DISQUS

jack · 1 year ago

i'm going to be honest, i find all of this backlash to be really bizarre and unfounded. the entire point of the feature was to mark articles that you want to share widely.

if you wanted to mark articles as important, that's what the star was for. if you wanted to email articles, that's what the 'email' button was for. you didn't need to mark an item with 'share' to do those things. i know because i used to email plenty of articles to people through gmail without marking them to share widely.

nothing has changed except they've now made the distribution easier. you compare it to facebook, but it's very different - they already asked you for permission to share the article because the button says 'share' on it.

am i the only person who understands what the word means? i feel like i'm taking crazy pills here!

i mean honestly, what did people think the 'share' button was supposed to do?

ITrush · 1 year ago

Very informative! thanks for sharing.

Nhick
http://www.itrush.com

Harshal Vaidya · 1 year ago

Thanks for this. I completely agree to all the content in this post. To add to that there is another annoying feature with Orkut. If I add a person as a friend on Orkut, whenever the person accesses his GMail s(he) automatically shows up online on my GTalk and can chat with me automatically.

This is preposterous. I admit that I added that guy as a friend but I might not want to talk to him on GTalk. Why the hell is there a default assumption that I want to chat with my Orkut friends? Who gave you that right ?

Most people add friends on Social Networks even if they have a faint acquaintance with them. That does not mean that they want to chat with them.

C'moon Google grow up and be responsible. You can play with peoples data like that.

Aaronontheweb · 1 year ago

Large organizations like Google and Facebook take their user bases for granted; they don't take into account the real-world circumstances of all possible relationships. I'm friends on Facebook with a lot of people whom I would certainly never talk to over AIM or GTalk, and for Google or whomever to make the reverse assumption is frustrating and potentially creates awkward situations for the lives of those people using social networks.

In short, social networks should assume NOTHING about their users.

Bob · 1 year ago

When you mention the idea of Google Reader + OpenSocial, the word "Spokeo" just came to mind. It was recently introduced on Guy Kawasaki's blog: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/12/reality-che...

Eric Eldon · 1 year ago

Jack, Google's definition of what public "sharing" means has been confusing to many people.

Many interpreted "share" to mean "share privately," based on Google's description of what the "sharing" option has meant up until the introduction of "friends."

Example: Text from Google's help page on the obscure, non-search-indexed "public" URL generated for your Shared items.

"Like any regular web page, your public page is viewable by anyone who knows its address. Send the link to your friends and family, and they'll be able to read what you've recommended. They can bookmark your page in their browsers for easy access, and they can even subscribe to it in Google Reader."

http://www.google.com/support/reader/bin/answer...

When Google says this is a URL that you tell "friends and family" about in order for them to find, there is no suggestion that Google will all of a sudden define your "friends" as people you chat with on Gtalk.

So there are two problems here for Google. Miscommunication about what sharing has meant and will mean in the future -- then, wrong assumptions about who your friends are.

Rob Scott · 1 year ago

Hmm... perhaps I'm missing something here. If they only share what is marked as "shared" and the default setting is to NOT share items (as it appears to be) what's the problem? I agree with up you, Eric, that this is another Google miscommunication. However it also sounds a bit like rabble rousing when the risk with default settings nil.

"competing bloggers"? Interesting concept.