Problems with Google Plus already!
Its been only a couple of days since Google Plus launched and there are problems already with it. Well, one can argue that these are bugs and are natural. I agree, and wish that they’re only “temporary”. For a super star product like Google Plus, it doesn’t look nice anyways.
1. Circles cannot be sorted in stream view.
The circles feature (much similar to how it was predicted earlier) lets you create groups within your friends list. So you have your boss in one circle, your pub friends in another so that your updates to them don’t get to the boss. Makes sense that way right ? Wish Facebook had this option to group different friends within itself. But the problem is that one cannot sort Google Plus’ circles in stream view. That it they appear in alphabetical view and cannot be rearranged or hidden or tweaked. So if you had an awkward name (that you didn’t want to show your colleague), then you’re stuck. Hope they fix it soon.
2. Removing someone from a circle will not remove their posts.
Ouch! So you find this annoying internet marketer in the stream, who befriended you and you want to remove him from your network. So you remove him from your circle and what happens ? All his annoying updates will still remain in your circle. Huh ?
3. No nested comments available in stream.
No big deal, you say, because not even Facebook has it. Well, one may argue that way but if you look at the stream you will understand how important nested comments are. Because the stream is very complex and unlike facebook.
4. Blocking a person will not remove your content from his stream.
You know how it works in facebook, right ? You block a person and you can block everything related to you being appearing for him, without leaving a trace. In Google Plus, everything you shared with the person still remains after blocking and ONLY future updates will be blocked. Sigh!
5. Hangouts won’t work on IE9 without compatibility view.
Guess that is self explanatory. Is it not ? I’m not an IE fan anyways, so it doesn’t matter much.
6. Posts don’t update in Real Time.
I assume this is a teething issue. When everything else works like a charm on Google Plus, the posts don’t update in real time and is often delayed by couple of minutes to appear. Little things Google – please focus.
Other Miscellaneous Google Plus Issues reported on the web
1 – Google Plus is not available for google apps users – Pranav
2- Google executive is say everything is break at scale. Is why Google Plus is hosted on Amazon EC2! – Develops_Borat
Many of these are little bugs that Google Engineers are already working on and by the time the product is out for all, it would’ve been sorted. Hope it doesn’t end up as Google Buzz.
By the way, everyone’s craving for Google Plus invite already on social networks. You got it ?
Nice post..
BTW.. You already removed and blocked some people in google plus ?
Not trying to create a debate here. But I don’t see those as problems. I see them as unimplemented features. Or at worse, designed to function like that.
I couldn’t agree more. Item #1 is a feature request. Not user-friendly? Sure. A bug, no. Do users care if it’s a feature or bug? Probably not. Do dev/product management care? Yes, bugs look bad on reports. No, if users want it, it is a high priority task. Items #2 is a by-design thing. If by removing someone from a circle and therefore expecting their historic posts to be removed, then shall Google Plus shows historic posts when adding someone to a circle? Item #3 is a good feature request. Item #4 is interesting. I agree this is a bug/a weak design. Blocking a person electronically usually does mean to us/users that all contents, previous or future, are blocked. Although, if you think about it, in real life, if you “block” a person, s/he stlll have access to “the past”. Maybe that’s their excuse. Google, you can do better than real life. Item #5, would be nice if it does work, but testing and development can be very expensive. IE9 is only about 3% as per http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_explorer.asp So yeah, nobody cares, for now. Item #6, a bug. It is simply expected all updates to be shown in real time – Google wants to compete with facebook? Get this right.
Bull, silencing idiots like the Kardashians that got snuck in with the Dali Lama by means of deletion should be a feature!
Good post MANI, you have started using Google Plus and also found some defects in it. I am yet to sign-up for it.
Hi, Mani
Great Post. But we should be looking more over to the impacts it will bring in SEO, SMO and Display Marketing. As the plus one feature will optimize originally what ever we say and like. The second thing that the google will be throwing a very cheap rate for Ad campaigns, so it will be killing for facebook. What would you think about it?
hey,
i have a problem. a few ppl have added me into their circles and i have blocked them. however, my profile is still shown in their circles. i don’t want that to happen. any idea how to get this done?
At the moment, there is nothing much you can do. Hope they fix it soon.
this will be the first blog i see which do talk about Google + weakness while i believe that not much people start using it yet.
It maybe too new, it need sometime to improve in order to better than Facebook. Maybe most of people do expect too much from Google Plus.
Hey there, For the first bug…. we can work on a temporary solution at least for now …… One has to rename all the circles to start with numbers and then names based on their priority….like…
1.Friends 2.Family……… Hope this helps at least for now
Your points are completely valid….but it’s still in beta. If there is a problem in the public release, then sure, i’ll care. But right now? I really am not bothered by the issues at all.
Remove someone from the circle and refresh the stream, the posts of the removed person go away.
You realise this FREE service is in beta right?
Instead of bitching about these issues, why not log onto Google and use the button in the lower right corner entitled ‘send feedback’ ?