

guardiantech — 2012-01-15T22:09:57+00:00

"The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is expanding its antitrust probe of Google, the world’s most popular search engine, to include scrutiny of its new Google+ social networking service, according to two people familiar with the situation. "The competition issues raised by Google+ go to the heart of the FTC’s investigation into whether the company is giving preference to its own services in search results and whether that practice violates antitrust laws, said the people, who declined to be identified because the probe isn’t public."

Recall that Google+ is tiny in terms of traffic and external links compared to sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and even Myspace. Then note how its results appear in the first page of searches.

February 2010: Google boss says 'nobody was harmed' by Buzz debacle >> guardian.co.uk

guardiantech — 2012-01-13T06:40:43+00:00

Worth reading in the light of the present fuss in the US over Google's "Search+". Recall the outcome: Google was obliged to submit to privacy checks by the FTC for 25 years as a result of Buzz's privacy failings.

Google: sorry, Twitter, we don't index the @ symbol >> Mashable

guardiantech — 2012-01-13T03:08:29+00:00

This one will run and run: "Now Google has confirmed to Mashable that it has never indexed the “@” symbol. In other words, the search engine has never recognized a Twitter handle when it was formatted that way. "So while a search for “WWE Twitter” still returns the organization’s Twitter feed before its Google+ page, “@WWE” returns the same results as “WWE” — in this case, with Google+ results first. Somehow a search for “+WWE” succeeds in returning a Google+ profile. "But really, Google? The company with a car that drives itself? In more than five years of people searching for Twitter handles, you never got around to adding the @ symbol to your index? "Even without the @ sign being indexed, however, the concern over the results for “@WWE” are valid: about 24,900 people have +1ed or added WWE to their circles on Google+ — but 792,642 people follow WWE on Twitter."

Is too much Plus a minus for Google? >> StevenLevy.com

guardiantech — 2012-01-13T01:01:38+00:00

Steven Levy was pretty much embedded with Google to write his book In The Plex, so he has a special view of its changes to search in the US: "there is a risk to proceeding on this path. The company has spent its entire corporate life protecting the integrity of its search product. When writing In the Plex, I learned that the secret behind Google’s somewhat bland design was that if Google looked like it was designed by a machine, users would implicitly understand that Google search itself was unpolluted by strong opinions. Google meticulously positioned its flagship product as a neutral judge of what was relevant to the user. "Search, in short, should appear to be like Caesar’s wife, above reproach. When using its algorithmic wizardry to deeply integrate social information into its search experience, it behooves Google to avoid even a whiff of bias. With SPYW, though, the odor is unmistakable. No matter how you cut it, the search engine now increases the value of participating in Google+. It may be Google’s right to do this. But it also may turn off a lot of users. And it also provides ammo for Google’s detractors, including those in Washington."

Is MySpace really dead? It still gets more traffic than Tumblr & Google+ >> hypebot

guardiantech — 2012-01-13T00:20:19+00:00

Shows Google+ to be about half the size of Twitter in the US in terms of unique visitors, and with people spending one-fifth of the time. When compared to Facebook, it gets one-tenth the visitors and they spend 1% as much time there. But Google+ sits right next to Google's crawler, so obviously it's more relevant for search results than the public networks that people actually use.

Sharing a search story >> Matt Cutts

guardiantech — 2012-01-11T17:18:09+00:00

Matt Cutts of Google uses his personal blog to defend the usefulness of Google's decision to push Google+ rankings miles above where they would otherwise appear (if based on, say, number of external links). But the commenters, who are polite and reasoned, simply don't seem to agree with him. At all. Even Danny Sullivan, the search engine expert who is usually a great supporter of Google, is unhappy (his comment is in there).

Google+ is going to mess up the internet >> ReadWriteWeb

guardiantech — 2012-01-04T22:42:46+00:00

Jon Mitchell, who is responsible for reporting on Google+ at RWW, doesn't like the way it lets people snarf entire articles to repost them (even seen Facebook, Jon?), the lack of permalinks, the shoehorning of Google+ profile pictures into search results, the shoehorning of Google+ posts into search results, and… quite a long list, actually.

Google+ visits in US hit 49m in December >> Hitwise

guardiantech — 2012-01-03T22:42:40+00:00

Hitwise has the data. That's a lot of visits (and likely excludes mobile, because Hitwise operates via ISPs).

Why is Sergey Brin so good at Angry Birds? >> kottke.org

guardiantech — 2012-01-01T22:20:41+00:00

"I spent perhaps too much time this morning pondering one of the mysteries of the internet: Sergey Brin's astronomically high scores on the Google+ version of Angry Birds. For instance, Brin's high score on the easiest level of the game is 36240. It's a legit score (here's a higher one) and he has impressive scores on several other levels. But in 15 minutes of playing this morning, I couldn't get within a thousand points of his score."

Actually, searches for “Google+” are petering out >> TechCrunch

guardiantech — 2012-01-01T22:13:47+00:00

The point about searches for it is that many people do a search to find a site - even if you would imagine that they would type in the URL directly. If fewer people search for something, that often means that they're not going there as much. (Seriously: Google processes a colossal number of searches for "Facebook" and "Twitter".) One potentially confounding effect: the introduction of apps on smartphones might mean fewer people need to do a search on those to get to them.

