To celebrate 10 years of Creator Weekly, I’m sharing tech highlights from 2015 that still resonate 10 years later. This update was for the week ending August 1, 2015.
Frame from the official Google video "Google+: Explore Settings", published
June 11, 2011
Google+ Create Home Page captured in March 2019. The Creator program launched in 2016.
In retrospect, this should not have come as a surprise.
“while our engineering teams have put a lot of effort and dedication into building Google+ over the years, it has not achieved broad consumer or developer adoption, and has seen limited user interaction with apps. The consumer version of Google+ currently has low usage and engagement: 90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds.”
Regular users weren't using Google+ and developers weren't using Google+, and Google discovered bugs that could leak private information. It shut down for consumers in 2019.
Ten years ago Google demoted Google+ from the social across all Google
products to a social platform focused on connecting users with shared
interests.
Google+ Was the Social Layer Across Google
Google+
launched in 2011
to much fanfare.
Soon Google+ head Vic Gundotra was describing as the "social layer across all of Google's services."
"The old Google was siloed; your identity and how you share with your
family was different across each product. ... In the new version of Google,
we know your name, we understand your circles and we make every service
better."
It's pretty clear this is part of where Google+ went wrong. People actually
did want to use a different identity and connections on Gmail and YouTube and
Blogger and other products. And by people, I mean me. I really liked Google+
as a social platform, but I created an entirely new Google account for my Plus
profile.
That version and vision of Google+ lasted just over four years.
A Google+ Focused on Collections, Connections Around Shared Interests, and Community
Google+ Create Home Page captured in March 2019. The Creator program launched in 2016.
On July 27, 2015,
Google announced
that Google+ would be a place for people to "engage around their shared
interests", and all you would need was a Google Account to use Google
products.
"People have told us that accessing all of their Google stuff with one account makes life a whole lot easier. But we’ve also heard that it doesn’t make sense for your Google+ profile to be your identity in all the other Google products you use."
"People have told us that accessing all of their Google stuff with one account makes life a whole lot easier. But we’ve also heard that it doesn’t make sense for your Google+ profile to be your identity in all the other Google products you use."
In retrospect, this should not have come as a surprise.
- In May 2015 Google Photos split off from Google+
- Google+ was no longer the only social profile in search, with Google adding theTwitter firehose of data a few months earlier.
- Hangouts had dropped the Google+ Profile requirement in 2013. A few weeks after this announcement, in August 2015, Google finally launched the standalone hangouts.google.com.
- And there were other changes that suggested Google+ was gradually being disentangled from other Google products.
But Google+ wasn’t dead (yet). Collections had launched in May 2015, allowing organization of posts and following by topic. Over the next few
years Google+ introduced a
new design and new features. It even had a
creator program.
The Great Untangling
One of the most contentious Google+ integrations was YouTube comments. The
way it worked was that any shared YouTube video on Google+ would appear as a
comment on that video, and a comment on YouTube could appear as a Google+
post. Neither YouTubers nor Plussers liked that arrangement.
So it was not surprising that that along with the announcement of changes to
Google+,
YouTube announced
that there would be an immediate change to comments.
"The comments you make on YouTube will now appear only on YouTube, not
also on Google+. And vice-versa."
Eventually YouTube would no longer require a Google+ Profile at all, but
they did have to
remind people not to make any changes just yet.
And Google+ features were gradually removed from other Google products. But it took years to untangle it all, even from YouTube.
Even when Google+ was abruptly shut down for personal accounts in early 2019, there were still integrations that needed to be unwound.
The folks at Google+ did put in a lot of effort to keep Google+ going, but
it never did really catch on.
In 2018 Google abruptly announced Google+ would be shut down.
And Google+ features were gradually removed from other Google products. But it took years to untangle it all, even from YouTube.
Even when Google+ was abruptly shut down for personal accounts in early 2019, there were still integrations that needed to be unwound.
Google+ Shuts Down
Google+ shut down in April 2019
In 2018 Google abruptly announced Google+ would be shut down.
“while our engineering teams have put a lot of effort and dedication into building Google+ over the years, it has not achieved broad consumer or developer adoption, and has seen limited user interaction with apps. The consumer version of Google+ currently has low usage and engagement: 90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds.”
Regular users weren't using Google+ and developers weren't using Google+, and Google discovered bugs that could leak private information. It shut down for consumers in 2019.
Google did maintain a stripped-down version of Google+ for business,
called Currents.
But when the Google Workspace "better home for work" launched in 2020 with a big splash, Currents wasn’t even mentioned.
But when the Google Workspace "better home for work" launched in 2020 with a big splash, Currents wasn’t even mentioned.
It’s no surprise that it was finally completely shut down in 2023 in favor of Chat Spaces, which is probably all most businesses need.
The View from 2025
In 2015
Facebook was focusing on friends, and then it wasn't,
and now it's focusing on friends again in 2025.
and now it's focusing on friends again in 2025.
Google wanted Google+ to be their version of Facebook. But it seems that
Facebook is a real outlier, and networks of friends and family on Facebook
aren't ever going to be easily reproduced on another platform.
Many people have a Facebook account for those personal interactions, but are
actually spending more time on platforms that are mainly entertainment, like
YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.
Even back in 2015 Facebook was trying to find the right balance between entertainment and content from personal connections. And they are still struggling with that.
Even back in 2015 Facebook was trying to find the right balance between entertainment and content from personal connections. And they are still struggling with that.
People do want to connect over shared interests. That is and was
happening on Reddit,
Discord
and other platforms. But they don't necessarily want to do that using their
wallet name, or on the same platform where they are connected with their
relatives, classmates and co-workers.
Could Google+ succeeded if it had focused on being a shared interest
platform from the start? Maybe, especially if it had been more welcoming to
YouTubers. But I'm not sure it could ever have been popular enough to be
considered a Google-level success.
I also think it's unlikely that Google will ever try to launch another
social network. It's not just that Google+ failed. It's that the current
social media landscape is pretty toxic, with content moderation,
misinformation and privacy concerns (and less entertainment value than
YouTube).
References
Google Blog, 27 July 2015:
Everything in its right place (Internet Archive version)
YouTube Blog, 27 July 2015: Keeping the conversation going (Internet Archive version)
Google Blog, 8 October 2018: Project Strobe: Protecting your data, improving our third-party APIs, and sunsetting consumer Google+
YouTube Blog, 27 July 2015: Keeping the conversation going (Internet Archive version)
Google Blog, 8 October 2018: Project Strobe: Protecting your data, improving our third-party APIs, and sunsetting consumer Google+
Google Blog, 10 December 2018:
Expediting changes to Google+
Comments
Post a Comment
Spam and personal attacks are not allowed. Any comment may be removed at my own discretion ~ Peggy