Why Google+ Still Has Huge Potential

When Google+ came out I was blown away by just how well designed it was, but then slowly Google ruined it. Andy Hertzfeld created an amazing product, but then Google worked their "magic" just like they did with Blogger and watered down every strong feature like circles.<p>The problem at the end of the day is that Google just doesn't understand "normal people". If you read up on their corporate culture they're filled with former gifted Montessori kids who make amazing engineers, but the dark side is that they may have a low social IQ. In fact Google goes out of its way to not have to interface with people: Have a problem with a Google product? Well good luck if you want to talk to a human.<p>So yes Google+ has amazing potential; but not with the Google management team. I'm sure over time if they're lucky they can turn it into Pepsi to Facebook's Coke -- but that's only if they figure out how to focus. And if you want to see their latest failure just try using their mobile app: When put next to Facebook it's terrible, and when put next to Instagram (now owned by facebook) it looks like student project.<p>And I say this as someone who loves and uses G+ every day!!!

Don't hit me.<p>I visit G+ if<p>- some post here links to it (seriously, I have more or less no other source that points to that stuff, and_very_ rarely a search hit leads that way)<p>- I check, in vain usually, on the progress of a CM port for my LG crapphone, because the amazing guy behind most LG ports uses that site. I have a bookmark for his.. uhm.. posts? timeline? feed?<p>People in my non technical and environment don't know what G+ is. People in my geek community left it because it's worse than Facebook in trying to build 'identities'. I'm always surprised to see real world usage and will continue to be a skeptical observer. That huge potential might certainly exist, but I fail to see it.

I think Google+ and Facebook complement each other in some sense. Facebook is social network which is mostly used communicate with "friends" and Google+ to communicate with like-minded people.

I don't understand how this article talks about the future of Google+ in the enterprise, yet it makes no mention of LinkedIn.

I think people are slowly waking up to the idiocy of having an online "identity" that matches their real world one. If anything there will be a trend away from these spy networks as more people switch on to their purpose.

Yammer definitely does have traction. It may well be that the author didn't use Yammer at the two companies he worked at, but Microsoft wouldn't have paid a billion dollars for a company without traction.

"At first, it’s just a place to put notes to myself, but I share them so that others can find them too. Once a few people start doing that, or a small team commits to doing it for the good of the team, the game is over. It can’t help but take off"<p>And when one of your team members leaves and pulls your access to their company related content/documentation they've previously placed on Google+ what do you do ???

Ok, their mobile app was once a beautiful thing. Then some retard designers got ahold of it.<p>- Now, there is hardly a text summary on posts. Just big ass pictures with hardly any content. - There's a delay when fetching new content. - They added really shitty scrolling animations that are just annoying.<p>You can install the older v2.5 of the app and bypass the crappy UI/UX, but you lose the newer features of G+. Sad tradeoff!

You can keep beating that dead horse, but I ain't gonna ride it. I was on G+ ver early, it's just not what I wanna use.

G+ has huge potential because it's Google's identity layer, the discrete social network thing is a byproduct.