Future of Google+

[G+_Vance McAlister]

Future of Google+

 

Following up on the "Future of Google+" discussion from the show, here is a comment from Yonatan Zunger , who is the Chief Architect at Google+ (and, thus, is one who might know a bit about it).  It was in a thread about the new Snapseed, when someone asked about the product divisions, Photos, Streams, and whether Google+ would be relegated to photo sharing:

 

"Photos is "a" stream. Google+ is still very much in use, and is also "a" stream. (And there is no intention to change it into a photo sharing app; it's a successful thing in its own right, and should develop in its natural direction) News and Blogger are also considered "streams." Of other things, I cannot yet speak."

 

I think this should answer the question about whether Google considers G+ successful, whether it is going away, etc.  Of course, anyone can play the "Yeah, but Reader!" card and, fair enough, but the point is that we have no particular reason to think that Google+, as a social networking platform (as we are using it right now) is going anywhere.  cc Jason Howell Ron Richards Ron Amadeo 

[G+_Jason Howell (raygun01)]

You are right. Google+ might not go away.

 

But... Where IS it going? Is this it, what we have here right now? Ron Amadeo??'s point speaks volumes IMO. No meaningful update in one year for a service that was once touted as an important component of google's search prowess.

 

Obligatory: I adore G+ and truly hope it never goes away. I just hope it evolves and doesn't hang out in this limbo for another year or two before finally going the way of Reader.?

[G+_Ron Amadeo]

Hey, Google only shut down Orkut last year! G+ doesn't necessarily have to go anywhere to be dead. 

 

Google executives can talk all they want but I want to see actions. G+ used to be actively developed and now things have slowed to a crawl. Things that used to be G+ branded (Hangouts, Photos) are getting their G+ branding removed. G+ doesn't look very healthy right now.

 

Yeah G+ probably isn't going anywhere, it's just sitting here. That's the problem.

[G+_Vance McAlister]

Jason Howell I think things definitely ARE changing as they shift away from G+ being a hub around which users live on the web.  They had big plans with the +1 system for web sites, Google+ sign in, using Google+ as your ID, your home for blogging, integrating You Tube and Hangouts, Gmail, etc.  They had a global vision and they acknowledged a long time ago that most of that was not going to play out as they had hoped.  But, they have always said that the social and community interaction part (which, let's face it, is what we all like), has met their expectations and is going good.  So, it seems from all I have read  that they are refocusing on what has worked and organizing and building around that.  Google+ as a social/community platform, Photos as a storage/editing/sharing platform, Hangouts doing what it does, etc.  They will still all interact and integrate with each other, but it will just not all be focused around this Google+ as the central hub for all those services, just one of the services running parallel and together.  

 

As for the lack of updates, I think they did a TON of work the first few years and got it just about right. No need for a lot of new changes and they needed to focus on how best to reorganize and get all of these services working independent but together.  My guess is that once that is done, we will then see bumps to Photos, then Hangouts, then Google+, etc, etc.  Someone like Yonatan Zunger could provide more insight, but my guess is that they are busy working on making the product better behind the scenes.

[G+_Vance McAlister]

Ron Amadeo Why is it a problem if Google+, which is still easily the best social networking platform to use, with millions of users and tons of interactions, remains the same for a while?  While they are definitely reorganizing their "big picture" regarding Google+ as a central hub for our online lives, most of us were never really sold on that anyway, we just wanted a cool social and community site, which is what we still have, and it is still pretty awesome.  My guess is that after they reshuffle and get their other products aligned, we will see Google+, as a social platform, get front-facing dev attention.  Until then, I don't see that it needs anything in particular. 

[G+_Raymond Johnson]

Jason Howell: There was a possible Google+ feature that had been discussed more than a year ago that was some sort of "history" or "capture" feature that could collect things you shared on other services. It was to work similarly to how Google can auto-backup your photos and hold them until you choose to share them on Google+, and it was a compromise solution to make up for not having an open write API. (The lack of an open write API really bothers some people, but I understand why we don't have it -- for many of us it turned Google Buzz into a place to see people's tweets a second time.)

 

I don't know that Google will let us reshare our tweets here (or if I want that), but it would be cool if Google saved the links I shared in Twitter, FB, or other services and made it easy for me to reshare them here. Maybe Google could capture pictures or videos shared elsewhere, too. A change like that isn't going to make naysayers change their mind about the future of Google+, but new features like that would give users a stronger sense of progress.

[G+_L I]

Raymond Johnson so sorta like Pocket (Read It Later)