What did Google+ get right
Google+ got some things awfully wrong. They lost and they were hated.
But many of us thought it was the best social network that existed in its time.
Here are my thoughts, both on technical advantages and community:
The first of my planned articles about messaging and social networking
Google plus had circles
... so unlike with twitter I didn't have to spam everyone to reach those two followers who'd actually care about that topic.
Example: I could add Norwegians I knew to my “Norwegians” circle so I could share links to Norwegian pages only to people I knew could read Norwegian.
Google plus had collections
... so unlike Facebook and Twitter, people who were interested in some of the same things as me wouldn't have to follow everything I ever posted.
Example: I had collections for:
- Java (links and comments)
- local stuff (my pictures from my town etc)
- retro stuff (c64 etc)
Google plus had groups
... kind of like Facebook groups but without having to deal with Facebook. (I now trust Google less than before as well, but Facebook has worked harder to earn their position as untrustworthy.)
They worked kind of like forums with topics, threads and members but:
- with good ux
- without signing up and in to 15 different places, all with their own ads for “their own app”.
Design and ux
The design was so much nicer, ux so much smoother than everything else.
It never really became mainstream
Google plus was really nice. So many nice posts. So little political spam. (A lot of other would-be spammers but we killed them within seconds every time it seems.)
Google forgot to add ads to it
: )
It is going away anyway so it doesn't matter if I say it now.
Filed under: #socialnetworking #googleplus and #messaging