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A Google engineer has apologised for publicly posting a long criticism of the company’s Google+ social network in which he described it as a ‘pathetic afterthought’.
Steve Yegge – unfamiliar with how to actually use the site, he says – accidentally made public a post that had been intended for internal eyes only.
His criticisms centred on the accusation that the company focuses too much on products, and not enough on building a platform, which can end up being used in unanticipated ways.
“”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),” he wrote, in a post which has since been taken down but is still available here.
“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 there’s something there for everyone.”
Yegge’s now withdrawn the post, and apologised, describing it as a ‘long opinionated rant’.
“My opinions, even though they may seem well-formed and accurate, really are just a bunch of opinions from someone who’s nowhere near the center of the action – so I wouldn’t read too much into anything I said,” he says.
There’s no doubt, though, that his first post made some good points. Google+ hasn’t been the success with users that the company must have hoped – indeed, even chairman Eric Schmidt only got round to making his first public post yesterday.
When the service went into public beta three weeks ago, to be sure, traffic rocketed – up 1,200% in the first couple of days.
Since then, however, users have abandoned the service. Figures released this week by data analytics firm Chitika show that traffic actually fell back to its previous level within just a few days.
“It would appear that although high levels of publicity were able to draw new traffic to Google+, few of them saw reason to stay,” says the company.
“Perhaps if Google can accelerate their current pace of innovation on their social network offering, Google+ could becoming a competitive alternative to its arch-rival, Facebook. Otherwise, given Facebook’s clout and reputation of rapid innovation, Google+ might just be left in the dust.”
Currently, traffic reports from several monitoring firms show that Google+ is only the sixth most popular social network – it currently trails not only Facebook and Twitter, but also LinkedIn, MySpace and Ning. Something needs to change, and maybe Yegge had the right idea after all.
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