What Google+ needs to do to be awesome

[jonmulholland]

#7 Push use of Circles across all Google products; I want the ability to share a Google Doc to all in my ‘Colleagues’ circle, share a Calendar Appointments to all in my ‘Friends’ circle or send a text message from my Android handset to all in my ‘Family’ circle.

[jannes]

  Push use of Circles across all Google products; I want the
  ability to share a Google Doc to all in my ‘Colleagues’
  circle, share a Calendar Appointments to all in my
  ‘Friends’ circle or send a text message from my Android
  handset to all in my ‘Family’ circle.  Circle integration
  throughout Google would be a killer feature.

This is the most important one in my opinion. Google+ has so much potential if integrated properly into the other Google products.

[deadcyclo]

I completely agree. This would be the one killer feature that would take g+ over the top. This would simply render g+ superior to all other social networks.

[juliano_q]

This will be awesome. Can't wait to have Circles integrated to all of the Google products that I use.

[btilly]

The big thing that it is missing is to let me categorize my outgoing content, and let people only pick up what they want.

The mechanism that I would suggest is to have what I'd call "public circles". These are circles that I have, that I can talk to, that anyone can join/leave. That way I can easily separate out content by type (eg technical, jokes, kid stories, etc), and not worry that pushing things out is drowning people in unwanted types of content.

You might say that I can just add people to circles that I manage. This is true, but it requires me to know who wants that content, and requires people who want it to know that they can ask me for it. Both are barriers to sharing information that I don't mind being public, but don't want to bore people who know me in different contexts.

You might also say that this is equivalent to a simple form of tagging. This is true, but I think that it would make for a simpler UI.

[seri]

That would effectively be like a Facebook Page, wouldn't it? Believe me, you won't enjoy the signal to noise ratio within these "public circles".

I proprosed a different solution to the same problem, as explained here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2738084

Edit: On second read, I think we do share the same concept, just different naming.

[joelhaus]

This sounds like thenextweb.com's implementation of RSS subscriptions. A modal window pops up when you click the RSS icon on the right; it says "Pick & Mix The Blogs You Want to Subscribe To". Is that similar to what you propose? I do like that.

Looking forward trying all this stuff out. Hope they send more invites soon, they actually opened for about 30 minutes last midnight.

[johnl]

I would think businesses could use the "public circles" for event marketing and give Google an entry into display marketing.

[Sayter]

"Public Circle" concept = Facebook Page with Facebook Groups adding ability.

[corin_]

  A really well crafted Google+ experience for the iPad would make it stand out.

I can't speak to Facebook's iPad interface as I don't use it, but G+ on the iPad is pretty awesome in my opinion, just through safari.

It's not a native app (through the app store), but it's a really nice just-for-ipad interface that suits me just fine.

Author: have you not tried this and are therefore unaware, or do you simply disagree with my opinion that the site they serve to iPad users is easily good enough?

[rxin]

I can't agree with you more. I don't understand why people are asking about all kinds of "apps" for tablets. In fact, the best app is really the browser given the screen size of the tablets. (Of course, this still doesn't give you some of the features like background notifications and photo uploading - but I feel these pictures are less important on tablets than on phones.)

What app developers really need to do is to make sure their websites/apps be touch friendly and work well with tablets.

[kristofferR]

Facebook doesn't even have an iPad experience, it's just the normal page with a lot of bugs not appearing on desktop browsers. You can't create mulitple paragraphs in comments because shift-enter is not possible etc.

[jonmulholland]

I agree the Safari G+ is pretty nicely done, TBH I'm just hoping for something cool like the Twitter iPad App :)

[DarrenLehane]

Somewhat related to point 7: Integrate Circles with Google Chat, and allow users to set different visibility per Circle.

As buggy as Facebook Chat is, this feature exponentially increases the value proposition for me. (You can leave certain Friend Lists offline, while having others online.)

It's 2011 and even companies like Skype still haven't implemented this, despite it being requested repeatedly by users.

You can't honestly expect users to have the same 'Available', 'Busy', or 'Invisible' status for a chat list that could contain hundreds of people ranging from friends and family to classmates, business contacts, acquaintances, etc.

When working on a project, I need to appear 'Available' to everybody else involved, while leaving other contact groups offline so as not to be contacted about trivial matters that don't require an immediate response.

Other people I've discussed this with have said things like not wishing to be 'Available' to work colleagues outside of work hours.

The list is endless, and any company that takes Instant Messaging seriously needs this. IM isn't going anywhere.

[yellowbkpk]

Regarding Circles + Chat: If you turn on chatting on Google+ it will ask you which Circles you want to be visible to. I'm not sure if this applies to all instances of Talk, and it looks like you can only say "I am visible to these Circles" (later configurable with the little dropdown next to the chat list in G+), but otherwise it seems to match what you're looking for.

