The new Myspace

[Thursday]

The amount of parents and grandparents on facebook could also be it's undoing though. Google Plus' main problem was that in it's strive for simplicity it lacked the functions from facebook that you actually wanted, but it didn't have the intuitive, instantaneous nature of twitter. The only new things it offered were things people didn't really want.

[vrailaine]

a.k.a that majority of the teen and 20-something populous who use social media nowadays. Trying to watch a film with my two housemates with one of their hands on a smartphone, the other on a laptop or ipad - all pinging away with some notification noise - bloody ridiculous, one of them couldn't make head nor tail of Hugo when we watched it - a film that even my 6 year old niece was able to grasp.

My low attention span just increases the allure of actually going to the cinema for me.

[Still Not George]

The amount of parents and grandparents on facebook could also be it's undoing though. Google Plus' main problem was that in it's strive for simplicity it lacked the functions from facebook that you actually wanted

... which, assuming you're talking about Events, it had within 2 months of launch...

but it didn't have the intuitive, instantaneous nature of twitter. The only new things it offered were things people didn't really want.

... apart from, y'know, the millions of people currently using it. Studied ignorance by the media != inexistence.

[mcbpete]

SNG - Can you explain what's the best way to use G+ ? I've had it since the invite-only beta testing and still feel I'm not really getting it. I post stuff, add people to circles, but it seems like I'm just shouting stuff across an empty post-apocalyptic world with no feedback for anything (once, about a year back, I got a +1 from someone about a photo I took but that was it)

Plus the wall (or whatever it's called) seems to be just full of these things rather than anything of interest:

[Still Not George]

SNG - Can you explain what's the best way to use G+ ? I've had it since the invite-only beta testing and still feel I'm not really getting it. I post stuff, add people to circles, but it seems like I'm just shouting stuff across an empty post-apocalyptic world with no feedback for anything (once, about a year back, I got a +1 from someone about a photo I took but that was it)

Post, and use the search function.

Sounds ridiculous, but that really is it. Figure out what you actually want to read about, search for it (it's a fecking Google site ffs, of course it has the best search ever), add the people who're talking about it to a circle about it, repeat. Keep an eye out for circle shares too, although they can be a mixed blessing, as some of them have a lot of noise along with the signal.

Second, make sure your profile is filled in, and post something to Public, ideally several things. Bear in mind many people will not circle you back if you have no posts or your profile is blank.

If you must add random people outside of subject matter circles, first check they're not just posting 20 dumb images a day or relentless YouTube clips. Some accounts are essentially just someone's Google Reader shares transferred straight over, and no-one wants that shit. If they aren't, put them in Acquaintances. Once you've got a whole buttload of people, use the stream controls to pare down the circles into what you want to read every day and what you don't. (I have a circle for models called 'Bewbs' turned down to nothing, to give you an idea. I don't want boobs in my feed, I just want to be able to click on my Bewbs stream and see Bewbs.)

You'll need hundreds, btw; I have over 2000 people circled. It's not like Twitter, no-one gives a shit about your followed:following ratio or any of that bollocks. Bear in mind many of the people you circle will be posting to their own circles a lot of the time rather than Public, so until you get added to those circles (another reason for a good profile, to let people know what circles to put you into) you'll need a good solid base of people to populate your feed.

All told, bear in mind it's not Facebook, and it's not Twitter, but somewhere inbetween. People don't post every 3 minutes that they just farted or that they feel grumpy etc on G+, and it's really not a popularity contest like Twitter; because G+ actually allows you to microblog rather than quip'n'link, most people are after content, not funnies.

[Still Not George]

TL;DR version:

G+ is like Twitter without the celebs and with fuckloads of actual content. Treat it as such.

[Still Not George]

I never tried Google+ so I don't know if it was any good or not, but the only reason I would use it would be as a means to keep in contact with friends, rather than as some kind of political statement, or fashion thing.

As I explained above - it's not for that, so don't bother.

[mcbpete]

Post, and use the search function.

I think it's the searching for people/content I'm not quite understanding. So, for example, I'm a big fan of retro gaming, programming and demos - in particular the C64. When I search for C64 at the top I get 3 results - The top one 'C64' seems the most promising though is in German and there doesn't seem to be anything posted since April, 'C64 Central' has nothing at all and has the default banner, and the last is 'C64 Month - August 2012' which is good but appears to have only lasted for 1 month. Surely there's more C64 content than that on Google+

EDIT: Bloody hell, why didn't I realise you just hit 'enter' without clicking anything on the dropdown and it'll show all 'c64' related content rather than usernames - over a year I've used it and never noticed you could do that ...

[chocky909]

Get AdBlock Plus?

I've got that. It works well but FB must've changed something because now I have reams of sponsored links and personalised ads. They're actually suggested 'likes' from FB but it's basically advertising and I used to prefer what was there before.... nothing.

[olliebean]

The downfall of facebook for me is that the emphasis seems to have almost entirely changed from "hey, here's a cool place where you can keep in touch and share things with your friends" to "hey, here's this place where you can interact with brands and see what brands your friends are interacting with." Which is something that holds no interest for me whatsoever.

[chand]

Every time someone tries to see Google+ they just make it sound like no fun at all to me. I suppose if I had a burnin' hankerin' to insert myself into a specific tech community it would be great, but the idea of streaming people and having decide which circles to post shit too gives me a headache. I guess I like all the things about Twitter that G+ folks consider time-wasting bullshit.

[Thursday]

... which, assuming you're talking about Events, it had within 2 months of launch...
... apart from, y'know, the millions of people currently using it. Studied ignorance by the media != inexistence.

Hey I'm still on it occasionally, but it doesn't seem like it's ever quite going to become a really big thing. It's just still there filling a small niche. In fact it's mostly you and Cerys that I see on there.

[Jackson K Pollock]

(not horribly forced ones like on Pinterest)

I've just realised that I have been confusing Pinterest with Punternet.

So... what's Pinterest?

[El Unicornio, mang]

The downfall of facebook for me is that the emphasis seems to have almost entirely changed from "hey, here's a cool place where you can keep in touch and share things with your friends" to "hey, here's this place where you can interact with brands and see what brands your friends are interacting with." Which is something that holds no interest for me whatsoever.

There seems to be an increasing amount of bitching on there since they enabled commenting on status updates (about 4 years ago?) too. People will make one snarky or misunderstood comment and suddenly there's 40+ comments with "friends" bitching each other out. Lots of petty cryptic updates and craving for "likes" also. Myspace was never really like that, there wasn't that in-built ability to interact easily with everyone 24-7, which most see as a plus point but actually backfires a lot of the time.

[Still Not George]

So... what's Pinterest?

An overcomplicated way for middle-aged women to share recipes.

[chand]

Every time someone tries to see sell Google+ [to me] they just make it sound like no fun at all to me. I suppose if I had a burnin' hankerin' to insert myself into a specific tech community it would be great, but the idea of streaming people and having [to] decide which circles to post shit too gives me a headache. I guess I like all the things about Twitter that G+ folks consider time-wasting bullshit.

Christ, this is the worst-written paragraph I've ever done. Sorry about that. FTFM