One of the guys working on this said "Please tell your friends using Google Apps that we're working to make Google+ available to them. Sorry for the delay - we need to do it right!" Teams from across the company have been working very, very hard to make sure all the consumer apps are available to Google Apps account users:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/ten-times-more-applic...
Maybe this is their indirect way of giving you incentive to move to a Google account? (Don't feel bad I have google accounts and do not have g+ access yet.)
With a decent IMAP or exchange client, you can easily browse multiple mailboxes. In fact, multiple emails is probably the best reason to use a non-browser app for email.
This was my experience 6 months ago (I ended up using multiple firefox profiles for months because of it).
Just tried it again this week, and I haven't run into the "derp derp derp one half of your accounts aren't allowed to see this"-type error yet.
Great, will give it another go, in that case. There's one little niggle still. Signing into a delegated Gmail account, there's no option for Labs. I want my signature to appear above the message I'm replying to, but this doesn't seem possible.
This was the last straw for me and my Google Apps account. I thought it was a good idea at the time, but I'm sick of being an afterthought. A couple nights ago I migrated everything over to my @gmail account. I even moved my phone over, which meant I had to wipe it completely and re-buy a couple apps! But it's all done, and now... I feel... good. I'm a first-class Google citizen again!
This is the reason that I've always kept both my google apps account and my gmail one. It can be very frustrating that some services aren't available otherwise.
This is why I'm not keep on the apps phenomenon - I'm still getting rid of DRM and I don't need more.
I'm sure there are a lot of good programs I'm missing, but (from a Debian-user's perspective) nothing is worth that sort of hassle.
The mobile market still seems bent on packaging users as the commodity. First holding them ransom to carriers (remember when people had to pay for new ringtones?!) and now to app-store dealers. Nobody makes the phone they really want to use, they make the phone they can best monetize.
EDIT: HN usability fail navigation Tip #97: The email field in your profile is invisible to others. Put your email in the About field so that others can see it.
I've gotten an invite through the real invite thing and the "tag trick", but i still get the "We've temporarily exceeded our capacity. Please try again soon" message. I'm starting to think that google just doesn't love me.
Keep trying. It can take a while. It was nearly 24 hours between when I received an email with a join link and finally getting past the "temporarily exceeded capcity" message.
I'm trying it out, but I can't invite any of my friends and family. That kind of defeats the purpose. It's social networking without the network or social aspects.
This hasn't worked for a couple of days at least. Yes, the invites go out, but the signup page only intermittently accepts logins (presumably as they open/close the floodgates).
Kinda. Until you get friends and family on board think of it more as Twitter, where there are many interesting people to follow and interact with and there's a bit more 'bandwidth'. I have a few of my friends on there but am already enjoying it more than Twitter.
* I'm sick of the hype already and I can't be bothered to try it.
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ADDED IN EDIT: Oh, goody. Down-votes. I'd be really interested to hear from someone who thinks this isn't a valid reaction to the whole thing.
Let me just say - I really don't care about Google+. I'll wait and see what happens, I'll wait to see who uses it, I'll wait to see what people say, and I'll wait to see if it looks useful.
I'm not going to go "OOOO! SHINY THING!!" and immediately jump all over it.
Allowing that as an option in the "poll" seems reasonable. Certinaly none of the options presented represent my point of view.
Of course, maybe you think my point of view isn't worth bothering about, and that everybody should be interested in the latest shiny thing from Google. That's called selection bias.
It's a perfectly valid reaction, just not a valid comment on HN. This page is clearly for people who want to discuss this topic, if you're not one of those people, don't click the link.
Ironically, I'm sure you don't go into every single topic on HN and comment when you don't care about the subject, yet you complain about the hype that made you bother to write a comment about it.
It's a poll, it's asking for people's reactions. If you exclude options, people or opinions it's selection bias.
If you want to know what people think, ask broad questions and listen to the answers. Asking questions like this where you specifically exclude some points of view means you'll get "data" that statistically worthless.
Well, even more worthless than the usual polls on HN.
I'm sure lots of people on HN are all very excited about Google+. Fine, I'm happy for them. Really. It's just that they're currently like puppies, pissing about all over the place. I'm doing my best to ignore it all, but it's not easy.
But I'll do what some people clearly want and go away now.
> If you exclude options, people or opinions it's selection bias.
"I'm sick of the hype already and I can't be bothered to try it."
