Former Google+ Engineer Writes a Brutal Blog Post About Why Google+ Failed..

[Tech_Dreamer]

Hell Hath no fury like a scorned employee

 

 

Chris Messina, A developer who spent three years helping create Google+ has written a brutal blog post declaring the tech giant's social network a failure. Former Google+ developer says the social tool has failed

 

 

 

I fucked up. So has Google.

                                                                    -  Chris Messina Former google employee..

 

Chris Messina, a former google employee & UX designer for Google+ who left Google over a year ago to join a startup. Before that, he had worked on the short-lived Google Buzz social product, then Google+. You might know him because he's known as the inventor of the every so hated but popular phrase #HashTag!

 

Chris Messina former google employee & Part time Ryan gosling impersonator..

 

 

Google+ is confused and adrift at sea..It's so far behind, how can it possibly catch up?

 

He wrote that while it was being developed under the code name "Emerald Sea," Google+ was internally being called "Google Me." The idea at the time, he said, was to make the site a sort of home base for users, where they would decide which information they'd like to share about themselves and with whom they'd like to share it.

 

From his Point of view , Google missed a chance to make the service a one-stop home for its users' online identities and, instead, created a less-popular Facebook copycat. (can you say he's wrong)

 

post was a follow-up to a tweet in which he had mistakenly called out a bug on Google+ that was actually caused by an external app. Even as he corrected himself, he called out Google for the network's missed opportunity.(hence the quote)

 

 

 

Google+ became a kind of Facebook-lite.Why did the world need another Facebook, unless to benefit Google by making their ad targeting more effective?

 

                                                                                                                                                                - Messina

 

 

He later claimed in a post that he wasn't actually targeting Google plus But was more concerned about users privacy,

 

"Frankly, my post wasn't actually about Google+. It was about the privacy"

 

His rant summed up in 10 points:

• Can't figure out what Google+ is for
• Can't tell if Google is "worried" about Facebook, Snapchat, or Pinterest
• Google+ doesn't aggressively "control" your digital identity
• Google+ is "Facebook lite" something the world doesn't need
• Google+ should have improved social networking by 10x, but didn't
• It doesn't sufficiently "motivate people to store more information with Google
• Google+ is confused and adrift at sea
• Google+ isn't evolving, changing and getting new features fast enough
• Doesn't know what Google+ is better for than Facebook
• Unlike Pinterest, which "helps you express your aspirational self," Google "pigeonholes you into what you already are"

 

Damn straight..

 

 

As it stands, Facebook, Apple, and Google (and to some degree Amazon) are in a battle to know you better than you do. Facebook is pretty clear about what they’re doing, and do a fair job explaining it  and have improved over the years. Apple recently came out aggressively about their own commitment to user privacy (but they make money from hardware, rather than ads). Google’s efforts, meanwhile, seem disjointed and confused, despite significant improvements to their settings and security features. If Google+ was intended to serve as Google’s “social backbone”, it should be the locus of control and access over the kind of information I’ve described above. And yet… it’s not. Far from it, in fact

 

Mostly he's been channeling his hate towards facebook somehow, he thinks that facebook shouldn't be up front for controlling everything, he's disappointed because Facebook, with its more than 1.3 billion users, needs competition.

 

Messina wrote that innovation appears to be slowing for the Web tool. In a chart,(you can see it inthe blog page half way through it) he said Google+ and Hangouts, its well-liked video chat tool, have been updated with six apps each in 2014, compared with 15 for YouTube and 16 for Chrome, both of which are also Google properties, and 19 for Facebook, 29 for Instagram and 33 for Twitter.

 

 

The problem is that these ideas exist in the "wordless plane" where, unless something is given a label, it's impossible for other people to see it. This is why I used terminology like "data capital" and "data positive". These phrases don't really exist in the popular lexicon yet, but once they do, people may be freed to see things more clearly. That was really my purpose in writing up my post not to trash Google+

 

He said that G+ Failed mostly because It was a functional search-oriented value proposition for the user rather than a social networking one. in his words quote "It was like Google was saying, "We're going to be your trusted partner in cyberspace, and we'll help you surface the right information to the people you choose, at the right time"

 

Pretty cool rant imo , But way too exaggerated in a way , maybe this will give g+ aspotlight for a few moments before it's forgotten again..

 

Please do Leave Your thoughts & Comments down Below...

 

You can read the full rant over here in his blog: bit lengthy imo

https://medium.com/@chrismessina/thoughts-on-google-8883844a9ca4

 

News was posted by CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/01/tech/social-media/google-plus-problems/index.html

[EChondo]

Yeah, we know Mr. Messina.

 

Just give me YouTube without Google+ already.

[zacRupnow]

So surprising that the creator of hashtag was a part of creating something bad. -Sarcasm

On a side note; I'd take Google+ a thousand times over the hashtag detriments.

[Guest]

Now we are used to it, but Google+ forcing it down everybody on Youtube....

 

I honestly was in disbelief a bit at the time, did Google actually do that?

[EChondo]

I honestly was in disbelief a bit at the time, did Google actually do that?

The way I remember it was that you could convert your YouTube account over to a Google account, but I think at a certain time they forced everyone over(I think). Then they did the whole thing of you needed a Google+ account to comment on YouTube videos.

 

I swear, ever since Google+ started leaking into YouTube it has gone to absolute crap. I don't even sign in anymore, I just bookmark all of my favorite YouTubers and categorize them and all my bookmarks go straight to their videos tab. Ever since I did that YouTube has gotten so much better for me to use. The subscription box/system is the most PoS thing ever.

[Guest]

The way I remember it was that you could convert your YouTube account over to a Google account, but I think at a certain time they forced everyone over(I think). Then they did the whole thing of you needed a Google+ account to comment on YouTube videos.

 

I swear, ever since Google+ started leaking into YouTube it has gone to absolute crap. I don't even sign in anymore, I just bookmark all of my favorite YouTuber's and categorize them and all my bookmarks go straight to their videos tab. Ever since I did that YouTube has gotten so much better for me to use.

Yeah, I just gave in and made an account...

[flibberdipper]

That's great. I don't even care anymore.

[SirSquid]

My problem with G+ (yes I use it to keep updated on ingress) is that its covered in click bait post like Top 10 words you should not say to a doctor or top 100 diet foods all of wich lead to an external site.

[BallGum]

Honestly I'll just say it. I quite like Google+. While managing accounts absolutely sucks, the actual network isn't too bad. Some of the communists are great, friendly and helpful, like the c++ community and the gaming community, and I enjoy the amount of control you have over who sees what.

It has some huge issues though like the follow system which does need some extra explanation, but beyond that I've just seen most of the hate come from having to merge YouTube and since then everyone else just jumped on the bandwagon.