Goldfinger >> parislemon

guardiantech — 2011-12-30T23:01:29+00:00

MG Siegler, whose profile picture on Google+ in which he was extending his middle finger (offensive? Maybe in the US) was deleted, points out that Michael Arrington's default picture if you search for images of him show Arrington… extending his middle finger. "So the rules seems to be that if you want a middle finger picture to be the image associated with you, too bad. Or if you don’t want a middle finger picture to be associated with you, too bad. Heads, Google wins. Tails, Google wins. "We’re seeing some of the problems with Google’s expansion to do everything on the web. Some of their policies in certain places seem to directly contradict their policies elsewhere. And there’s no easy solution. As a result, these types of debates will continue." This has spiralled from being trivial to being very important.

Google Circles and Path 2.0: How good UI design cannot fix a broken solution

guardiantech — 2011-12-21T22:42:31+00:00

"There are inherent problems with binary social networks. The idea that someone is either full-on in your life (and therefore has access to everything about you) or not at all is not how it works offline. You tend to share certain information only with certain groups of people. Only some people will be interested in photos of your new puppy, whereas those same people will probably not be interested in blog posts about your work. Google Circles aims to solve these problems by allowing you to drag and drop people into distinct buckets, and letting you only share what you want with each circle. And yes, the UI makes it really easy to do this. It’s great design." But it's impossible for that great design to make up for the fact that you can't maintain the listing of who belongs in which circles (or overlapping circles) for any length of time.

Killing spam on Google+ >> Pras Sarkar

guardiantech — 2011-12-14T06:30:07+00:00

"The quality of conversations on Google+ is something we take very seriously, so we’re happy to announce that we've finished rolling out our new comment spam moderation system. "Now, if we identify a possibly spammy comment on your post, we'll immediately mark it for your review." If Google+ is getting spam that's actually a good sign - spammers don't bother with places where nothing is happening. But you have to review your own? Bet that people won't, for the most part.

Facebook's Zuckerberg answers the big question "Is Google+ a threat?" >> The Next Web

guardiantech — 2011-12-05T07:46:20+00:00

Mark Zuckerberg's answer: 'Um, no, not really'

Google+ had a chance to compete with Facebook. Not anymore. - Slate Magazine

guardiantech — 2011-11-08T22:51:21+00:00

"Google might not know it yet, but from the outside, it’s clear that G+ has started to die—it will hang on for a year, maybe two, but at some point Google will have to put it out of its misery. "Why am I so sure that Google+ can’t be saved? Because there’s no way to correct Google’s central failure. Back when companies were clamoring to create brand pages on the network—or users were looking to create profiles with pseudonyms, another phenomenon that Google shut down—the company ought to have acceded to its users’ wishes and accommodated them. If Google wasn’t ready for brand pages in the summer, it shouldn’t have launched Google+ until it was. And this advice goes more generally—by failing to offer people a reason to keep coming back to the site every day, Google+ made a bad first impression. And in the social-networking business, a bad first impression spells death."

The Art Of Google+ Comments >> Guy Kawasaki

guardiantech — 2011-10-09T16:08:22+00:00

"For awhile, Google+ was a beautiful swimming pool filled with enchanting people making substantial, supportive and serene comments. Then hell broke loose On Sept. 21, 2011 when Google+ opened for anyone to join. Overnight, posts were inundated with clueless, crass or callous comments—is it possible to be nostalgic about the good old days when those days were only a few weeks ago?" Useful advice for those who use it on how to avoid the useless comments "floating in the pool".

The women who made Google+: 22 developers behind the world's fastest growing social network >> ReadWriteWeb

guardiantech — 2011-10-08T21:45:05+00:00

From Friday: "Today is Ada Lovelace Day, a day dedicated to celebrating the world's first computer programmer and to share inspiring stories about women working in science, technology and math. Surely some of the most significant technical work done by women since this day last year includes the creation of what is said to be the fastest-growing social network in history, Google Plus."

Google’s Management Doesn’t Use Google+ >> the understatement

guardiantech — 2011-10-05T07:20:41+00:00

"It’s been over 3 months since Google+ launched, and he’s only made 7 public posts, including just one since mid-August. Turns out that’s still 7 more posts than Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has ever made. Since Google+ launched, Mr. Schmidt has found time to retweet Ivanka Trump’s promotion of “Snow Flower & The Secret Fan”, but apparently couldn’t find time to even join Google+. He’s nowhere to be found in the search results, and one can only assume he’s using his real name. He’s apparently also still using a Blackberry, so he’s hardly been a leader in the eat-your-own-dogfood department."

I am asking Google to remove me from the Google+ suggested user list >> Robert Scoble - Google+

guardiantech — 2011-09-05T07:25:47+00:00

"...Anyway, I totally understand why Google did this list. It just isn't a well curated list and so I don't want my name associated with it."