That actually excludes more options than it adds. It is an explanation with unnecessary complexity. Applying Occam's razor would turn the option into "I have not tried it," which is indeed a missing poll option.
My parents have a rule about new TV shows: They won't watch anything in the first season. Instead, they record the entire season, and once it is picked up for a second, they'll watch the first season and then become regular viewers.
I have the same rule with social networks. I'll sign up right at the beginning, but I won't participate until I see a good chunk of my friends are on it. I don't want to invest the time if it is going to flop.
I don't like that rule. Sure, it sucks when a show you love gets cancelled, but I'd rather have a little bit of something awesome than nothing.
Great example, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, a 2005 comedy show written by Aaron Sorkin. It's ratings weren't great and it was canned, but I think it's amazing, and I rewatch that one season at least once a year.
I agree, Studio 60 was awesome (I don't follow their rule). But at the same time, I feel very unsatisfied that I got so little of the story arc with the cancellation.
S60 really got worse as the season went along, not helped by Amanda Peet getting pregnant and needing that storyline to be written into the show. I'm not actually sure how much of that was based on "shit we're not getting a second season, how do we tie up as many loose ends as possible" and how much was just... bad (relatively) TV.
Either way, while I agree with you on not liking the ending (and would have loved it to become as popular and long-running as The West Wing), still extremely glad that it became one of my "re-watch whenever I have nothing else to watch" shows, and still love it each and every time I see it.
Also Sports Night from the turn of the century, two seasons of fantastic writing and amazing characters. Check it out if you haven't seen it - although I do have a friend who's also a big Sorkin fan, and loves WW and S60, but didn't particularly like Sports Night, so perhaps it's not as good... but it was the first TV I saw from Sorkin, and I still absolutely love it.
Shows are cancelled because the people are not watching it. What is the logic to dont watch it because it can be cancelled? If everybody do this every show will be cancelled.
I know, but I dont like approachs that does not scale. I think the best thing to do is to watch and support new series that you like and hope for a second season. If you had a good time watching it that is already ok, it is not an investment.
Thats why I dont watch series that promise a distant final revelation after 4234 seasons like Lost.
i like your parents approach, but there are sometimes good shows that get cancelled after the 1st season. if you let the masses make decisions for you (as your parents are doing in this situation) things tend to slip through the cracks.
Right, you end up missing out on some great shows. But those great shows leave you with a bad taste, because you only get 1/2 the story, since they are cancelled before their time.
TV shows, at least in the way they are currently produced, are only valuable if at least some subset of the masses likes them.
Just like social networks. they are only valuable if at least some subset of the masses likes them enough.
I like it, prefer it to FaceBook, but won't switch until all my friends do.
I think the make or break of G+ is in mass migration of circles of friends (pun intended). Facebook takes enough time out of my life as it is. Managing 2 separate sets of 'social networks' seems a bit over the top to me.
All of your friends? That's a little extreme, and will ensure that you'll never switch. I have friends that will just stop using Facebook rather than switching if all of the action moves to G+.
G+ will be popular with the tech set (and probably their freinds), but I can't see moms, dads, grand parents really switching to it. Nor can I see it becoming as popular until there are games, etc. For better or worse, the vast proportion of FBs users will not move over.
Take a look around, how many people still have yahoo, aol, and MSN email addresses? Yahoo still is a very popular destination for people (groups, etc).
The concept of social networking was still being defined. facebook is social networking in most people's minds. The concept has been solidified. Google's recent offering does nothing to reinvent the concept.
Also, social networking was still something mostly young people were into. The network-effects now are much greater in magnitude than they were then.
The biggest factor was that myspace was perceived as a "ghetto" (I had multiple people describe it to me as such). People didn't join facebook because it was more compelling, they left myspace because it had degenerated to a ghetto and facebook was the most viable option.
The social networking battle is facebook's to lose, not google's to win.
"The concept of social networking" is very much still being defined today. The objection to having parents/bosses/other "uncool" people on Facebook is but one example. The entire idea is something like 10 years old and incredibly far from maturity and being set in stone.
Indeed, Inertia shouldn't be an excuse for Facebook to not improve their track record. Atleast now that they have some competition, they might actually get better.
I said "I like it but don't prefer it to Facebook", but that needs some explanation.
At the moment, Facebook still has the edge because it has all my friends on it. I also am less than 24 hours with +, so I haven't gotten to fully explore. But when more people join and I figure out all its quirks, I believe I will prefer it to Facebook (as I haven't particularly liked Facebook for quite some time now).
