Author Topic: Google+ (Read 154311 times)

Shades · « **Reply #175 on:** July 16, 2011, 06:54 AM »

We need a thread here for people to put their names in associated with their username on DoCo. People are adding me left and right, and a lot of them I don't recognize. And with no way to send someone a message associated with the add, there's really no way to know who anyone truly is.

Thoughts?
-wraith808 (July 15, 2011, 09:31 PM)

Or maybe it is better to have an option to add text to the G+ friend invite/add option. At least you can send an introduction and you don't need to associate your real name with your DC name.

wraith808 · « **Reply #176 on:** July 16, 2011, 07:14 AM »

^ That would be a better option. But that's also a solution that Google would have to implement, and I was looking for something that DoCo could implement in the meantime.

40hz · « **Reply #177 on:** July 16, 2011, 07:20 AM »

You could also just PM the person at DoCo and let them know you sent them an invite under what name in the meantime.

fenixproductions · « **Reply #178 on:** July 16, 2011, 09:45 AM »

Few invitations received and all of them marked as spam

I can't simply find anything tasty in G+. I know I am using Gmail, Search and maps (sometimes) but I don't want more of it. It is enough information for Google tracking my activities.

Being worried about my stuff I can't trust G with anything more as docs or photos (in addition: I think Picassa is someone's mistake).

Although I live on Facebook it is OK for me as long as it's not connected to everything else I do/share.

What could G+ offer for people like me?

Tuxman · « **Reply #179 on:** July 16, 2011, 10:00 AM »

What does Facebook offer? Virtual friends?

fenixproductions · « **Reply #180 on:** July 16, 2011, 10:16 AM »

What does Facebook offer? Virtual friends?
-Tuxman (July 16, 2011, 10:00 AM)

Real ones, at least for me. They were the only reason why I had to "go into social". I was against all of this but got used to. It's like new phone for me: old one works perfectly well (calls, alarms and SMSes), so no new wave is going to made me change it.

As for virtual friends... most of them I have here, at DC

Tuxman · « **Reply #181 on:** July 16, 2011, 11:29 AM »

You need the internet for your real friends?

Shades · « **Reply #182 on:** July 16, 2011, 11:45 AM »

It is quite handy....for those that are separated from (old) friends by, let's say...an ocean?

Or by any other distance that their means cannot afford (time and/or money)?

40hz · « **Reply #183 on:** July 16, 2011, 11:47 AM »

^ I do since one of my best friends is currently in a war zone half a world away.

Tuxman · « **Reply #184 on:** July 16, 2011, 11:52 AM »

Yeh, if there only was some way to stay in contact with them (like ICQ/AIM/MSN/Y!IM/Jabber/... or e-mail or, hmm, ever heard of a phone or something?) ... sooo glad that we all have Facebook!

JavaJones · « **Reply #185 on:** July 16, 2011, 12:00 PM »

40hz, I agree that the handling of "not-really-friends" in G+ is way better. For me this was clear from the get-go in using the service but maybe I didn't articulate it well originally. So likewise I see this as being a potentially big win over Facebook. Being able to follow people without them following you (and vice verse), or putting people in circles that you don't really use or care about but acknowledges their existence and relationship to you (regardless of whether you care about said relationship), solves a fundamental problem of Facebook for pretty much everyone. The reason why so many people have 100s of "friends" when scientific research has shown that actually relating regularly to more than 100 people is pretty much impossible for most people to manage is because there's no way to distinguish between a "friend", an "acquaintance", and whatever else. This is why the Circles foundation of G+ is brilliant. Simple, yes, but why couldn't FB make this work before? I guess they just didn't care to. That's why competition is a great thing.

- Oshyan

app103 · « **Reply #186 on:** July 16, 2011, 12:48 PM »

What does Facebook offer? Virtual friends?
-Tuxman (July 16, 2011, 10:00 AM)

You need the internet for your real friends?
-Tuxman (July 16, 2011, 11:29 AM)

Statements like that seem to imply that people you have met online are not real people, or can not be real friends. Virtual implies artificial.

Maybe that has been your experience, but it sure isn't mine. I probably have more real friends online than in meatspace, and more virtual friends long before I ever had access to an internet connection.

Yeh, if there only was some way to stay in contact with them (like ICQ/AIM/MSN/Y!IM/Jabber/... or e-mail or, hmm, ever heard of a phone or something?) ... sooo glad that we all have Facebook!
-Tuxman (July 16, 2011, 11:52 AM)

I don't see much difference between any of those. Except for phone, they are all free 3rd party online services in which you essentially are the product and not the customer.

Tuxman · « **Reply #187 on:** July 16, 2011, 12:51 PM »

Most people in my favorite social network (called "real life") say that they "need Facebook to stay in contact with their real friends. Now I wonder what makes a "real friend" if the whole friendship is only maintained via Facebook or something similar?

