from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is Google+ success or failure?

by cHalgan on 9/16/11, 1:44 AM with 3 comments

After initial growth is seems like Google+ is slowing down... and people are not coming back. At least from my perspective. None of my friends started using Google+ - even though they did get Google+ account. Facebook still seems the only place where people post something interesting.

What is your experience?

  • by rjd on 9/19/11, 8:04 PM

    Its dead if they don't continue to iterate, and keep people interested. I mean they have 500 engineers working on it, and what do I see? ghost town...

    They need API's out immediately, intact that needed it on launch, without them its dead.

    And there marketing is going down hill fast, its already gaining a stigma.

    Will it fail? doubt it, it'll integrate with everything like MSN Live, and like Live (remembering it has as many users as Facebook), Live is HUGE. But is it exciting? interesting? something people even care about? nope.

    Thats my prediction. Google+ will be a boring tool attached to there products that I have no real daily use for, but may offer contextual benefits as Live does.

    Lastly Google is to slightly for me. They start products and shut them down a year later, often with traction that would be amazing for anyone else, but considered a failure to them. Its matured into a proper company run by bureaucracy and accounts... and those people never inspire anyone.

    If you want an interesting social network, Steam just hit 20 million users. Thats a space that could open up, but I think they are taking the Apple approach of moving very slowly and making sure things work right instead of running head long into things.

    I only started using the steam event management tools, and was blown away by the tools just sitting there unadvertised and under utilised.

  • by Steko on 9/16/11, 2:47 AM

    My experience was people thought Facebook was a flop a couple months in and that was a bad time to draw conclusions.

  • by yanw on 9/16/11, 2:05 AM

    It's way too early to tell, ask again when it's visible to all users and integrated into all of Google's products and have the basic features of search and even decent (vanity) urls, not to mention not requiring an invite.

    It's Google's social play, something it must have, a list of people you know and interact with over Google products. It's a work in progress and will yet unfold for some time.

    And by the way, if any other startup got the numbers they have it would be dubbed a huge success, it's just that people like to speculate about everything Google as it gets them clicks.