Google+ is being changed this week based on user feedback. It’s been a couple of weeks since Google+ launched, and with the exception of China already blocking its use, people do seem to like it. That’s good news for Google after the failures of Buzz and Wave, and bad news for Facebook who now has a serious competitor in the social network space. You may think Google could sit back and watch the Google+ network grow, but that would be a mistake. The search company has realized it can’t just watch what happens, it needs to respond to users quickly in order to keep them happy and the network growing. While the general view of Google+ is a positive one, there’s also a lot of criticism and user feedback of which Google is about to tackle.
Today, Vic Gundotra, senior vice president of social at Google used his Google+ account to post a message confirming there’s “lots of criticism for Google+.” Although there isn’t a list of what the most criticized features are (or lack thereof), the responses to Gundotra’s post are very telling. Via Computerworld. Google+ with Gmail. Changes coming to Google+ this week. News July 11, 2011 12:02 PM ET Computerworld - It looks like Google will be making some changes to Google+ this week.
In a post on Google+, Vic Gundotra, a senior vice president of engineering at Google, told his followers that users have been providing a lot of positive and negative feedback about Google's new social network, and that the company plans to respond to some of them this week. "Lots of criticism for Google+," Gundotra wrote at about 2:05 a.m. Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research, said it's pretty clever for Google to fess up to the many complaints it's received about Google+.
"It's like the Domino's [Pizza] ads," he added. Gottheil said he expects that Google will tackle issues related to Google+ invites and to the receipt of floods of notifications about everything from being added to a circle to referred to someone else. "I'm glad we're able to be a part of the formative stages of Google+," commented one user. Google+ faces thorny online identity issues | Deep Tech. Google, trying to take a stand with its new social network, requires people to use real-world names on Google+. The real world, though, turns out to be more complex than a simple rule can accommodate. Now two weeks old and growing like a weed , Google+ is facing issues that became common once the Internet made people's identity into information that can reach potentially anyone on the planet.
With Google+ and the Google Profiles service on which it relies, the company is trying to build a service without pseudonyms, anonymous cowards, or impersonation. "Google Profiles is a product that works best in the identified state. This way you can be certain you're connecting with the right person, and others will have confidence knowing that there is someone real behind the profile they're checking out," according to the Google help files for Google+. But there are acres of gray area, too. Should Google+ require your real name? Online names have been a contentious issue before. Today On Google+: Top Users Hide Followers, Gender Can Be Hidden & How Google+ Is Built!