Push use of Circles across all Google products; I want the
ability to share a Google Doc to all in my ‘Colleagues’
circle, share a Calendar Appointments to all in my
‘Friends’ circle or send a text message from my Android
handset to all in my ‘Family’ circle. Circle integration
throughout Google would be a killer feature.
This is the most important one in my opinion. Google+ has so much potential if integrated properly into the other Google products.
I completely agree. This would be the one killer feature that would take g+ over the top. This would simply render g+ superior to all other social networks.
The big thing that it is missing is to let me categorize my outgoing content, and let people only pick up what they want.
The mechanism that I would suggest is to have what I'd call "public circles". These are circles that I have, that I can talk to, that anyone can join/leave. That way I can easily separate out content by type (eg technical, jokes, kid stories, etc), and not worry that pushing things out is drowning people in unwanted types of content.
You might say that I can just add people to circles that I manage. This is true, but it requires me to know who wants that content, and requires people who want it to know that they can ask me for it. Both are barriers to sharing information that I don't mind being public, but don't want to bore people who know me in different contexts.
You might also say that this is equivalent to a simple form of tagging. This is true, but I think that it would make for a simpler UI.
Yet another useful variation is the idea of a public circle which multiple people can share to, aka a mailing list. There are lots of use cases for that, but that's not the primary thing that I am missing on Google+ right now.
I'm working on a very early stage startup to solve this exact problem. One of our main challenges though seems the hardest part of finding a solution is having a social graph to test with, or how to gain traction in the first place. Content algorithms inherently need a lot of participation.
This sounds like thenextweb.com's implementation of RSS subscriptions. A modal window pops up when you click the RSS icon on the right; it says "Pick & Mix The Blogs You Want to Subscribe To". Is that similar to what you propose? I do like that.
Looking forward trying all this stuff out. Hope they send more invites soon, they actually opened for about 30 minutes last midnight.
A really well crafted Google+ experience for the iPad would make it stand out.
I can't speak to Facebook's iPad interface as I don't use it, but G+ on the iPad is pretty awesome in my opinion, just through safari.
It's not a native app (through the app store), but it's a really nice just-for-ipad interface that suits me just fine.
Author: have you not tried this and are therefore unaware, or do you simply disagree with my opinion that the site they serve to iPad users is easily good enough?
I can't agree with you more. I don't understand why people are asking about all kinds of "apps" for tablets. In fact, the best app is really the browser given the screen size of the tablets. (Of course, this still doesn't give you some of the features like background notifications and photo uploading - but I feel these pictures are less important on tablets than on phones.)
What app developers really need to do is to make sure their websites/apps be touch friendly and work well with tablets.
Facebook doesn't even have an iPad experience, it's just the normal page with a lot of bugs not appearing on desktop browsers. You can't create mulitple paragraphs in comments because shift-enter is not possible etc.
Somewhat related to point 7: Integrate Circles with Google Chat, and allow users to set different visibility per Circle.
As buggy as Facebook Chat is, this feature exponentially increases the value proposition for me. (You can leave certain Friend Lists offline, while having others online.)
It's 2011 and even companies like Skype still haven't implemented this, despite it being requested repeatedly by users.
You can't honestly expect users to have the same 'Available', 'Busy', or 'Invisible' status for a chat list that could contain hundreds of people ranging from friends and family to classmates, business contacts, acquaintances, etc.
When working on a project, I need to appear 'Available' to everybody else involved, while leaving other contact groups offline so as not to be contacted about trivial matters that don't require an immediate response.
Other people I've discussed this with have said things like not wishing to be 'Available' to work colleagues outside of work hours.
The list is endless, and any company that takes Instant Messaging seriously needs this. IM isn't going anywhere.
Regarding Circles + Chat: If you turn on chatting on Google+ it will ask you which Circles you want to be visible to. I'm not sure if this applies to all instances of Talk, and it looks like you can only say "I am visible to these Circles" (later configurable with the little dropdown next to the chat list in G+), but otherwise it seems to match what you're looking for.
You're right, to some extent it is what I'm talking about, however they state "People in these circles who also enable chat will be able to see when you're online and chat with you." and it feels like more of an all-or-nothing system (adding or removing Circles entirely from Chat).
Whereas Facebook's single-click 'on the fly' interface is superior to this - all groups always visible, one-click online and expanded, one-click offline and collapsed.
I think that was one of my first suggestions with the Send feedback button. But, you can add only certain circles right now that will be able to see you online.
Not all people. Google has simply failed at building a quality community around Google+.
