shiv.me

A friend asked what I like about google+, and as I started posting a reply , I noticed there were enough to make a blog post. So here goes…

Here’s a quick list:
1. Mobile app on android and iphone are awesome!
2. Automatic upload of pics on phone/picasa
3. Non-crappy photos (allows 2400+px, and g+ renders pictures better, since they don’t mess with the image, if it is smaller than the max size)
4. Easier to mention specific people in a conversation. (auto-completes ppl’s profile name)
5. hangouts (free video conferencing)
6. Group messaging done right (huddle) on the mobile phone
7. decent integration with email (I guess this is just coz I use Gmail)
8. Privacy – predictable and manageable (not that it matters to me)
9. Much less noise (a – mostly used by techies for now, b – allows asymmetric relationships à la twitter)
10. Keyboard shortcuts (J, K work. Someone at google like vi — a lot)

So, there’s 10 reasons to dump Facebook for G+. There is a lot more in terms of features (new ones are added all the time), but mostly the community is awesome, and the engagement is better!

11. (bonus). I was going to say games, but they have that here too, but I’m not bothered by it, and don’t have to see someone’s update on buying sheep

Having said the above, I miss a couple of FB “features”. Really, its the of the same: 1. There is no way to start a conversation with someone, unless, you address it specifically to that person (in which case nobody else see it). Facebook does this simply, by providing a “wall”.

2. There are no “Groups”. Ie each circle is local to me, and hence, if I want to have a group for all my friends from university, I will have to add them to a circle. In order to simulate Facebook “groups”, everyone in that circle, has to add everyone else to a group of the same name. Adding one more person to that group, now means that everyone has to add that person manually.

I’m sure, google will come up with something to address the above two. We’ll have to wait and see how it goes!

So long oppression

Thanks for the iPhone, Mr. Jobs. There is a new way to protest the iPhone. I don’t have to sign petitions anymore. I can now take my $500 elsewhere, for a slightly more open experience. I didn’t ask for much, but I don’t have to wait on your whim any longer (no offense meant to you personally, Mr Jobs).

There are several issues that people have uncovered in the last 2 days that it has existed. For me, of all the features that Buzz lacks, one thing really stands out. There is no way to just see a list of the conversations (without the whole list of comments expanded by default). This is the main reason that I *had* to unfollow Scoble, Michael Arrington, Louis Gray and a bunch of others. Take a look at this conversation, and you would understand why.

Every time, anyone, replied to that thread (which incidently has been at the top of scoble’s buzz list all day), it would become the top post on my buzz view as well.  Now you are thinking, “Well, Buzz was not meant for long conversations”. Go back and read the comments on that conversation .. all 350+ of them, and come back here.

Note to Google Buzz Developers: Now that truly sucks, and is such a trivial use-case that I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets fixed in a day or two … it better if you want Scoble to continue to use it (and we all know how vital that is for any social network’s success).

So here’s my humble request: PLEASE LET ME MINIMIZE HUGE-ASS THREADS

Google has already done this with Google Reader, where you can just see a list of items, or see them expanded. I don’t see any reason why this wasn’t the case, out of the box, for Buzz. In end, the only conclusion that I can think of is that, this pre-pre-alpha from a user experience perspective, and somehow all the design gurus (the ones who kept the Google page clean all these years), have disappeared into the user.

Google Buzz is by far, the clumsiest google product, with almost zero forethought to how users, will use it. It’s almost as if, none of the enigneers/designers on the Buzz have ever used twitter or facebook or friendfeed. Somehow I find that hard to believe. I’m hoping they’ll fix some, if not all the usability issues very soon.

Iterate guys! Iterate! Fast and hard.

Did anyone else notice that buzz has an RSS feed for everything!!

Here’s a conversation that @Thomashawk started

Here’s the feed for that entry

Here’s the feed for the owner’s entries

Theoretically, one could build a service that aggregates only specific conversations (and keep them updated), or only a small group etc… No more reading data from a firehose!!

That is very nice.

P.S: also this could be a way to aggregate all your webservices into one super feed, that can then be posted elsewhere (comments and all!!)

The power is endless, so be cautious when exercising it