I think this means that the business model of social networks is failing. Google must have noticed that FB shares are down.
I think that the business model is failing because users are not producing enough free content of adequate quality. Google as an answer to that: youtube. It is a social network where users are forced to produce content more adapted to be use for advertising.
+ happily dances on plus’s grave as one who never let G. manhandle them into getting a plus-page or using their ‘real name’ on YT +
But what happens to all the sites which offered you to login with your G+ account??!?? Is nobody thinking of the children? OMGlob all G+ pages are gonna die and we will, too. Eventually.
Organizationally, yes; though nothing I’ve seen so far indicates that their ‘Project Zero’ team was involved in the discovery or setting the timeline(as has been snidely noted, they tend to focus on things that are widely used); and that is the arm that is reasonably hard hitting and humorless about security fixing.
It might well appeal to the contingent that likes doing implementation but hates doing maintenance. Atypically good odds that a given product or feature won’t live long enough to turn into a legacy support effort; and at least some of the technical debt erased at death.
Probably does weigh heavily on the people who want to see a project to long term operation; but one imagines that, given that Google’s enthusiasm for slaughter is a punchline at this point, such people either avoid them or gravitate towards working on things that aren’t user-facing experiments that will likely die.
Actually, I think the security bug is just a rationalization for shutting it down. I also think the less than five seconds is a pretty carefully selected statistic to use. I am fairly active on a number of Google+ groups that are very well run and have greatly enjoyed my interactions with the people there. The reason I liked Google+ was that it focused on interests and communities (comic books, science fiction, steam punk) that were outside my family and friends. Yes, I know FB has groups, but the way FB pages are organized makes it much less conducive to finding and having conversations. I’m not going to go into all the details, but I much prefer it to FB.
The biggest problems (and a driver for that 5 second stat) is Google just had no clear idea of what they wanted to get out of it and were ridiculously heavy handed in their approach to get people on the service - which is why people often got there and immediately jumped out. It reminds me of a quote from a former FB executive I read in What’s the Future (WTF) by O’Reilly (great book, by the way). The gist of it was ‘we have some of the best minds of our generation working on getting people to click on more ads. That sucks.’ Yes, it does suck. And the former FB person moved on to doing work on using big data to help solve medical problems.
Anyway, I enjoy Google+ and will
Another google plus user here. Will miss it. I deleted facebook long ago, and it amused me to be basically talking into an empty room, and also have a minimal and quirky social media presence.
“I do not have a Facebook account, but I would invite you to follow me on Google+ where you may find many fine pictures of fish.”
There was a time where my friends and family were active on G+, however.
The Fediverse feels like the wild west of the internet right now. Small communities popping up and disappearing just as quickly, admins publicly discussing technical issues. Social media is changing quickly.
Oops, that’s what I meant!
From what I can tell, the RPG communities seem to be talking about moving to other close, proprietary, locked-down platforms like Discord or Mewe (the latter I’d never heard of before). It would seem more sensible to move to something open and federated like Mastodon or the like.
Remember back when everyone was complaining about how Youtube comments were an appalling toxic stew? It seemed like Google at least had to try to do something.
Not sure why I haven’t heard anyone complaining too hard about Youtube comments lately. Maybe it’s because things even more toxic managed to develop?
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