Google Plus is shutting down earlier than expected. This means that there is less time to look for a good alternative than we thought there is.
https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/google-plus-shutting-down-april-1203085769/
https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/google-plus-shutting-down-april-1203085769/
Anton A Deletion Notice:
ReplyDeleteI have deleted a number of comments in this thread that were not directly related to the article posted by the original poster. Sorry guys, we like facts and personal opinions about the original content. We're all short on time, so please save us the effort.
In short, if your comment isn't about the original post, leave it in your personal stream. Thanks.
People's who's comments were deleted:
Commander Gustavo Michelle LaRose Kerry Jeon
Despite Google's corporate mission is "to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” which Google Plus contributes to in a self organized way.
ReplyDeleteGoogle also declared a long term commitment to Google Plus despite the fact that its growth does not keep up with Facebook.
In recent time though, the wind is blowing from a different direction, the Google management now seems to think that everything that cannot be monetized has no value at all.
Hence it would be better if Google Plus gets segregated from Google LLC and put under the umbrella of an independent foundation.
Google should not be allowed to just terminate the most valuable and prospering social network just because the current management considers it a failed experiment.
Stefan Quandt I suspect failed monetization was not the impetus for closure. I highly suspect, based on the recent testimony before Congress, that Google didn't want to be in the crosshairs of the privacy debate the US is about to get into.
ReplyDeleteIn particular, the social media content, filtering, and resulting breakdown of privacy. They saw what happened to Facebook in the US and the EU and they were very adament about stating they were not a social media network.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4768158/social-platform
John Lewis Agreed, I also believe that the pressure to monetarization is not the driving motivaiont. But still, as G+ is a unique and successful socio-cultural phenomenon initiated by Google, Google just giving up on this and terminating the diverse communities and years of dedication from contributing users it represents in face of political pressure and (abuse of the platform (which affects not only G+ but all social media platforms, see the new report from comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk - Home in the washington post later this week) looks like Google is denying its own values. Its a shame, this is not what I expected from Google.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/russland-und-die-us-wahl-2016-fuer-donald-trump-gegen-alle-anderen-a-1244043.html
Stefan Quandt Let's look at what Google's perspective would be for a moment.
ReplyDeleteThey created a social network and the thought leadership was that this network could unify everything. It could be a nexus for their users, a common place for all their various initiatives. Imagine something where you could share and edit a google doc right here in the stream. Watch videos in stream. Live chat in stream. Basically, the stream becomes your access point for everything Google and it's collaborative and would create a network effect!
There were some moves to make that happen, there were some mistakes, each mistake shakes things up a bit. For example: Google+ really wanted people to use real names, but then they link up to YouTube and no, people don't want to use their real names there (you want your real name connected to the videos you watch?.) That was a huge mistake. Another was cross-posting in stream comments to Blog comments without notification. I'm replying to a post with a link to a blog and my comment on Google+ shows up in the blog. I'm not even notified or given an option to opt out. No, wrong move.
The idea that each "card" is its own little metaverse and that you could do anything in these spaces was compelling. And again, they end up removing functionality that people liked (remember when you could make an insta-meme on your posted pictures) to clear space for something they wanted to try and connect (where do you photos live? I can never tell.)
So Google+ tried to connect things together. They tried to unify their products and then when it was too hard, their leader left. Without a leader, you have no goals. Without goals, you might still have a community but it's self-regulating and you're just coasting. Google wanted to keep things alive, but there was no one with any vision for what Google+ could be (ignore what it was to the users, that was never the goal.)
From Google's perspective, this was a failure because it never delivered on the promise to create something that unified, but it wasn't really costing them yet. There was no reason to fold, they could wait for the next card to turn and see if something good came up.
Unfortunately, the next card that came up was the use of social networks to manipulate elections.
Facebook was brought to task by the US Congress and the EU for not doing enough to protect user privacy.
Facebook can't take their ball and go home. It's literally all they are doing, but Google can walk away before anything too bad happens. Someone at Google did a security audit on Google+ and said it's going to cost you X to fix these security problems and BTW, you have a meeting with Congress about privacy and this could potentially explode.
From Google's point of view, this network was a liability without a leader. It would be better for them to cut it off before it cost them money or political capital.
So they did.
That's my take on how this happened. What do you guys think went on at Google?