New goooogle

[Zetetic]

Doesn't Diaspora count? You could implement any front-end you wanted I would have thought, although I don't know if the protocol is well-documented (or at all outside of the Diaspora software source).

[katzenjammer]

I guess it could, although aparrently Zuckerberg doesn't see it as much of a threat since he donated money to it.

[biggytitbo]

Doesn't Diaspora count? You could implement any front-end you wanted I would have thought, although I don't know if the protocol is well-documented (or at all outside of the Diaspora software source).

Think it'll be something like that, if not actually that. Highly unlikely that another monopoly is going to replace facebook by doing the same thing.

[The Roofdog]

myspace sold for $545m less than Murdoch paid for it:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jun/30/myspace-sold-35-million-news

I find it hard to believe that it still makes $183m a year in advertising.

[jutl]

There's also elgg.

[biggytitbo]

myspace sold for $545m less than Murdoch paid for it:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jun/30/myspace-sold-35-million-news

I find it hard to believe that it still makes $183m a year in advertising.

Bought by Justin Timberlake ironically.

[Jemble Fred]

myspace sold for $545m less than Murdoch paid for it:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jun/30/myspace-sold-35-million-news

I know, isn't it wonderful? I was there before Murdoch, and I'm still there now. The fact that News C orp lost so much money makes me prouder than ever to still have an account on there.

Google can piss off for anything other than maps and the search engine itself. Nobody wants another social network.

[Still Not George]

Google can piss off for anything other than maps and the search engine itself. Nobody wants another social network.

I do. I'm with xkcd; what I basically want is Facebook, but not run by the incompetent company known as "Facebook."

And preferably with a few million less racist, homophobic, knee-jerk morons on it. And lots of hot semi-naked women, but real women this time and not blokes pretending to be lesbians. And a cannon that fires Mini Coopers.

And A FUCKING PONY.

[Neomod]

Myspace really became a mess didn't it. Like Jemble Fred says it was great for meeting random strangers with similar interests (my last g/f chatted me up on there with an opening gambit relating to Nick Drake). You don't get that with Facebook so that's maybe what the new angle should be.

I hope there's a book/documentary made in the style of that Boo Hoo book about the mess that was Myspace's response to the Facebook challenge.

[momatt]

Bought by Justin Timberlake ironically.

My God, I thought you were joking!  This is hillarious.  How can someone who used to be in N'Sync be so cool?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jun/30/myspace-internet
the singer will have an office in Myspace but that he was "probably not going to be there every day".

I have great memories of MySpace.  Have never been a member, but an ex used it to find and fuck men behind my back.  YEAH!  :D

Murdoch losing all those millions makes me think about Nelson Muntz's laugh.  :D

[Jemble Fred]

And preferably with a few million less racist, homophobic, knee-jerk morons on it.

To be honest, the only place I've ever seen such people is quoted on this site's Facebook page, never seen anything like it on Facebook myself. If a few Verbwhores choose to have 'racist, homophobic knee-jerk morons' for friends, or friends of friends, there's not much any social network site can do about it. Some people are cunts, any networking site is going to reflect that if it's open to all – which I always thought was the point of social networking, being open to all, good and bad.

Not that I don't hate Facebook by the way, I have little to do with it, beyond occasional gig-whoring. But it's the default social network site that everyone uses, so Google are onto a loser.

Maybe I'm just getting too old, but the idea of signing up to yet another social network site just inspires vomit, I'm more inclined to delete the accounts I already have.

[Still Not George]

What I basically want is something essentially like Facebook, but with several important differences:

1) The ability to easily determine and control who the fuck my post about the ludicrous amount of dope I smoked last night is going to be visible to. Given that some of my business associates are the kind of people who are friends-of-friends, this shit be important, yo.

2) The ability to easily determine and control who the fuck my post about the 5 hours I spent fucking Cerys yesterday is going to be visible to. Given that several of Cerys' family members are on my friends list, this shit be even more fucking important, yo.

3) NO FUCKING FARMVILLE REQUESTS. Not even hidden ones. Not ever. Not on your bloody wall. Not blockable. Not "oh, you can just install a plugin." JUST FUCKING NONE OF IT.