[nextparadigms]

I think that was one of my first suggestions with the Send feedback button. But, you can add only certain circles right now that will be able to see you online.

[maxklein]

All I need Google+ to do is allow me customize by default stream to only include circles I want to see there. That's ALL.

[cycojesus]

and let me not display comments in the stream, people are morons.

[Pahalial]

I was surprised he didn't mention two-way contacts integration. I met a new person yesterday on G+ first, then in person; later that day he emailed me a doc and I was surprised to find that his name/email had not been added to my contact list from circles. This is something the facebook messages/chat integration gets right, and Google needs to figure out how to answer it sooner rather than later.

[dododo]

events? this seems like the most obvious thing missing from g+. have i missed it somewhere?

[AndrewDucker]

Yes. I know people who joined FB simply because that's where all of the events were being organised.

[mindcrime]

I'm thinking they don't need a separate "events" feature, but just tight integration with Google Calendar. When I can create an event in GCal and invite by Circles, etc., then they'll have a pretty slick "events" setup.

[matwood]

Events are a specific case of integrating G+ across all google products. Once g+ gets integrated with gcal, it should only take minor changes to implement events.

[bchhun]

Creating events with Google Agenda and being able to show them in G+ would be awesome !

[nextparadigms]

I don't like at least half of his suggestions.

But some I really don't like are 3. and 6. He does mention it should be a sensible integration, but something like importing tweets and shares/comments from Facebook would be the LAST thing I'd want to see on Google+. Google+ really doesn't need that kind of integration.It can grow on its own, and it's for the best.

On 6. +1's is not really an intent of sharing. It's 50% of that, at most. +1'ing is very different than sharing, and it has a much lower value than a share, which means that seeing dozens of +1's from friends each day on my stream would be very spammy. I think it's better that they keep them separated, and more like a bookmarking feature. And it still helps with personalization of what you like, but not necessarily something you want to spam 100 friends with. There isn't much thought put into a +1, that's why it's so much less valuable than a share. +1'ing is an impulse thing.

[melvinmt]

Yep, I agree on the +1 part. Sometimes I hesitate to like things with FB because I know I'll be spamming my entire friend list. Liking is not the same as sharing.

[tijs]

All good suggestions. As for Sparks though; i wouldn't mind if they just dropped that completely. Not sure we need another google reader and + has enough to keep you busy as is. Would get rid of some clutter too.

[vmind]

Point 7 seems like the biggest for me. Recently wanted to plan/discuss a few days away with the family. A shared google calendar with a circle and discussion around that would be superb for such things.

[Tomek_]

For me (and I'm surprised it's not on a list): filtering incoming content. In this regard G+ is really lacking (you can't hide a person, similar posts (or the same post shared by many of your contacts) are not grouped together, etc.). Circles are great for controlling who sees your posts (although, surprisingly, FB's lists are actually more powerful), something as brilliant as that but for controlling what you see and I'd be completely happy.

[jwuphysics]

>> 6. On that note, move +1’d sites into a users main Google+ activity stream. Again - networks are all about the Social Objects and +1 is Google’s method for sharing. Why hide it away in a separate tab?

Please do not do this. There are already options to share sites on Google. Also, everytime I +1 a site on the main search page, I don't want to have to specify which circles can see it--nor do I want everyone to see it.

[thomaslangston]

Agreed. Part of the distastefulness of Facebook for me was the amount of auto-generated noise from these types of "features".

[alanh]

Note we aren’t sure if the linked Google Docs form is actually an official one from Google.

It is linked to by https://plus.google.com/105923173045049725307/posts/E3mVj6ns... Christian Oestlien, ostensibly a Google+ team member, but I can’t verify if that claim is true or not.

[OliverSteenbuck]

imho set operations on circels are missing. Think:public but not family or extend but not people_i_dont_like

[omaranto]

I agree, Facebook friend lists have this and it can be very useful.

[dannylipsitz]

How about a platform for businesses? I've noticed an emerging trend of Fortune 500 companies listing their Facebook sites in their advertisements rather than their own location on a TLD. For instance, will facebook.com/mastercard become plus.google.com/mastercard?

[quinndupont]

Number five (5) is solved by this third-party Chrome extension (works well): https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hcieonlgpadegedlcp...

[LordBodak]

APIs for third party apps. I already use Seesmic to watch my twitter and Facebook feeds, but with G+ I have to use another app.

[DannoHung]

They'll need to modify the +1 widget to be aware of your circles and allow you to determine who sees them before 6 can happen.

[wccrawford]

This is a good list. I think these are the final pieces needed to bring G+ up to the level of all the existing sites.

[orionlogic]

It's always very easy to add something rather than removing.