That's not the same thing at all. Taking the time to provide information that you've read the question, considered the options, and specifically want to say that you don't care about Google+ is different from not reading the item, or not considering the options, or deciding not to provide information.
I, for one, sometimes choose to share information even about topics in which I have no interest. Why? Because I think information is of value, and I will provide it to a community in which I have an interest. It's the community I care about, not the topic.
So Google+ is not interesting, but the idea that you're interested in expressing your disinterest is itself worth interest?
Should I write a post complaining about how I want an option on the poll to express that I do not care that you do not care? How deep does this rabbit hole go before we all have better things to do?
And you took time to write that in the hopes of educating me about your attitude. Thanks. I appreciate that.
And in case you're unsure, that is not sarcasm. I genuinely do appreciate the time you spent ensuring that I understood your opinion. I think you're wrong, and I think you've misunderstood my points and my purpose. It is of value to me to see how you've misunderstood.
But I have better things to do than try to fix that misunderstanding.
I just don't like the Google's Like button, a.k.a. the tiny +1 rectangle. It's just not obvious. It looks almost like a logo and I'm afraid Google is making the same mistake as Microsoft Office 2007 (the big office globe button on the upper left that many thought it's just for decoration). My fear came true when a friend of mine yesterday told me she wish she could 'like' my posted photos.
I hope Google can change that button, right now it's just not as obvious and psychologically commanding as the Like button of Facebook.
I like it and prefer it to Facebook, but as long as I have years of history in albums, photos, videos, tags and notes...it'll be hard to warrant a complete switch without a mass migration of my friends over to Facebook.
That being said, Google+ has some neat features, so I may use it occasionally-- but just taking a look at Facebook's history: they're probably going to copy many of Google+'s features.
Remember when Facebook didn't have deals and didn't even have status updates?
"I have years of history in albums, photos, videos, tags and notes..."
This is primarily why I don't use facebook today. It's not easy to get that stuff out. I don't have API access to G+ yet, but my hope is that I can move data in and out pretty freely. That will make me quite comfortable to use the service.
I like it (UI-wise). As an experiment, I updated on both Facebook and G-Plus that I just celebrated my wedding anniversary (yay!). I also tweeted it, for good measure.
This is why Slashdot has multiple reasons for +1/-1 mods. More flexibility.
Congrats might be appropriate, but should that count as a +1 making your update more visible? It's hard to say. Perhaps it should differ by user - being a +1 to users who tend to congratulate others.
But anyways, your experience might lead me to try G+ where I haven't tried their competitors.
Given I've not been able to invite hardly any of my friends, I haven't really gotten to make much use of it. I think, for me at least, this is a mediocre entree to the platform, since my first impression is that it has almost no utility, they really should have just opened it up to everyone so I could quickly have my FB buddies on here and be having fun and socializing.
I go back and forth on this. On one hand Google of all companies should have no problem scaling a new service up to a huge number of users, and quickly.
But I think the real issue is they want to tease out problems early, with people who are likely to be a bit more forgiving. I've been using G+ for almost a week now, and I've heard of a few bugs that were easy to fix with a small userbase, but could have caused trouble -- and a lot of negative opinions/press -- if it had been open to a wider audience.
So yes, it's a little frustrating that I'm missing chunks of my real-life friend circles, but I totally understand why they're rolling out the service as they are.
It's not really a Facebook killer IMO. I like Facebook because it's just my friends (since it requires a two way confirmation). It more seems to fill a gap between public and private friendships. So most likely it will just be yet another social network I'm on all day in addition to Twitter and Facebook :)
I like Facebook because it's just my friends (since it requires a two way confirmation)
You may use Facebook like that, but lots of people don't. The majority of Facebook users have 300...400...800 friends. Very very very few people are actually friends with 500 people in real life. I trimmed my friend list down from 380 to 40 a couple months ago and it's already crept back up to 60ish.
I think part of the genius of G+ is that it isn't a two way mutually agreed on relationship. You get to decide what you share with who. Facebook you're either friends, or your not. Everything generally gets shared with everyone of your 800 friends. Thats not the case on G+.
An imho better poll would have looked more like this: "a) Google+ > Facebook b) Google+ < Facebook c) Couldn't try it out yet d) Don't care", since the way mrspeaker asked the question, a lot of people get left out.
You're going to get a huge amount of selection bias in a poll like this. The people most likely to try out Google+ are the ones who were already looking for an alternative to Facebook.
