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Google Photos started to show/recognize people lately, it was not supported in my country earlier
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Do you agree???
Why I don’t use Collections anymore
I stopped categorizing my posts into Collections some time ago. Today, somebody asked why.
The reason is that I disagree with all Google’s bad decisions that hide or discourage engagement.
I’m frustrated by all the ways Google made Google+ worse in the past 3 or 4 years. And so at some point I “opted out” of all the features I could that were part of that wrong direction.
Specifically:
1. Google+ Create is a terrible idea.
Google+ Create is a private community of prolific creatives on Google+ where Google picks the members. They’ve got staff working on this, and encouraging posts and other activities. But nobody can tell me what it’s for.
They’re taking some of the best posters on Google+ and incentivizing them to post privately, where the public can’t see what they’re posting.
Why?
People have only a finite amount of time and energy to post and engage on social. To take so many great users and hide their posts is insane.
So I opted out.
2. Having both Communities and Collections is over-complicated.
And it results in reduced engagement on the network.
Both are ways to categorize content. Communities are for multiple posters, and Collections are for single posters.
The way they’re designed, we ended up with a large number of Communities on a single subject, and of course huge numbers of Collections on the same subject.
I just don’t see the point of all this complication, unless Google’s goal was to minimize engagement.
Communities should work more like Reddits, where there are far fewer communities on any one subject — theoretically only one on any give very specific subject — with all the enthusiasts joining that one subreddit.
The way Communities are designed, they encourage non-use, non-posting and non-moderation, where probably most of the Communities out there have been abandoned.
3. I don’t understand what Collections are or how they work.
When Google first rolled out Collections, I understood it as a kind of hashtagging system for categorizing posts. It would enable people to follow you, but to not get types of posts they didn’t want. In my case, someone might follow me for my tech related posts, but not want to see my food posts.
That’s why I was confused to learn that some people have more followers on specific collections than they have as users. For example, my wife has less than 11,000 followers. But one of her Collections has more than 60,000 followers.
Which means, what? People can follow your Collections without following you?
4. Collections work against one of Google+’s biggest strengths: Simplicity of posting.
Google+ is the second easiest and fastest social network to post on, after Twitter.
I really appreciate this because I use Squarespace as my blogging platform. After I signed up and committed to it, they ended their post-via-email feature. So now it’s super time consuming, complicated and annoying to post anything on Squarespace, and it discourages me from posting.
So I gravitate to Google+, where you can just post fast and simple.
But having to designate a Collection for every post is a minor hassle that subtly works against this speed and simplicity. Especially when I forget to do it, or accidentally file it into the wrong category. Then I have to go back, etc.
Google+ is a social search engine. Users should be able to apply standing search operators to other users’ profiles. For example, if you don’t want my food posts, you should be able to simply add “-food” “-lunch” -“pie” etc., to my profile, which would henceforth not display any post with these words in it.
Collections are far too blunt an instrument and they discourage posting. Why? Because if I’m committed to using them, I can’t add posts to more than one collection.
If I have three collections: 1) travel; 2) food; and 3) tech, then which Collection do I use to post about a tech product that’s for preparing food while traveling?
So that’s why I don’t use Collections. They’re part of the Troika of Failure introduced by Google that discourages engagement and harms Google+.
I stopped categorizing my posts into Collections some time ago. Today, somebody asked why.
The reason is that I disagree with all Google’s bad decisions that hide or discourage engagement.
I’m frustrated by all the ways Google made Google+ worse in the past 3 or 4 years. And so at some point I “opted out” of all the features I could that were part of that wrong direction.
Specifically:
1. Google+ Create is a terrible idea.
Google+ Create is a private community of prolific creatives on Google+ where Google picks the members. They’ve got staff working on this, and encouraging posts and other activities. But nobody can tell me what it’s for.
They’re taking some of the best posters on Google+ and incentivizing them to post privately, where the public can’t see what they’re posting.
Why?
People have only a finite amount of time and energy to post and engage on social. To take so many great users and hide their posts is insane.
So I opted out.
2. Having both Communities and Collections is over-complicated.
And it results in reduced engagement on the network.
Both are ways to categorize content. Communities are for multiple posters, and Collections are for single posters.
The way they’re designed, we ended up with a large number of Communities on a single subject, and of course huge numbers of Collections on the same subject.
I just don’t see the point of all this complication, unless Google’s goal was to minimize engagement.
Communities should work more like Reddits, where there are far fewer communities on any one subject — theoretically only one on any give very specific subject — with all the enthusiasts joining that one subreddit.
The way Communities are designed, they encourage non-use, non-posting and non-moderation, where probably most of the Communities out there have been abandoned.
3. I don’t understand what Collections are or how they work.
When Google first rolled out Collections, I understood it as a kind of hashtagging system for categorizing posts. It would enable people to follow you, but to not get types of posts they didn’t want. In my case, someone might follow me for my tech related posts, but not want to see my food posts.
That’s why I was confused to learn that some people have more followers on specific collections than they have as users. For example, my wife has less than 11,000 followers. But one of her Collections has more than 60,000 followers.
Which means, what? People can follow your Collections without following you?
4. Collections work against one of Google+’s biggest strengths: Simplicity of posting.
Google+ is the second easiest and fastest social network to post on, after Twitter.
I really appreciate this because I use Squarespace as my blogging platform. After I signed up and committed to it, they ended their post-via-email feature. So now it’s super time consuming, complicated and annoying to post anything on Squarespace, and it discourages me from posting.
So I gravitate to Google+, where you can just post fast and simple.
But having to designate a Collection for every post is a minor hassle that subtly works against this speed and simplicity. Especially when I forget to do it, or accidentally file it into the wrong category. Then I have to go back, etc.
Google+ is a social search engine. Users should be able to apply standing search operators to other users’ profiles. For example, if you don’t want my food posts, you should be able to simply add “-food” “-lunch” -“pie” etc., to my profile, which would henceforth not display any post with these words in it.
Collections are far too blunt an instrument and they discourage posting. Why? Because if I’m committed to using them, I can’t add posts to more than one collection.
If I have three collections: 1) travel; 2) food; and 3) tech, then which Collection do I use to post about a tech product that’s for preparing food while traveling?
So that’s why I don’t use Collections. They’re part of the Troika of Failure introduced by Google that discourages engagement and harms Google+.
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I knew that will happen, sooner or later
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Personal Search results resurface in Google app as dedicated section and app shortcut.
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Skype v8.29 ditches Snapchat-like 'Highlights' and has a simplified UI.
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AppOnboard and Google are collaborating to bring playable demos directly into the Google Play store with a “try now” button. That button is prominently displayed right next to the purchase or download button, bringing us one step closer to instantly playable games.
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Four months after arriving on desktop, Gmail’s potentially job/relationship/self-respect-saving self-destruction feature is finally available on Android
Gmail’s undo send feature hits Android – TechCrunch
techcrunch.com
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Google Play Store shows you the streaming apps that have the movie or show you're searching for
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Instagram Now Supports 3rd-Party Authentication Apps, Lets Users Apply for Verification
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Viber gets a facelift
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