Google+ Isn’t Going Away

Re:Google+ Isn’t Going Away by bad_user on Thursday November 10, 2011 @04:23PM (#3221935)

    a lot of technically inclined people know a 
    lot of other people and want to interact with 
    them socially

I remember a time when Facebook was the gathering place for technically inclined people, while normal people would hang out on MySpace or Hi5. I also remember a time when Apple products were reserved for professionals doing either creative work or software development. And speaking of Google, I also remember a time when Yahoo and AltaVista were used by normal people, while people with in-knowledge would quietly type "google.com" in the address bar.

For me, I never liked MySpace or the copycat Hi5 because noise, eye-bleeding page customizations and idiotic comments were actively encouraged and I couldn't stand it. Then Facebook came with a cleaner design and (initially) a more well-behaved audience and so I was hooked. But now that initial advantage is gone, the masses found out about it, so half of my news feed is filled with invites to idiotic games or stupid jokes and I don't have the patience to block them all (on the other hand Google+ has a spam problem already).

The reality is that technically inclined people are the trend setters when it comes to technology, not the other way around.

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Re:Google+ Isn’t Going Away by joebadmo on Thursday November 10, 2011 @04:52PM (#3222050)

I remember those times, too, but MySpace never had the sheer ubiquity that Facebook has. It feel qualitatively different to me, in that I never felt like I was out of the loop or unable to communicate with certain people or excluded from certain conversations because I wasn't on MySpace. That was partly because I could see people's MySpace pages (not that I frequently wanted to) without having an account, unlike Facebook.

Yes, the technical elite from MySpace eventually moved to FB, but more importantly, FB got a ton of users that were never on MS. I don't think Google can do the same to FB, because there just aren't that many people that aren't on FB. They have to actively court current FB users. Stealing the technical crowd is relatively easy. But FB's network effect is unprecedented and represents a much bigger challenge, IMO.

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