seanmonstar

Google+ Feedback

I’ve been enjoying Google+, for the most part. I would love to just drop Twitter and Facebook, since it feels like the proper merging of the two. Besides that most of my friends aren’t using it, given some time, I’m sure more will. In the meantime, I’m using it more along the Twitter approach than the Facebook approach¹.

To that effect, there are some things that if added, would make the experience closer to what I feel the Google+ product team was aiming for²:

• Posts should only show the first 2-3 comments that I haven’t seen yet, with a link to open more. Seriously, some posts are gigantic walls of comments from people that frankly I don’t care about.
• Circles need a way of letting others join them. I like talking about JavaScript, Android, Star Wars, and video games. I bet most people who find what I have to say interesting aren’t interested in all those subjects. However, I’m not going to ask for an email from everyone to let me know what Circle I should put them in. So I end up having to post most things Public, which is contrary to the product goal.
• Notifications are super buggy. Sometimes, it will show I have notifications, but clicking the button from GMail will show that I really don’t have anything unread. Sometimes, clicking that button will show the notifications panel, but the contents have duplicated inside the panel. Also, unlike Gmail, which does a great job of syncing my unread notifications between the web client and my Android phone, the Google+ notifications show up on both; no matter what. Turning off syncing the notifications to my phone saved my double dismissal duty, and about half a days worth of battery power.
• Sharing needs to let me do intersections of Circles , and everyone but a Circle (or persons). Such as, my people that are both in my Local and Starcraft Circles, excluding John.

Some related reading from David Eaves that got me thinking about this.