Edit: actually, it's not that they "failed," it's that they've completely ignored the importance of community building.
For example, the difference in quality between certain reddits is like night and day. This is all down to the way these reddits have nurtured their community and their values of quality.
HN is good in this regard too, although it's been slowly-yet-steadily declining due to pg's negligence of maintaining the community and managing its growth.
Google+ will probably succeed on its format alone (that is, the required application of circles), which will allow users to filter and select voices in their stream. But unless someone like Vic Gundotra steps in and puts some effort into community-building (like telling his follows to just +1 if you like the post instead of making a comment), it's going to really suck in public discussions.
You assume they ignored. The mere fact that those high profile Googlers actually create G+ accounts tells me that they are serious about community building this time around. And they actually managed to invite Taylor Swift in.
I'm not saying they're doing an awesome job. But they do care.
I was surprised he didn't mention two-way contacts integration. I met a new person yesterday on G+ first, then in person; later that day he emailed me a doc and I was surprised to find that his name/email had not been added to my contact list from circles. This is something the facebook messages/chat integration gets right, and Google needs to figure out how to answer it sooner rather than later.
I'm thinking they don't need a separate "events" feature, but just tight integration with Google Calendar. When I can create an event in GCal and invite by Circles, etc., then they'll have a pretty slick "events" setup.
Don't forget that a lot of the appeal of the FB's events feature is seeing who else is invited, who else is attending, the whole description and possible discussion that can also occur. Sometimes details need to be organised, comments made etc... I think it would also be cool and useful when uploading pictures to be able to tag an event so there is an album which people invited to the event can see and comment.
Sure, and I'm not arguing against any of that... I'm just saying that the way for Google to implement "events" is to thoroughly integrate G+ with GCal, so that you can do all those things. And I hope that's what they do, as I - for one - don't want yet another place that I have to pay attention to, to keep track of events.
Thankfully almost everything calendar related supports ical or some export format that Google Calendar can handle, or it'd be a real mess. :-)
Events are a specific case of integrating G+ across all google products. Once g+ gets integrated with gcal, it should only take minor changes to implement events.
Disagree on the "minor" bit -- I find Facebook's events system to be excellently done from a UX perspective. Simply making it possible to add GCal events from G+ and invite people from your circles would not do the trick.
But some I really don't like are 3. and 6. He does mention it should be a sensible integration, but something like importing tweets and shares/comments from Facebook would be the LAST thing I'd want to see on Google+. Google+ really doesn't need that kind of integration.It can grow on its own, and it's for the best.
On 6. +1's is not really an intent of sharing. It's 50% of that, at most. +1'ing is very different than sharing, and it has a much lower value than a share, which means that seeing dozens of +1's from friends each day on my stream would be very spammy. I think it's better that they keep them separated, and more like a bookmarking feature. And it still helps with personalization of what you like, but not necessarily something you want to spam 100 friends with. There isn't much thought put into a +1, that's why it's so much less valuable than a share. +1'ing is an impulse thing.
Yep, I agree on the +1 part. Sometimes I hesitate to like things with FB because I know I'll be spamming my entire friend list. Liking is not the same as sharing.
All good suggestions. As for Sparks though; i wouldn't mind if they just dropped that completely. Not sure we need another google reader and + has enough to keep you busy as is. Would get rid of some clutter too.
Point 7 seems like the biggest for me. Recently wanted to plan/discuss a few days away with the family. A shared google calendar with a circle and discussion around that would be superb for such things.
For me (and I'm surprised it's not on a list): filtering incoming content. In this regard G+ is really lacking (you can't hide a person, similar posts (or the same post shared by many of your contacts) are not grouped together, etc.). Circles are great for controlling who sees your posts (although, surprisingly, FB's lists are actually more powerful), something as brilliant as that but for controlling what you see and I'd be completely happy.
>> 6. On that note, move +1’d sites into a users main Google+ activity stream. Again - networks are all about the Social Objects and +1 is Google’s method for sharing. Why hide it away in a separate tab?
Please do not do this. There are already options to share sites on Google. Also, everytime I +1 a site on the main search page, I don't want to have to specify which circles can see it--nor do I want everyone to see it.
How about a platform for businesses? I've noticed an emerging trend of Fortune 500 companies listing their Facebook sites in their advertisements rather than their own location on a TLD. For instance, will facebook.com/mastercard become plus.google.com/mastercard?
Make it easy for developers to build awesome apps to sit on the google+ platform - make it much clearer and more user-friendly than facebook, and you've got a game-changer ...
