In August, I suggested that the only way we'd see lasting success/popularity for G+ was to build a really great game brand, and that we couldn't do this if we were publishing a mix of (a) Zynga games and (b) decent but not brand-defining games like Angry Birds (non-defining because it was already popular by then). I got a few people together and we came up with a plan for saving the Games brand by courting indie developers. A plan that would have worked, and that likely would have made G+ into something. I had massive support (including about 2/3 of the G+ Games team, because who wants to support Farmville instead of doing something cool?) among the engineers and a lot of people said they'd contribute on a 20% basis (even though 20%T was clearly dying).
This drew a lot of attention to me. Positive attention from everyone who cared about games or the actual success of G+. Negative attention from the higher-ups because they were afraid of another RNCH.
Googlers don't talk about it for fear of losing their jobs, but the engineers hate the Real Names policy. It's probably 80 to 90 percent opposition. Here was another mini-RN (even titled "Real Games") that I inadvertently started in my first 3 months by pointing out that the direction we were taking with games was going to set a historical record for missed opportunities. A weird and harrowing experience. I really did not anticipate that positing a good idea and getting a lot of popular support would lead to adversity. I underestimated the degree (and I still do) to which people would entrench themselves with bad ideas.
I still stand by the fact that I was completely and utterly right. The only way I can see a general-purpose social network beating Facebook is by having great games, and by having a very high average quality (a "we won't waste your time" ideology). This requires being extremely editorial about what you accept. This is hard for Google because it made its name by being non-editorial, which is admirable and stately for web search but inappropriate for games, especially because those shitty Zynga games were (in 2011) the #1 cited cause of social network fatigue.
I didn't get fired, because I don't think Google knows how to fire people. (If it did, there'd be boxes at the desks of most of their executives.) I left in good standing when I realized that (a) I had years of C++ legacy maintenance ahead of me, because that's what most of the work at Google is, and (b) it would take several years before I'd actually be able to really contribute. Not being able to save the Games product was pretty discouraging.
This is what people keep talking about here on HN with regard to me and Google. That, and the fact that I got mixed up with one of the most ineffective means of communication (an internal mailing list that rhymes with henge-risk) I've ever encountered.
You know, I don't have a horse in this race, but the sentiments you express in this comment would definitely make me think twice about hiring you if your resume ever crossed my desk.
Sometimes businesses, large or small, make questionable or even outright stupid decisions. But past a certain point it's time to bury the "I told you so"s and work to get something done. If what's being done is illegal or unethical, then that's one thing, but you're talking about setting a strategy for a game site. People get their say, and things go up the chain of command until it reaches the person whose job it is to make the decision. Then they make the decision, and everybody moves on and does the best job they can at trying to make the business successful based on the decision that was made.
When something's been shipped and/or new information is available, there may come another time when that decision is revisited or further strategic direction is necessary. At that point, making a case for a different direction is, once again, entirely appropriate. Until then, people who are on the team should be working to accomplish the team's goals, even if you fear they might be wrong.
If you disagree strongly enough with a decision, it may be appropriate to say to your management, "I'm sorry, but I can't agree with you on your strategic direction for the product" and either ask to be reassigned to something else or seek employment elsewhere. That's perfectly reasonable, and a professional way to handle a disagreement.
But if I read your post correctly, you were inciting open insurrection on a team after key decisions had been made. That's categorically inappropriate. Even if everything you said makes you look like Nostradamus in retrospect, that still makes you a bad team player.
Having people who can work as a team to accomplish a common goal is at least as important as having the right goal. There are many, many stories of teams who built the wrong thing, then adapted accordingly to produce something better. I can think of virtually no stories where a product succeeded despite a divided team that could not work toward a common goal.
I actually faded pretty quickly on the Games issue because, you're right, it was a bad decision but this wasn't an ethics problem. Once it was clear that it wasn't going to go the right way, I stopped trying to change it.
Thanks for that. I always enjoy hearing about what goes on inside bigger tech companies, given that I've never worked at anything other than small startups.
I must ask: You're a motivated and (probably) skilled developer. Why keep working at big bureaucratic businesses? It sounds really frustrating, and there's never been an easier time to set out on your own.