When I was young, I did not have the internet, but I had real friends in cities I could not easily reach every day. Wondering how I managed that...

rgdot · « **Reply #188 on:** July 16, 2011, 12:58 PM »

meatspace
-app103 (July 16, 2011, 12:48 PM)

40hz · « **Reply #189 on:** July 16, 2011, 01:17 PM »

Yeh, if there only was some way to stay in contact with them (like ICQ/AIM/MSN/Y!IM/Jabber/... or e-mail or, hmm, ever heard of a phone or something?) ... sooo glad that we all have Facebook!
-Tuxman (July 16, 2011, 11:52 AM)

@Tuxman - Sorry, I thought you asked if "You need the internet for your real friends?"

I don't equate the Internet with Facebook. I regularly use Skype and e-mail to keep in touch with friends and professional colleagues. Sometimes I also keep in touch via I2P webmail depending upon who the person is and where in the world they're located, or (lately) what's being discussed.

So in my case, yes - I do need the Internet for keeping in touch with my "real" (whatever that means) friends.

--------

BTW: I don't have a FB, or Twitter, or any other "social network" account. Nor do I plan on getting one.

fenixproductions · « **Reply #190 on:** July 16, 2011, 02:28 PM »

You need the internet for your real friends?
-Tuxman (July 16, 2011, 11:29 AM)

We can make any statement ridiculous this way.

Let's go back few decades and discuss about:
- Do we need letters for our real friends?
- Do we need cars for them?

Tuxman · « **Reply #191 on:** July 16, 2011, 02:40 PM »

No, basically you just need yourself. Anyway, in the decades before Facebook no one dared to say "I can only have contact with my friends via ..".

mahesh2k · « **Reply #192 on:** July 16, 2011, 04:08 PM »

Maybe that has been your experience, but it sure isn't mine. I probably have more real friends online than in meatspace, and more virtual friends long before I ever had access to an internet connection.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

You need the internet for your real friends?

2 cents.
My best friends are not in country anymore and there are no meas to contact them other than internet/phone. As for other friends, they judge you based on your income, physical appearance, religious belief, political inclination, lifestyle and geographical location. Maybe that i've such materialistic friends here but the reason i prefer virtual friends over materialistic one is that- they don't expect anything from me. That means a lot to me. Some of my friends in real life are completely different in persona. They try to portray their image as *cool* on FB when in reality they're totally different. So it's good to keep such friends in FB instead of wasting time with them in real life being part of their judgmental conservative cult.

fenixproductions · « **Reply #193 on:** July 16, 2011, 06:13 PM »

No, basically you just need yourself.
-Tuxman (July 16, 2011, 02:40 PM)

I disagree. Just by yourself you can only get imaginary friend :p

For real people you need to interact with them somehow. You need to communicate and how you are doing it is what truly matters. Listen to them, talk to them, shake your hands... smile. You need some methods and tools to do so. The quicker you find shared interests the stronger the bond may be. Simple letters, ICQ, email or FB are just tools - one more appealing than others. Of course, real contact is the most important thing here but not the only one. I don't need Internet to make friends or to keep them but I may need it to get the quickest possibility of contact.

If I had wife I would rather call her and ask about buying groceries when I am leaving my work, instead of going home, asking and making few more miles back for it.

If your ways of staying in touch are good for you then stay with them. Same way I just stay with FB.

[back to topic]
I just think there is nothing in G+ I could need there so far. I am not saying I will never go G+ 'cause there is small possibility that I may not be aware I may need something from there. I doubt it but not denying.

...Hm. I've just felt philosophically uncertain. Reason: I loudly reject HTML emails

zridling · « **Reply #194 on:** July 17, 2011, 12:27 AM »

Again, though, the simple advantage of the circles idea is that I can separate the people in my life based on their roles in relation to me. I can share and talk to my nieces and nephews in a clearly different way than I do than my mom and brothers, or even my friends with whom I talk politics. And when I talk to my tech friends, most of them aren't concerned with politics until it bumps up against tech issues (which grow by the year). Same goes for what I choose to share with the "public" on G+. You can sort of do the same with Facebook, but one of the first things people do when angry is to hack another's FB page.

Whereas Facebook is a hammer, G+ is more like a multi-tool. As for G+'s security, privacy, and censorship, we'll have to see.

nosh · « **Reply #195 on:** July 17, 2011, 03:45 AM »

40hz · « **Reply #196 on:** July 17, 2011, 01:57 PM »

@nosh - that is one bloody evil trick to pull on your G+ circles.

Ages ago while still in my "business suit days," the guys in my department did something similar to one of our more cordially despised 'toady' co-workers.

Somebody called the WSJ and took them up on a promo they were running to get 13 weeks of the paper for free.

When they ordered it for this dweeb, the person who called made sure to speak like a pompous ass (with hopes the name would be remembered) - and also get the name of the service rep who took the order.

Next, one of the other conspirators had his GF (Darcy) call the dweeb at work using the name of the person at the WSJ, and tell him the WSJ had selected him to receive a lifetime free subscription to the paper in acknowledgement of him being a very respected writer within his industry. (Note: This same dweeb had written a buzzword-laden pop "management" book which he had vanity published the year before.)

This guy was so full of himself that he swallowed the setup call hook, line, and sinker - despite the fact that loud rock music was playing in the background when she called him! (We knew this because she taped the conversation. It was a big comedy hit at several parties listening to him trying to impress Darcy while simultaneously trying to get hired at the WSJ.)

