I worked at Google during the Google Plus catastrophe. A friend worked at Facebook. I asked him why FB didn’t have sharing circles, and he said their data showed people couldn’t be bothered to set them up. Now figure the odds people will want to manage cryptographic keys and relay servers… - ThreadSky

paul.bsky.social • 671 days ago

I worked at Google during the Google Plus catastrophe. A friend worked at Facebook. I asked him why FB didn’t have sharing circles, and he said their data showed people couldn’t be bothered to set them up.

Now figure the odds people will want to manage cryptographic keys and relay servers…

Reposted from 𝘊𝘩𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘢𝘯 𝘛𝘢𝘺𝘭𝘰𝘳 📐

Can't be arsed with cryptographic keys and managing relay servers, etc. personally

Comments

geca.bsky.social•671 days ago

what was circles? I literally can't remember

paul.bsky.social•671 days ago

Everything you posted was Public by default. Then you could set up sub-sets of your friends list (sharing circles) and pick one of those to share to instead of the default "Public". FB did have something similar, but turns out nobody used it.

geca.bsky.social•671 days ago

ohh
doesn't twitter has something like that?

paul.bsky.social•671 days ago

Could be? But our confusion about whether it even exists speaks to its popularity of use.

pnr.bsky.social•671 days ago

I think the promise of the vision is that you can but you don't have to. The underlying infra and data is open so builders can leverage it to build consumer only products. Some people will be builders, some consumers, only a smaller subset both.

paul.bsky.social•671 days ago

Also, that was the same promise of Google+. They were there, but you didn't have to use them. People were still confused, and just... stopped using the platform.

paul.bsky.social•671 days ago

As soon as someone even sees an option they don't understand, that creates friction and they nope right on out.

gpurcell.bsky.social•671 days ago

Yeah, it has to be something along the line of “Download this app from your phone and it just works” type approach.

pnr.bsky.social•671 days ago

How did you install this app and post this?

gpurcell.bsky.social•671 days ago

Exactly—whatever wraparound that handles federation has to be similarly easy to use.

gpurcell.bsky.social•671 days ago

When I learned the first step of Mastodon is “Ok, pick a server…”. I lost all interest and consigned it to the Linux box in my brain.

nezter.bsky.social•671 days ago

I got through sign up. When I found out I had to follow someone on every server, I was done.

codingo.com•671 days ago

I'd love to know more about that time.. Do you feel the exclusivity of invite-only was held onto too long / led to part of the failure there? It felt like they hit critical mass in media, but had a hard limit on how quickly people could onboard at the same time

paul.bsky.social•671 days ago

Hard for me to say. I’m no expert in social, I worked in datacenter ops/Eng. There were several failures, mostly in product leadership and marketing I think. Vic Gundotra was up his own ass about the whole thing, and it was forced upon other products where it had no business being.

codingo.com•671 days ago

Agree there.. I remember the revolt when they forced it upon youtube comments

xlaszlo.bsky.social•671 days ago

It's weird because youtube has in general (I am sure there are exceptions) the best comment sorting algorithm. (otoh their video sorting is trash)

I would really like to know how they do it.

codingo.com•671 days ago

For the scale they operate at, quite good moderation too.. nothing is perfect, but they do "ok" with the challenges scale presents

litwin.bsky.social•671 days ago

Exactly why I didn’t spend much time on mastadon…

paul.bsky.social•671 days ago

Mastodon has a myriad of issues. UI is a big one, it looks like complete cluttered shit on both mobile and desktop.

forever.bsky.social•671 days ago

Circles always felt weird to me because if I want something to have a limited audience, I'm probably going to send it to a group text, or DM. People come to social media for engagement, not limited reach.

teon.bsky.social•671 days ago

I often think about Circles for photo sharing and clear access control. It would be great if Google Photos let you share with a predefined group or Circle. Sometimes I want to share with just the gays, sometimes I want everyone to see.

I guess they have their place for some things.

paul.bsky.social•671 days ago

Don't get me started on what a half-assed project Google Photos is.

teon.bsky.social•671 days ago

So much potential!

But also why can't I flip mirror a fking photo?!

paul.bsky.social•671 days ago

Google is data-driven to a fault. Unless there's at least a hundred million people requesting a feature they don't bother.

teon.bsky.social•671 days ago

🥲🥲🥲

forever.bsky.social•671 days ago

That's fair. In my mind, when I want to be public I use my main. When I want to be a little more anonymous, I use my alt. Circles are another approach to that, just not one that resonated with me because I'm convinced that everything eventually gets hacked.

paul.bsky.social•671 days ago

People don't want to be mindful of what they say, it's the accountability issue they have a problem with.

roubix.co•671 days ago

🤣

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