In Are you on Google+? If you are, then do you enjoy being there or do you think that Facebook is a better option? Perhaps one of the biggest problems with Google+ is that it didn't emulate Facebook's plan of building "an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work." That is what Steve Yegge, a senior Google executive thinks.
Steve Yegges 4578 word rant has gone viral all over the Internet. He writes: Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo). We all dont get it. The Golden Rule of platforms is that you Eat Your Own Dogfood. The Google+ platform is a pathetic afterthought. We had no API at all at launch, and last I checked, we had one measly API call. One of the team members marched in and told me about it when they launched, and I asked: So is it the Stalker API? She got all glum and said Yeah. I mean, I was joking, but no the only API call we offer is to get someones stream. So I guess the joke was on me.
He goes on to say: Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But thats not why they are successful. Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work. So Facebook is different for everyone. Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars. Some spend all their time on Farmville. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so theres something there for everyone.
Further down his post, he says, Our Google+ team took a look at the aftermarket and said: Gosh, it looks like we need some games. Lets go contract someone to, um, write some games for us. Do you begin to see how incredibly wrong that thinking is now? The problem is that we are trying to predict what people want and deliver it for them.
Perhaps the most important line that Steve Yegge says in his post is: a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. To most users it does seem as if Google+ is a clone of Facebook. It is also too didactic, in the sense that it is built completely by engineers, who had very little feedback from ordinary users.
Since then Steve Yegge has removed the post from Google+ account. Now he has posted an apologia of sorts. His latest post says, I posted a long opinionated rant tonight about how I think Google could be doing a much better job of thinking from the ground up in terms of services rather than products. Sadly, it was intended to be an internal post, visible to everybody at Google, but not externally. But as it was midnight and I am not what you might call an experienced Google+ user, by the time I figured out how to actually post something I had somehow switched accounts. I've taken the post down at my own discretion. It was kind of a tough call, since obviously there will be copies. And everyone who commented was nice and supportive.
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