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Facebook events just feel empty, don’t they? If you agree, you’ll be psyched about Google+ events. Can better invitations, calendar integration, photos and other flashy tricks to make the people you invite feel like they’re really having a good time?
First of all, Google+ wants to fix invitations. Sometimes the mass invitations we get online seem cold and impersonal. Google thinks cinemagrams will change that. Do you agree?
Calendar integration is key. Google Calendar is a huge planning tool, and if events are integrated with the event that means that you can immediately check to see if you’re free and respond to the invitation immediately. When you say yes it instantly shows up in you calendar.
There’s also photo integration. When your event is going on photos are automatically added to the event, and there are multiple ways to view the events. Furthermore, after the event it doesn’t just die. You can add photos after the fact so it compiles everything from everyone who attended and added photos. What a nice little document.
Rad! Now if only people actually used Google+.
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Introducing my new policy on Giz articles that needlessly bash Google+
Dear Mr Agular – FUCK OFF YOU DICKWAD.
The final comment on this article was utterly unnecessary, as was my reaction to it. Remove the former and you won’t see the latter.
Now now, Darrell. It’s obvious to everyone that Google+ just hasn’t gained ground the way Facebook, Twitter and other social networks did in their early days. There’s no need for such strong language.
I am not going to retract any of what I said. If you want to remove the last line of the article I will happily accept you deleting my comment.
A major feature is released and gets the above paltry “review” and snarky sign off. This is not fair and mature reviewing, which I know He is more than capable of.
Darrell, look at the stats. I know YOU use Google+, and have an army of followers on there, but you’re literally the only person I know who uses it. Sam and I checked into our accounts last week (as you saw) and couldn’t find anyone else using it. Nor could I work out how the hell to join your circle (it’s so clunky, there’s little wonder Google is struggling to retain interest in the service.)
You can’t just ask an editor to retract something from a post, just because it doesn’t meet with your fanboyistic interests.
Sorry to jump in here, but if you would have looked through your circles kat, you would have seen that both yourself and Mr biddles have been invited to the Gizmodo circle which was created by Darrell and used by a good few of us.
Sure, it doesn’t have the subscriber base of facebonk but it’s by no means dead. Hopefully recent updates and the fact that facedick’s mobile app is white will mean a bit more traffic for G+
Must have skimmed over the fact you couldn’t work it out there
as I said though, you and Sam were invited to the circle, think here’s nearly 30 UK Gizmodo followers on there.
Maybe get Darrell to the a quick how to video for the site
Clunky? Struggling? Really?! Could not figure out how to use circles? I am probably reading all this wrong, I have a bit of a hangover so I will read it again later to make sure.
taking you points in order
1. “you’re literally the only person I know who uses it” mhatti3000, Udimion, Glenbot 3000, zerrin, eadingas, Coastercub, The Doctor, yeoldgreat1, DirtyMagic86, Spatchmo, jpxdude, Lester_Bangs, Southern, kwiiiq , Eldwafio, flynndean & Alfred Heflander are all members of my Giz UK Circle, any of those names seem familiar?
2.”Nor could I work out how the hell to join your circle”. With any new system you have to learn how to use it. If you come with the attitude of expecting it to work just like facebook of course you aren’t going to understand the different (and iMO better) way that G+ works)
3. “there’s little wonder Google is struggling to retain interest in the service”. The world for G+ is very different than it was for Facebook, mostly because of Facebook’s ubiquity. Everyone and their nan (and their nan’s dog) has a facebook account, did you expect G+ to arrive and overturn that overnight? Please name for me one website/product/service that has launched into a market that has a major market dominating compititor that was an overnight success? It’s only been out a year, it will take time to slowly convert people, largely because of the inertia of “but all my friends/family are on facebook”. The fact that G+ is growing at all in such a situation is impressive.
“You can’t just ask an editor to retract something from a post, just because it doesn’t meet with your fanboyistic interests.” That wasn’t what I was doing. I know for a fact that you adapt US posts for the UK site and have adjusted attitude and language used before, that’s all I was asking for.
P.S. If you need some help understanding G+ I will be happy to show you how it works.
As much as I use any social network, G+ and twitter are the only ones I frequent. I and a growing number of my friends haven’t used Facebook in years. I log in remember it is rubbish and promptly get out again. At some point Facebook will go the way of myspace and G+ will be the new Facebook.
It seems crazy to be so dismissive of something just because it doesn’t have the same user base as the largest of its type and you don’t know how to use it. After all, how many users did Chrome have in the early days? Or webOS……….?
bet you wasn’t ready for that shitstorm… ;o
“Facebook, Twitter and…” what other comparably-sized social networks are there at the moment? And don’t say Pinterest, Pinterest is a social scrapbook not a network…
Instagram?
I was actually enjoying this article until the last line, which for some reason felt the need to bash Google+. As many have already noted, Gizmodo UK actually has a very strong community on the network and I would of thought the editors would have taken note of that by now.
Clunky you say? Are you sure you are using the right network? The system is by far the most intuitive and beautiful I have seen, especially the newly released mobile apps.
It’s very easy to knock down a network that you don’t engage in, much like many did with Twitter ‘oh its stupid’ etc etc, but without interacting yourself and circling people/pages that interest you, obviously it’s going to feel like a ghost town.
I like Google+ because of the rich content it creates, Facebook is filled with people just posting about day to day life, Twitter is filled with great content but is based solely on text and the occasional picture/video when you open a tweet, but Google+ is built around beautiful design which encourages people to post interesting content.
Start circling things that interest you and you will start to soon see the reason so many of us here are so passionate about it.
Perfect description!
It works pretty well, I’ve just created an Event (party for one) and it gets added to your Google calendar. You get a notification when the event starts and when you take a picture during the time of the event it automatically adds it to the event. When you take your first picture it also checks you in at the event. You can also leave comments which didn’t seem to work for me. And there’s Party Mode which automatically shares the pictures with other people at the event, which I couldn’t really see as I was the only one in the event to test.
I would definitely use this if more of my friends had G+ (sorry Darrell!)
Ah… Party Mode IS the option that automatically adds the pictures to the event and shares it.
Funny thing, Kat doesn’t like G+ but it would have been a great tool to organise the next meetup, with everyone sharing photos and thoughts.
I think that is the exactly what this should be used for!
Not everyone will have a G+ account so this would have to be in addition to regular invitations. Of course no one is stopping anyone from creating the event on G+ once a Giz meetup is planned.
It would also be good for people not being able to attend and getting in on the feel of it.
We can probably do that on the Giz UK circle. Assuming Kat will invite us.