4) More than 250 characters in a post without moving it into some stupid "note" crap that no-one will ever read unless I fecking tag them.

5) Speaking of tagging... photo tagging is what morons do. But it's kind of necessary and is responsible for me discovering epic photos of myself, so it can stay. But no more stupid fucking apps that produce auto-tagged composite photos of someone's "friend wall".

6) In fact, could we please have no fucking apps at all? It's a social network, not a retarded Flash game marketplace with extra annoyance factor.

7) We won't get this from Google, because we don't get it on fucking Android so I don't see how we'll get it on Google+, but a "Report" button that actually gets reviewed by an actual human being who spends more than 2 seconds looking at the case before randomly deleting completely harmless photos and blocking accounts.

Not so much to ask, is it?

[Jemble Fred]

Myspace really became a mess didn't it. Like Jemble Fred says it was great for meeting random strangers with similar interests (my last g/f chatted me up on there with an opening gambit relating to Nick Drake). You don't get that with Facebook so that's maybe what the new angle should be.

Well this is the other reason why I'd never sign up to a new social network – thanks to MySpace, I've found my other half and am on the verge of domestic bliss, so pretty much everyone else can fuck off...

But then it may just have been me who only ever saw social networking as a source of sexual congress. With just the occasional bit of desperate self-promotion thrown in.

[Famous Mortimer]

And indeed what Google did with gmail.

That said I didn't hear much about Facebook until long after it was public access, while gmail was on everyone's lips during its invite-only period.

I remember when you needed a Uni-based email address to register with Facebook, it seemed a wonderful and mysterious world back then.

[Eis Nein]

this shit be important, yo.

It's stunning that an invitational social network hasn't yet implemented such a hierarchy. Who among us doesn't enjoy Venn diagrams and judging people, often using punishing criteria? Circles is such a good idea Facebook must be working on it. What else are they doing: trying to make the interface even more obtuse?

[Still Not George]

The important thing here is that I get my fucking PONY.

[Uncle TechTip]

Google can piss off for anything other than maps and the search engine itself. Nobody wants another social network.

Yes they do, competition is important. The only wrinkle is the 'critical mass' issue, that is since everyone's in one place you have to be there too and it ends up as a vicious circle. What's needed is interoperability between the networks. Like a single sign-on. Maybe a Google account? Haha.

[Icehaven]

With this 'circles' thing, can one friend be in more than one circle? Because if not it sounds as if you'd be forever having to move certain people from one circle to another depending on how innocent/filthy/libellous the contents of your message was. More versatile than fb but a bit of a mither.

[Still Not George]

Yes, they can, AFAICT. So if you had a "special" relationship with your aunt you could put her into the "dirty people" circle as well as the "family" circle.

[mook]

The important thing here is that I get my fucking PONY.

alright..give me a minute, damn you.



happy now? don't spend it all on curly wurlys. k!

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Like a lot of companies they can't be satisfied with their core business, the thing they have expertise in and are brilliant at. Instead they have this obsessive compulsive desire to try and stick their fingers  in every single fucking pie going

A bit like Rupert Murdoch.

[Retinend]

It's stunning that an invitational social network hasn't yet implemented such a hierarchy. Who among us doesn't enjoy Venn diagrams and judging people, often using punishing criteria? Circles is such a good idea Facebook must be working on it.

really? yeah sure, we all love judging people and whatnot, but do people actively divide their acquaintances into specific groups ('circles') enough to then create these lists in such a concrete way? I think that it'll attract a particularly internet-savvy audience, already used to sites like last.fm, to whom cataloging their real life is second nature. I doubt it'll appeal to the average person whom Facebook was good at capturing, what with it's idiot-proof interface and intuitive language ("what's on your mind?", "like", "tag").

[mcbpete]

Just noticed the new "layout" for google. There is an interesting addition in a +1 recommendation button next to each search hit (Similar to Like in facebook, but for webpage returns). I wonder how that will work - so far I seem to be the only one who has +1'd this site...

Eep, I was was just going to try the +1 feature and -

Your profile and +1's appear publicly in search results, on ads and across the web.