Btw, the high-quality games strategy would have been interesting. I think it's impossible to say that any particular strategy will allow Google to beat Facebook. But I do agree that would have been much more interesting than what they're doing now. Better to attack a niche and grow from there than to go for everyone and remain stagnant. My G+ network is a ghost town, and has been since about a week after they opened it up. What's weird about it is that Google doesn't seem to be doing anything to change that. From my limited perspective, they only seem to care about achieving feature parity with FB.
I really believed that Google culture was still alive, and not just a bunch of marketing drivel.
By the way, most startups aren't much better. The best startups are great, but there's a major survivorship bias in what we think of as "startup culture". The ones that implement shitty MBA culture don't get off the ground because people leave.
I think it's impossible to say that any particular strategy will allow Google to beat Facebook.
Sure, and "beat Facebook" was bad word choice on my part. I don't think "beating" Facebook would even be desirable. Right now, though, G+ would do well to have 1% the relevance of Facebook in the social space.
People have short memories. In mid-2011, a lot of people hated Facebook. That was a selling point of G+: we're like Facebook, but we're not Facebook. Ok, cool. Except... no one uses it yet, and there's a major critical-mass effect to social networking sites. Also, in mid-2012, I think the hatred for Facebook (a consequence of those shitty Zynga games, which Facebook has seriously curtailed) has waned and people like it again. As I said, short memories. Google+ was perfectly timed to take advantage of Facebook fatigue by providing something more... qualitative is, I guess, the word... but they blew it.
My thought on games was that getting a few very high quality games would give people an incentive to use G+ even if they were the first ones on it. We wouldn't make money on the games, but that would get people into and comfortable with the system and give G+, at the least, a fighting chance.
Instead, they put huge amounts of money and gambled internal engineer morale for... a "Me, too" product that will probably be shuttered in 5 years.
Totally untrue. I have almost 10K users who have circled me, and my G+ network is very active. The quality of engagement I get at G+ is leagues higher than Facebook. A lot of the people I interact with on G+ are engineers, programmers, artists, designers, scientists, and other "knowledge workers", whereas while I've tried to grow out my Facebook network, it appears to be mentally challenged. Hey, a lot of users I know on G+ have deleted their Facebook accounts and aren't coming back.
Now, that's a personal data point, and by no means a scientific poll. But it's clear to me that Google+ is very much here to stay. Even if you only look at the design and UI side of it, G+ is considerably more advanced than Facebook. You can see the influence of Edward Tufte on the Google+ DNA.
I think he meant to say "no nonprogrammers use it". Of course that isn't entirely true either, but the point is that it was able to get mass adoption among people in tech but (according to my understanding) not for people at large.
Also, design/UI isn't really all that different than Facebook, especially after the changes made by Facebook after Google+'s release.
Edit: Google+'s real advantages right now are that 1) it is not Facebook (so if Facebook's perception worsens a lot, people have a choice and Google+ growth could increase a lot), 2) you automatically become a member if you have a Google account and content is present in various Google properties (including message notifications) 3) hangouts, and 4) many of the people you wish weren't your Facebook friends aren't on Google+ yet (although this would likely change if Google+ became popular)
The fact that Google+ can strongly appeal to a particular niche is a good sign. I don't know of any massively-viral social applications with staying power that didn't begin in a similar fashion.
That said, I don't think programmers are a particularly great niche for eventual viral growth. We're sort of the default niche for every new product in the valley. Whether we can sustain a product until it becomes mainstream is a complete toss-up. It happened with Twitter, but even then, the main catalysts were celebrities like Ashton Kutcher creating profiles.
Compare that to Pinterest, which strongly appeals to women of all ages and locations. Or to early Facebook, which targeted college students. These groups are almost defined by their social behavior and their "mainstream-ness". College students get older, leave college, and become hair stylists/grocery baggers/whatever kids are going to school for these days, where they make even more social connections.
So I'm curious how G+ can exploit the particular niche(s) they've had success with. I doubt they'll be able to do it well by simply parroting Facebook's features.
Google+ adoption among my social circles (makers, programmers, burners, hippies, ravers, kinksters) is around 50-75% of Facebook adoption. It's more than enough that if G+ added a few critical features I'd jump ship.
If G+ had Events, I would stop posting events to FB, as would a large number of my friends. This would rapidly cause our remaining friends to join G+ in order to see/RSVP our events.