Google+ introduces new "ignore" and "block functions >> Google+

guardiantech — 2011-08-29T08:08:30+00:00

"We want to make sure you can represent your real-life relationships on Google+ -- whether you want to connect with someone or not :-) So starting today, we're rolling out a new option to Ignore people, in addition to the existing (and stronger) option to Block them."

Now, where have we heard of that before?

Five reasons Google+'s name policy fails >> Informationweek

guardiantech — 2011-08-24T21:11:37+00:00

There's the feeling of an idealistic thread of thinking running up against Google's deep need to be able to mine personal data in this debate.

Facebook: Google+ has no users >> Fortune Tech

guardiantech — 2011-08-17T07:41:13+00:00

"At an event last week, Facebook director of game partnerships Sean Ryan had some choice words for his new competitor. "Google has emulated aspects of our system, which is what they have the right to do," he said. "We just need to be better." He's referring to the way the companies make money from casual online games like Farmville and Words With Friends. Players pay for play time or virtual goods within the games, and the social networks take a cut of the sales. Currently, Facebook reportedly takes 30% from game developers, whereas Google takes just 5%."

Hands-on with Edgeworld and other Google+ games >> VentureBeat

guardiantech — 2011-08-15T07:41:49+00:00

"Google passes the test so far. It can essentially duplicate Facebook’s platform for games and bring over a lot of games that already exist elsewhere. The next test is to see how many games it can get and how the performance works when the games scale to millions of players. Facebook may not be that worried about Google for now, but it definitely has to watch its back because its platform is not so hard to clone."

Take that, Facebook: Google+ commission on game transactions is 5 percent, not 30 percent >> VentureBeat

guardiantech — 2011-08-12T07:29:06+00:00

How Google+ hopes to beat Facebook: undercutting it. "For the launch of its Google+ social games platform, Google has found one way to differentiate itself from Facebook. For in-game transactions, Google is only going to be charging a 5 percent commission to game developers instead of the 30 percent that Facebook charges."

Games in Google+: fun that fits your schedule >> Official Google Blog

guardiantech — 2011-08-12T07:27:25+00:00

"Today we’re adding games to Google+. With the Google+ project, we want to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to the web. But sharing is about more than just conversations. The experiences we have together are just as important to our relationships. We want to make playing games online just as fun, and just as meaningful, as playing in real life."

Social Developers Hopeful About Google+ Platform Potential >> Inside Social Games

guardiantech — 2011-08-08T06:27:59+00:00

"...we’ve been surprised by the optimism among companies we’re talking to, and they’re not just having wishful thoughts. The specific reasons: Google+ is a respectable product, it’s grown quickly, there are clear social communication channels like Streams where developers could promote discovery and engagement, and the transaction fee is likely to be quite low."

It was just a matter of time: Google +1′s being sold by the thousands >> Search Engine Land

guardiantech — 2011-07-27T15:03:00+00:00

"A report by the Atlantic shined a light on a new “social media service” which allows users to purchase Google +1′s in bulk. The site in question, Pluseem, has a variety of different Google+ package sizes, from 50 plusses to 2,000, with the prices ranging from $0.18 – $0.38 per plus."

Breaking Google's quality guidelines, as you could guess. But - the presence of spam shows an ecosystem that spammers think worth chasing.

The sociological breakthrough of Google+ >> Hannibal and Me

guardiantech — 2011-07-24T21:53:23+00:00

Andreas Kluth of The Economist: "Tell me: In real life, how often do you walk up to somebody and request to be “friends”, then begin “sharing” pictures of your naked baby?
"How wonderfully warm and fuzzy do you feel when somebody (oh yes, wasn’t he on my soccer team 30 years ago? Or perhaps I vomited on him at that keg party in 1989?) stops you on the street, asks to be “friends”, then shares his baby pictures with you?
"Mark [Zuckerberg] has been asking us all to do exactly this sort of thing. I thought it was strange back then, and I said so in our pages. (The picture at the top of this post is from that old piece.) But — did I mention? — that was in 2007. A different era, as I said."

He likes Google+ and Circles, however.

An open letter to Google+ >> Danny Sullivan

guardiantech — 2011-07-22T07:12:20+00:00

Ouch. Search Engine Land chief tells it like it his: "For one, you know that Twitter and Facebook both support brands, and that there would obviously be demand for this here. You failed to implement that support. Bad on you."

This is what Twitter does not want to happen, part four >> Mike Cane's xBlog

guardiantech — 2011-07-15T05:38:30+00:00

"It is even worse than it appears for Twitter. The Google+ APIs are coming. When that happens, third-party Twitter clients will start baking in Google+ integration, especially because Twitter has been kicking their developers all year.
"What does Twitter do in response?
"Do nothing? The bleeding increases. Backbone users, after all, are big fans of third-party clients.
"Kick developers who dare to integrate with Google+? That sounds like it would generate a devastating backlash.
"Buy more clients / pay developers to favor Twitter? That doesn’t sound sustainable.
"Alternatives?"

The difference, though, is that an app for Google+ will need to be able to show the huge amounts of verbiage and comments that people add to it. Tolerable on a smartphone, but not so easy - oddly enough - on the desktop.