Things went swimmingly for 13 weeks with him telling anyone who would listen about this professional "acknowledgement" he had received.

Then the first bill arrived at the start of week 14...

The ensuing calls back and forth we're hysterical to listen to. (He had a habit of talking loudly on the phone in his cubicle.) He was confused because he got a bill. The WSJ was confused because - while there was a person working in the phone circulation department with the name he had been given - she no longer worked there. And while it is true that the paper did give out complimentary subscriptions to industry bigwigs from time to time, nobody there had apparently ever heard of him.

Most people would have given up at that point. But not him! The phone calls went on for a wek before the WSJ told him to stop calling them. That's when he began writing letters to them instead. Letters he would sometimes share with us to get our "take" on how they sounded. One was 14 pages long...

Having realized, by now, that this guy was insane, there was some discussion of having GF Darcy (who he didn't know) call him back to let him know it was just a practical joke before he went totally off the deep end.

Fortunately (or unfortunately as the case may be) the dweeb resigned (i.e. was canned) about a week later after senior management and internal audit detected several "questionable entries" in some inventory accounts he was responsible for reconciling.

So it goes.

nosh · « **Reply #197 on:** July 19, 2011, 03:09 AM »

I have a really hard time following how Google links all their services and which bits of info from one service get fed to one or more of the others.

I review the "view data stored with this account" section from time to time. Have to give the devil its due for having this under account settings. On my last visit I learned that I had "subscribed" to some Arabic language forum... (not much use to me coz I can't say/follow anything beyond "How are you?" and "Thank you" in that language - there's only a limited no. of posts one can make with those two phrases before being permabanned on a forum, methinks

) and that I had claimed ownership (confirmation pending) on a notorious music piracy site based in the UK that was recently shut down. There's too much voodoo going on for my liking and I feel foolish for browsing for as long as I have while being signed into my Google account simply to make a few things more convenient.

I had clicked a +1 button somewhere (I could swear I was signed out at the time) and a few days later I log into another Google account of mine and could see the link I'd +1'd. There was no seeking out on my part what ppl. had +1'd, Google just let me have that info., no questions asked, coz the accounts are "linked". No clue what constitutes a linked account either.

With FB, I know they're a**holes but their a**holery is limited mostly within their network. With Google being as ubiquitous as they are, the sky's the limit.

@40Hz - that was hilarious! Esp. loved the 14 page letter bit!

Proximo · « **Reply #198 on:** July 19, 2011, 09:16 AM »

I enjoy using G+ and think it's a much better solution than Facebook. G+ takes the best of Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter, under one easy to use UI.

Facebook added lots of features as an after though of their original intent. G+ takes their web applications that are designed for specific content and adds them to G+, so you get a much better experience. Gmail, Calendar, Photo's, Video's, etc. All of these technologies already existed on their own, so they are designed to work great. Now you add them all to G+ and you have a much better experience than Facebook.

Facebook forces people to join in order to communicate with them. G+ does not. I can post something on G+ and add anyone with an email. If they have a G+ account, they can choose to add me to their circles or not and we can still communicate. If you don't have G+ and choose not to get an account, we can still communicate. This is much better than the walled garden of Facebook.

G+ allows me to send the post or articles I want to share to specific circle of people. So I don't bore my non gaming friends with the latest review of a game or bother my gamer friends with my new camera gear that my photo friends would be interested in. I can decide to post something to multiple circles such as Family and Friends if it's something I want a broader audience to see. I can also post things Public like Twitter, if I wanted to share something with the world.

People can follow me and I can follow them like Twitter, but they will be in my "Following" circle. I never have to worry about posting something to the wrong people with G+.

G+ allows me to take all my data with me with a click of a button and I can completely delete my account and all my data from Google's servers with a click of a button. Try that with Facebook.

Everyone is trying to make money from our data and habits, but if I had to trust a company with this information, I would trust Google much more than Facebook.

Circles, Hangout, Sparks, Huddle and more great features coming. FINALLY, a competitor to Facebook that will be a game changer. G+ will make Facebook and Twitter better, so in the end, we all win. I already use all Google services, so G+ is a perfect fit for me. Just because you prefer one from the other, does not mean you can't keep both. I will keep my Facebook for some time, but will do less and less there with G+ taking center stage as my social platform.

Just my thoughts on G+

zridling · « **Reply #199 on:** July 19, 2011, 09:43 AM »

FINALLY, a competitor to Facebook that will be a game changer. G+ will make Facebook and Twitter better, so in the end, we all win.
-Proximo (July 19, 2011, 09:16 AM)

So true throughout the history of tech, e.g., compare IE6 with IE9. But in the Web 2.0/cloud space, companies rise and fall faster than ever. If G+ is ascendant, it will continue the evolution from many before it. Anyone remember MySpace? Oooo, that's gotta hurt, and a Rupert Murdoch mistake at that.
________________________________________
Something else I'd love to see on G+ is a mere avatar of your self under another name/ID just for the purpose of signing onto a forum or site merely to leave a comment.