Ooh, no thanks .........

[jutl]

really? yeah sure, we all love judging people and whatnot, but do people actively divide their acquaintances into specific groups ('circles') enough to then create these lists in such a concrete way?

I maintain entirely separate profiles for these purposes.

[Steve Lampkins]

Eep, I was was just going to try the +1 feature and -
Ooh, no thanks .........

http://www.google.com/intl/en/+1/button/

In order to +1 things, you first need a public Google profile. This helps people see who recommended that tasty recipe or great campsite. When you create a profile, it's visible to anyone and connections with your email address can easily find it.

Your +1's are stored in a new tab on your Google profile. You can show your +1's tab to the world, or keep it private and just use it to personally manage the ever-expanding record of things you love around the web.

[Eis Nein]

do people actively divide their acquaintances into specific groups

I do. Ever since I submitted a budget proposal to my teenage nephew, made a lewd advance to my boss and showed my dowager aunt an hilarious, trouserless photo of me chugging a 40 I have been most assiduous in that regard.


Edited for lightness of being.

[Famous Mortimer]

The important thing here is that I get my fucking PONY.

More importantly, can I be in the group that gets the 5 hour sex stories?

[Johnny Yesno]

The whole driving force of G+ appears to be this "circles" concept. Essentially a circle is a visual friendlist/whitelist - you make one, label it, drag friends onto it, and then it hovers around in an easily accessible selection. Whichever one is highlighted is the one your messages are going to. So you can set up a "friends" circle, a "work" circle, a "family" circle and quicky and easily flip between them. It's a good idea, but I suspect it'll be difficult to gauge how good until there's more people on the service.

That sounds pretty good. The friends-of-friends aspect is one of the things that put me off using FB.

[Zetetic]

I don't know if it's been made explicit, but Facebook does broadly support grouping and, to a lesser extent, per-group messaging. However, as evidenced by this thread, the interface is terrible. (Hell, Facebook try to hide all this privacy stuff as best as possible.)

I do wonder if Circles has been partly born from the clusterfuck[nb]$8.5 million in fines, I think. Which is probably spare change to Google, but nevertheless...[/nb] that the unrestricted nature of Buzz produced.

[chand]

As for whether FB will inevitably win - "Myspace is unbeatable at the moment" is a phrase I remember being used a goodly few years back...

I think there are a few differences though. One big one is that Facebook started getting popular when a lot more people were arriving on the internet for the first time. Myspace was around when fewer people were using the internet; it got bloated and data-heavy at a time when people weren't all on fast broadband connections, and Facebook was more user-friendly for your mum or your gran. My mum is on Facebook because she didn't give a shit about the internet when Myspace peaked, it wasn't so necessary to be online then. Now every cunt in the universe either has a Facebook account or has no interest in social networking, it'll be harder for a new thing to enter, even given Google's existing power. Twitter has made headway by being a very different animal, but even that's nowhere near as widely used as Facebook.

Also, a new competitor would need a new feature that's really useful that Facebook doesn't do or does very badly. The biggest advantages with Facebook over Myspace were a) the Events system which made it a piss-easy tool for organising parties and inviting dozens of specific people for free, and b) the photo sharing and tagging system which is perfect for people taking photos on nights out (which seems like 90% of what FB is for). Oh, and the wall/news feed which dropped people's updates into your feed, as opposed to Myspace's clunkier system which came out of it being essentially a "have your own webpage" tool for people with no HTML skills.

Myspace always seemed full of kids to me, and they're less reluctant to change to new things, whereas the thing about Facebook as it is now is that everyone's on there, including people wth no real interest in the internet who just use it to get party invites. I rarely use Facebook now apart from to hear about parties and shit, and a lot of my friends are the same so they'll have no real desire to switch to something new and lose touch with people now, even if something comes along that's better. I know one guy who's been desperately looking forward to Diaspora, but that's it, and he's the sort of passionate internet nerd that goes on about privacy and DRM and browsers and all that shit that casual internet users don't care about. If your friends are all passionate internet nerds they might start using something else, but for the majority of people who don't give a shit about that stuff, Facebook is gonna win now by default.