If G+ had Groups, I could migrate my FB groups over, and this would also lead to a rapid spike in new users.
Google already has Calendar and Groups, so we are just waiting for integration at this point.
"No one uses it yet" I meant to apply to the time (spring and summer) when these discussions were occurring. It's not accurate to say that "no one" uses G+ now.
I think the hatred for Facebook [...] has waned and people like it again.
I think that there are a couple important reasons for this. Google+, a big alternative to Facebook, wasn't a viable option for most people, so they recognized the comfort of Facebook's features. Also, Facebook implemented a bunch of new features that made Facebook more lively (friend lists, timeline, ticker, etc.).
Google had a great opportunity, but they really missed out. Games could have been a great factor in getting more users, but I think that the fundamental issue lies with the actual sharing and interaction mechanisms! Not being able to write on someone's profile was a huge mistake for familiarizing Facebook users with the site, and getting new users. The circling and filtering behaviors still haven't changed. Pinterest came along and did sharing the right way: users posting categories of posts that other people can choose to voluntarily follow. Google+ isn't useful to me because the signal/noise ratio is through the roof because of this fundamental flaw. And there is still no way to exclude individuals from seeing a post.
In many ways, Pinterest is wiping the floor with Google+... an actual content-sharing network, with a well-designed intuitive sharing mechanism. An actual companion to Facebook rather than competitor. Making people choose between the two (Google+/Facebook) was far too large of a challenge.
If you ever decide to put together a social network dedicated to games by gamers (or people who want to play them), please let me know. I have a half dozen half-developed HTML5 games because I can't figure out how I would make enough money to pay the hosting bills. Would love to team up with someone who can build a platform that I could put these on.
I could do these as Flash of course (did do so with one game a couple years ago), but I can't say I'm interested in putting in library after library of ads and optimizing Actionscript to support a shrinking audience.
Amusingly enough, while they do have a small list of HTML5 games, there is nothing in their documentation that talks about how to get one to them. The single reference is to using an iFrame to put their API onto your game that is hosted at another URL.
I am hopeful they, or Mochi, or someone like them will come along and provide a true HTML5 solution like the Flash folks already have. But I suspect we are getting rather off-topic here :-)
Maybe not exactly what you meant, but Raptr employs video game players (including a few pro/ex-pro players), and is a social network for video game players.
You seem blind to the popularity of Zynga and other makers of 'shitty' games. Steam has plenty of what you would call real games. G+ is wise to court the popular games first.
Xbox and Playstation have the same kind of games, and Call of Duty is of course on both. Consumers have expectations of what a social game is. Why not offer them the choice of social network to play them on?
This drew a lot of attention to me. Positive attention from everyone who cared about games or the actual success of G+. Negative attention from the higher-ups because they were afraid of another RNCH.
Googlers don't talk about it for fear of losing their jobs, but the engineers hate the Real Names policy. It's probably 80 to 90 percent opposition. Here was another mini-RN (even titled "Real Games") that I inadvertently started in my first 3 months by pointing out that the direction we were taking with games was going to set a historical record for missed opportunities. A weird and harrowing experience. I really did not anticipate that positing a good idea and getting a lot of popular support would lead to adversity. I underestimated the degree (and I still do) to which people would entrench themselves with bad ideas.
I still stand by the fact that I was completely and utterly right. The only way I can see a general-purpose social network beating Facebook is by having great games, and by having a very high average quality (a "we won't waste your time" ideology). This requires being extremely editorial about what you accept. This is hard for Google because it made its name by being non-editorial, which is admirable and stately for web search but inappropriate for games, especially because those shitty Zynga games were (in 2011) the #1 cited cause of social network fatigue.
I didn't get fired, because I don't think Google knows how to fire people. (If it did, there'd be boxes at the desks of most of their executives.) I left in good standing when I realized that (a) I had years of C++ legacy maintenance ahead of me, because that's what most of the work at Google is, and (b) it would take several years before I'd actually be able to really contribute. Not being able to save the Games product was pretty discouraging.
This is what people keep talking about here on HN with regard to me and Google. That, and the fact that I got mixed up with one of the most ineffective means of communication (an internal mailing list that rhymes with henge-risk) I've ever encountered.