Re:Google login now requires Google+ Account
by frostmatthew on Saturday July 20, 2013 @08:45PM
(#6077244)
That doesn't sound like a very good "primary benefit" since Google's strategy is clearly to get as many people to use G+ as possible. Either a) they'll be successful and your G+ stream will be barraged by "photos of cousins and aunts" anyway or b) it's not successful and they pull the plug.
Re:Google login now requires Google+ Account
by cromwellian on Saturday July 20, 2013 @09:44PM
(#6077431)
I don't think it's either-or. Even if they show up, G+ is by default, an asymmetric model. And G+ isn't just about the "stream". Google would have done something like G+ anyway to unify 40+ services. You might be right that they want more than a niche audience, on the other hand, Google does want to elevate the public square.
Having a segmented by interest social network is a primary benefit. I come to HackerNews not because I'm friends with anyone here, but because I can interact with interesting people here. It's also why I go to G+ every. The level of dialogue on G+ is much better than Facebook on average, and the G+ communities are a lot better than Facebook pages.
None of the people I follow on G+ are 'friends' with the exception of co-workers, instead, they are people who have very interesting things to say and who I like interacting with. Twitter would be a comparable use case, but it is too annoying to have long form stream discussions with followers like this.