Despite being the butt of social media jokes for a while now, Google+ isn't going anywhere - it has just been given a revamp.
The "new" site will now focus on "collections" and "communities" - making it more an interest-network than a personal one.
In a blog post, Google said: "Today, we're starting to introduce a fully redesigned Google+ that puts Communities and Collections front and centre. Now focused around interests, the new Google+ is much simpler.
"And it's more mobile-friendly - we've rebuilt it across web, Android and iOS so that you'll have a fast and consistent experience whether you are on a big screen or small one."
Another post, on Google+, said the company had been visiting users in their homes to get feedback.
"the company had been visiting users in their homes to get feedback."?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Appalbarry on Friday November 20 2015, @01:18AM
Google+ isn't dead, it's just resting.... https://youtu.be/4vuW6tQ0218 [youtu.be]
(Score: 2) by NickFortune on Friday November 20 2015, @08:39AM
So this would be Google putting 20,000 volts through it, in the hopes that it will indeed go "VOOM", I suppose? :)
(Score: 4, Informative) by Nerdfest on Friday November 20 2015, @01:19AM
It's always been about interests and communities. They seem to be stripping out a bunch of features people don't use much, including a few I use frequently. I quite like Google+ ... it has a *vastly* lower idiot factor than FaceBook and is a great place for guitar and photography groups, etc.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday November 20 2015, @01:48AM
You mean... a bit like the old Usenet only somehow fancier and disorganized?
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Friday November 20 2015, @01:54AM
I like how it's organized for the most part. It actually is quite similar to usenet except you can get a feed from all groups, post to multiples, etc. Maybe a bit more like Reddit that way. One thing I'd like that they don't have is to be able to do set operations on circles, as in "I want to post this question to former co-workers who are software developers". It's pretty much just straight groups though.
Despite the rumours of its demise it seems to be growing continuously.
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Friday November 20 2015, @02:18PM
(Score: 2, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday November 20 2015, @01:21AM
what I want is email and web search. That's it.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Friday November 20 2015, @01:50AM
Don't you have that?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2015, @02:33AM
So long as you use a non-Google e-mail service and a non-Google search engine, Google Plus won't interfere.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2015, @08:47AM
Not everybody uses Gmail. Oh sure, most of you are probably the people who were proud to get invites early. When I finally got an invite, all the good email addresses were taken, and I didn't want something like wrept98h@gmail.com. And then they removed the "don't" from their slogan (you know, the "be evil" one).
Now, search on the other hand. Google Search has been approaching Altavista in quality of the search results. It used to be that Google always had the solution on top, they did "and" search by default and SEO-spam ended up on the last pages. Nowadays, the solution I search for is usually nowhere to be found, if you want to do an "and" search, first you had to add a plus in front of every word (like Altavista), then they changed it again to be double quotes around every word (twice as much extra typing as Altavista), and the top results are a mix of SEO-spam and StackExchange posts containing solutions to everything but the actual question asked.
It seems to me that making something better than Google should be easy (Google did that as two guys in a garage, back when Altavista was just as bad). So, with Google continuously getting worse, just how much money just Microsoft spend to be able to keep Bing being even worse?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday November 21 2015, @05:55AM
Search for Soylent News, it finds Fox News then says "missing: soylent".
WHY?
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday November 20 2015, @04:49PM
Google has more sites in its index. Sometimes when I can't find something on DuckDuckGo I can google it.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by iWantToKeepAnon on Saturday November 21 2015, @11:04PM
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2015, @01:31AM
And I refuse to use it, as well as other forms of Fecal Media. It's all just a useless hive of idiocy designed to get suckers to divulge more information about themselves so that it can be monetized to the fullest extent by corporate scum. Everyone should refuse to be part of this nonsense.
(Score: 3, Funny) by jdavidb on Friday November 20 2015, @02:06AM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2015, @09:13AM
See, this is the kind of comment I expect whenever I come to SN.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by krishnoid on Friday November 20 2015, @01:36AM
This could be a great opportunity:
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Friday November 20 2015, @01:51AM
I like it.
But...The Profit step...?
Don't see Google doing that encryption bit. When all your content is encrypted with a key they don't have, they can't sell you.
You can't sell just a box-o-bits to retailers you know. Remember, you ARE the product.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Friday November 20 2015, @02:26AM
Why not just leave Google out of this?
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Friday November 20 2015, @03:42AM
Isn't that Diaspora? As much as I like the idea, it's not ding very well. Too bad, it's a great idea.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2015, @06:57AM
I've heard lots of criticisms about the name, plus market share of FB. People don't want to be pioneers, people want to be sheep cause that's where all the other sheep are...
(Score: 2) by ticho on Friday November 20 2015, @07:17AM
And friendica, and thematrix, and redmatrixproject, and gnu social... I am sure I am missing a few. There has been a lot of "facebook killer" attempts, and they are all crap. Maybe it's the whole idea of fb-like social networks that is crap.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by CaTfiSh on Friday November 20 2015, @07:17PM
....and Zurker, the cooperative social network where participants were granted "virtual shares" for signing up. It made sense, since participants are content creators and it was gaining in popularity and Alexis standing. However, the SEC began questioning some aspect of its structure (that was never made clear) and finally closed promising a rebuild in compliance. That never materialized and now the domain doesn't resolve.
These social media outlets have become monoliths and it's going to be difficult to displace them. I also suspect they are invaluable government tools and a mutual relationship has been formed. If the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory can gain accurate assessment of one's personality using around 500 multiple choice questions, many of which are repeats to weed out cheating, then I wonder how accurate the combined data of hundreds of posts and private messages can be? Toss in all of your private emails, web searches and text messages, I suspect all of your weaknesses and strengths can be accurately laid bare, and/or exploited.
Interesting times we are in.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2015, @03:01AM
http://www.quickmeme.com/img/7c/7cff27cdd57ceaf4efab439394c212520adea20eb11f746b32abd96f932a6bab.jpg [quickmeme.com]
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2015, @04:30AM
Multicore